NLRB's St. Francis decision signals broader-based bargaining units

The number of potentially appropriate bargaining units in a hospital has been sharply reduced by the National Labor Relations Board's recent St. Francis decision. Following a series of rejections by the U.S. Courts of Appeals, the NLRB has abandoned its previous position and adopted new standards that it believes are more in keeping with Congress' directive to prevent the proliferation of bargaining units in the health care industry. The new standards require that there be unusually sharp differences between the wages, hours, working conditions, etc., of employees requesting a separate bargaining unit and those in an overall professional or nonprofessional unit. As a result, hospital bargaining units will become much more broadly based. The St. Francis decision does not, however, invalidate previous NLRB certification or relieve a hospital of established bargaining obligations. To establish the appropriateness of broader based units, employers can ensure that employees in such a proposed unit are covered by a centrally administered wage and salary program with common wage scales, labor grades, pay increments, and job performance evaluation standards. Functional integration, continuing education and training, job transfers, shared facilities and activities, and centralized personnel policies and procedures are also areas in which employees' mutuality of interest can be established, thereby supporting the creation or maintenance of broad units.