Unfair labor practices (ULPs); The National Labor Relations Act; Unilateral wage increases to bargaining-unit employees; Waiver; Clear & unequivocal notice; Whether the employer withdrew recognition of the union; Refusal to bargain in good faith & failure to provide requested information; Applicability of the technical-refusal-to-bargain doctrine; Jurisdiction to review challenge to the enforceability of the NLRB’s bargaining order; 29 USC § 160(e)

Holding that substantial evidence supported respondent-NLRB’s findings that petitioner-employer (Rieth-Riley) engaged in ULPs in 2021 and 2022, the court denied Rieth-Riley’s petition for review of the NLRB’s order and granted the NLRB’s cross-application for enforcement of its order. Rieth-Riley first argued that “its 2021 and 2022 wage increases to bargaining-unit employees were not” ULPs because intervenor-Union “waived its right to bargain over them[.]” The NLRB found that Rieth-Riley did not prove waiver, and the court concluded that substantial evidence supported the “finding that Rieth-Riley failed to provide clear and unequivocal notice of the 2021 and 2022 wage increases to the Union.” The court held that the “supposed notice was far from ‘clear and unequivocal.’ As the Board pointed out, such general statements, without essential details like timing and amounts, are too broad to qualify as adequate notice.” And because the waiver defense failed, the NLRB “did not err by finding that the company committed [ULPs] by granting unilateral wage increases in 2021 and 2022.” The court also determined that substantial evidence supported the NLRB’s “finding that Rieth-Riley withdrew recognition from the Union. Taken together, the company’s conduct—its unilateral wage increases over multiple years, its [6/22] letter to the Union explicitly refusing to bargain, and its failure to provide requested information to the Union—demonstrated an intent to completely sever its relationship with the Union. Of course, a single [ULP] may not convey such an intent. But Rieth-Riley committed several serious ones.” Next, Rieth-Riley did “not deny that it refused to bargain with the Union and that it failed to provide requested information.” Rather, it sought to invoke the technical-refusal-to-bargain doctrine. But the court concluded that none of the Board’s ULP “findings was ‘based in whole or in part’ on the” dismissal of decertification petitions. And given that “Rieth-Riley’s longstanding obligations to the Union remained the same—whether or not the Board dismissed the petitions—it could not test those obligations by refusing to bargain.” Finally, the court found that it lacked jurisdiction to consider Rieth-Riley’s argument that the NLRB “improperly expanded the ALJ’s bargaining order” because Rieth-Riley did not “raise this challenge before the Board.”