🗞️ Labor Board Finds Las Vegas Waste Hauler Retaliated Against Drivers Who Sought a Union

A National Labor Relations Board administrative law judge has ruled that Endurance Environmental Solutions, a Las Vegas waste and recycling hauler, violated federal labor law repeatedly over nearly two years following a 2021 organizing drive by Teamsters Local 631. Judge Geoffrey Carter found that company managers questioned employees about union meetings, created the impression that workers' union activities were being monitored, and solicited employee grievances while implying the company would address them directly, conduct the Board treats as unlawful when it occurs during an organizing campaign. After drivers voted to unionize in mid 2021, the judge found, supervisors tightened scheduling and truck assignment rules and then disciplined or fired union supporters, including organizing campaign leader Luis Garibay Sr., for conduct the company had previously tolerated, such as tardiness, profanity, and accidental equipment damage. The case proceeded largely uncontested after Endurance's attorneys withdrew in April 2026 and the company did not respond to subpoenas or appear at trial. Judge Carter applied the Wright Line burden shifting standard the Board uses in retaliation cases, then ordered reinstatement and back pay for three discharged drivers, expungement of disciplinary records, restoration of prior working conditions, and production of sick leave records the union had requested in 2022. The ruling is a recommended decision and becomes final only if Endurance does not file exceptions with the Board in Washington.

Key Points

• Judge Geoffrey Carter found Endurance violated Sections 8(a)(1), 8(a)(3), and 8(a)(5) of the National Labor Relations Act across a dozen consolidated unfair labor practice cases.
• Managers were found to have unlawfully interrogated drivers, created an impression of surveillance, solicited grievances with implied promises, and misrepresented hired labor consultants as government or union affiliated.
• Three drivers, Yaniel Cervantes, Luis Garibay Jr., and Luis Garibay Sr., were ordered reinstated with full back pay after the judge found their discipline and firings were retaliatory.
• A fourth employee, Martin Tapia, is entitled to have an unlawful written warning removed from his personnel file.
• The company also failed to provide the union with requested employee sick leave records, a separate violation of its duty to bargain.
• Endurance did not appear at trial or file a defense brief after its counsel withdrew in April 2026, leaving most of the General Counsel's evidence unrebutted.
• The decision is a recommended order; it becomes binding only if Endurance does not file exceptions with the Board.

Primary Source Author: Geoffrey Carter, Administrative Law Judge, National Labor Relations Board
Primary Source: Endurance Environmental Solutions, LLC, Case No. 28-CA-278714 et al. (JD-41-26)
Primary Source Link: https://www.nlrb.gov/case/28-CA-278714

Analysis Excerpt

Much of Judge Carter's reasoning turns on timing and inconsistency rather than any single damaging statement. He noted that Endurance's own personnel records showed the company had no history of disciplining drivers for tardiness, profanity, or accidental equipment damage before the organizing campaign began, then suddenly began enforcing those standards against the workers most visibly tied to the union. That pattern, combined with supervisors' remarks that managers intended to keep running things their own way regardless of the union, allowed the judge to infer that anti-union sentiment, not workplace infractions, drove the discipline.

The judge also drew a sharp distinction between lawful curiosity and unlawful surveillance. A supervisor's question about how a union meeting "went" was not coercive merely because it was asked, he found, but because it came from a manager with authority over the employee's schedule, in a setting where only the two of them were present, immediately after a meeting the company had no legitimate way of knowing about. Judge Carter wrote that the totality of the circumstances, not any single remark, supported a finding that the question was unlawfully coercive. Because Endurance never appeared to offer a competing explanation for the timing of its disciplinary actions or the source of its knowledge about employees' organizing activity, the General Counsel's evidence went unrebutted on nearly every count.

Supplemental Links

• Teamsters Local 631
• NLRB explanation of the Wright Line burden shifting standard
• NLRB Edge coverage of related Endurance Environmental precedent
• Teamsters report on organizing at a separate Endurance Environmental Solutions facility in Georgia
• Waste Dive reporting on Teamsters organizing in the waste and recycling industry