NLRB Election Procedures - Successorship

Successorship

An employer may also be ordered to bargain with a union, even though the union has not been certified as the representative of any of its employees, if it is the successor to an employer that was obliged to bargain with the union. Successorship requires (1) that the new employer draw a majority of its workforce from the bargaining unit the union previously represented, (2) that the new employer be engaged in the same general line of business as its predecessor, and (3) that the bargaining unit has not been changed so drastically in the transfer of the business from the old to the new employer that it is no longer an appropriate one.

It is not necessary to show that the new employer bought the predecessor’s business in order to prove successorship; an employer that does nothing more than buy the assets of another company, or a competitor that supplants another employer by underbidding it, can still be a successor if it draws most of its workforce from the old bargaining unit and remains in the same general line of business. In addition, an employer may be a successor, even if it does not hire any of its predecessor’s employees, if it refused to hire them because of their union membership or activities.