🗞️ A Labor Board Split Over a "No" Delayed: Ambulance Workers' Case Heads to Trial Despite United Front on the Facts
A divided NLRB, in its first Republican majority ruling since regaining quorum in 2026, sent a California ambulance union dispute to a full hearing rather than deciding it now, over a dissent arguing the outcome was already clear.
The National Labor Relations Board declined this week to resolve a labor dispute involving Manteca District Volunteer Ambulance Service and a union representing its paramedics and EMTs, even though the employer, the union, and the agency's own General Counsel had all separately asked the Board to rule without a trial. The case centers on whether the ambulance service was obligated to keep bargaining with the United Steelworkers affiliate after voluntarily recognizing it in 2023, once a rank and file petition to decertify the union surfaced weeks later.
Under longstanding Board precedent, an employer's duty to bargain does not automatically pause just because a decertification petition has been filed, since such petitions can be triggered by support from as little as 30 percent of a workforce. The ambulance service told the union in 2023 that it would withhold the requested payroll and personnel records while the decertification petition was pending, and it later invoked a Board rule, since rescinded, to argue it had no duty to bargain absent a formal election certifying the union. A subsequent election went against the union by a 13 to 11 vote, and the union's objections to that election are still pending separately.
Rather than rule on the merits, the Board's two Republican appointees, Chairman James Murphy and Member Scott Mayer, denied every party's bid for summary judgment, holding that unresolved questions remained about which records the union was legally entitled to and whether the employer had adequately contested that relevance. That sends the case to an administrative law judge for a full hearing, a process that typically takes months before returning to the Board on appeal.
Member David Prouty, the Board's lone holdover from the Biden administration, dissented, writing that the case's material facts were undisputed and that the employer's own legal filings already conceded it had cut off bargaining because of the decertification petition alone. Prouty argued the law on that point has been settled for decades and would have ordered the ambulance service back to the bargaining table for up to a year, along with worker rights training and a posted notice of violations. The disagreement illustrates how the newly reconstituted Board, now operating with a 2 to 1 Republican majority after nearly a year without a quorum, is approaching contested labor cases differently than it did under its previous composition.
Key Points
- The NLRB denied summary judgment motions from all three parties, meaning the case will go to a hearing before an administrative law judge instead of being decided now.
- The employer voluntarily recognized the union in April 2023 based on a card check, then stopped bargaining and withheld requested information after a decertification petition was filed in May 2023.
- A subsequent decertification election, held in August 2023, went against the union 13 votes to 11; the union's objections to that vote remain pending in a separate case.
- The two Republican Board members found unresolved questions about whether all the requested information was legally relevant, warranting a hearing rather than an immediate ruling.
- Dissenting Member David Prouty argued the employer's own admissions already established a violation of federal labor law and that summary judgment should have been granted for the union and the agency's General Counsel.
- The ruling is one of the first from the Board since it regained a working quorum in January 2026 following a nearly year long vacancy.
Primary Source Author: National Labor Relations Board (Chairman James R. Murphy and Members David M. Prouty and Scott A. Mayer)
Primary Source: Manteca District Volunteer Ambulance Service and United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, AFL-CIO, CLC, 375 NLRB No. 10, Case 32-CA-319646 (July 23, 2026)
Primary Source Link: NLRB Case 32-CA-319646
