A National Labor Relations Board judge issued a decision finding that Overnite Transportation has solicited and bribed employeed to circulate decertification petitions
-- petitions calling to drop the Teamsters union as the bargaining agent at various terminals.
Administrative Law Judge Robert Pulcini ordered Overnite to cease and desist from "soliciting, encouraging or bribing employees to circulate a decertification petition."
The union has long alleged that the decertification petitions are bogus, claiming the less-than-truckload company engineered them, and that non-employee signatures were found on them. The NLRB has dismissed all of them. For instance, shortly before the union went on strike against the company in October 1999, the NLRB had dismissed a ninth such petition.
Pulcini wrote in his decision that the company "advances the virtuousness of its supervisors as a reason why this [bribing] could not have happened ... I can place no reliance on this assertion, given the history of the parties, of bitter labor strife and unresolved conflict, driven by [Overnite's] previous misconduct."
Overnite has four weeks to appeal the ruling.