🗞️ Lies, Fake Tracking Numbers, and a Union's Broken Promise: The JoAnn Britt Decision

For nearly two years, JoAnn Britt believed her union was fighting for her job. It wasn't.

On April 8, 2026, the National Labor Relations Board ruled in American Postal Workers Union, Local 512 a/w American Postal Workers Union AFL–CIO (United States Postal Service) and JoAnn Britt that the union had violated Section 8(b)(1)(A) of the National Labor Relations Act by abandoning a member's grievances and, when confronted, covering its tracks with invented documentation.

Britt, a postal clerk in Emmitsburg, Maryland, was placed on unpaid suspension in April 2017 and discharged the following month after a dispute with a coworker over a stack of letters. Her union steward, Curt Kretzer, who also served as the local's Area Vice President, promised to file grievances over both disciplinary actions. He never did. Instead, over a period spanning roughly two years, Kretzer sent Britt a string of reassuring texts, told her documents were being "resent" and files were being built, and when she demanded proof, supplied her with tracking numbers and case numbers that he had fabricated. None of it was real.

In late 2017 or early 2018, a representative at the National union office told Britt directly that no grievances had been filed in her name. Rather than treating that as a definitive answer, Britt continued seeking clarification from Kretzer, who kept the fiction alive with more assurances. By January 2019, a second search by a National union business agent confirmed the same finding, and Britt texted Kretzer directly to ask whether he had ever filed the grievances at all. His reply was another promise to follow through. She filed an unfair labor practice charge in May 2019, nearly two years after her discharge.

That timing set up the central legal battle in the case. Under Section 10(b) of the NLRA, workers have six months from the point they knew or reasonably should have known about an unfair labor practice to file a charge. The Administrative Law Judge who first heard the case dismissed it as too late, concluding that Britt had enough information by late 2017 or early 2018 to have acted sooner. The Board majority disagreed. In a 2 to 1 decision, Chairman James R. Murphy and Member Scott A. Mayer found that Kretzer's sustained campaign of deception had generated precisely the kind of conflicting signals that labor law recognizes as a reason to delay the filing clock. A person cannot be expected to file a legal claim, the majority reasoned, when the very person responsible for her representation is actively misleading her about whether a problem exists.

The majority also addressed what the duty of fair representation actually requires of a union. Under longstanding precedent rooted in Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171 (1967), a union is not obligated to pursue every grievance, and courts have historically given unions wide latitude in making judgment calls about which cases to take forward. What a union cannot do is lie about what it has done. The Board found that Kretzer's conduct went well beyond negligence or even poor judgment. He had made a commitment, done nothing, and then provided Britt with fabricated tracking numbers and case numbers by text message to prevent her from discovering the truth. That, the Board said, was arbitrary, bad faith conduct in violation of federal law.

The Board identified two separate violations: the failure to process the grievances at all, and the provision of fabricated tracking and case numbers in response to Britt's repeated requests for documentation, conduct the Board found to be independently unlawful under Postal Workers, 328 NLRB 281 (1999). As a remedy, the Board ordered the union to formally request that USPS consider Britt's grievances, allow her to hire her own attorney at the union's expense for any resulting proceedings, and compensate her for any losses traceable to the union's failure, provided the General Counsel can show her grievances would have succeeded.

Member David M. Prouty dissented. In his view, the moment Britt heard from the National union office in early 2018 that no grievances existed, she had more than enough reason to file a charge. The eight months she then waited before resuming regular contact with Kretzer represented an inexcusable delay, and conduct that followed after the limitations period had already run could not, in his reading of the law, revive a time-barred claim.

The case has drawn attention beyond its immediate facts because it sharpens a question that labor law has long struggled with: at what point does a union member's suspicion become legally actionable knowledge? The majority's answer, at least in circumstances involving sustained and deliberate deception by a union officer, is that the clock does not start until the picture is genuinely clear, not merely troubling.

Key Points

• A union steward's two-year pattern of lies and fabricated documentation, not mere negligence or poor administration, constituted an arbitrary and bad-faith breach of the duty of fair representation under Section 8(b)(1)(A).
• The NLRB's six-month filing window under Section 10(b) does not begin until a charging party has "clear and unequivocal notice" of the alleged unfair labor practice, and conflicting signals caused by the respondent's own conduct can delay that trigger.
• The Board drew a firm line between a union's discretionary decision not to pursue a grievance, which is generally permissible, and a union official's affirmative deception about whether a grievance was ever filed, which is not.
• Providing a member with fake grievance tracking numbers to conceal inaction is independently unlawful as willful misinformation, separate from the underlying failure to file.
• The Board ordered the union to fund independent legal representation for Britt at any future grievance or arbitration proceeding, an unusual remedy that reflects the severity of the misconduct found.
• The 2 to 1 decision exposes an unresolved tension in labor law over when a union member's suspicion ripens into the kind of notice that starts the statute of limitations running.

Primary Source Author: Chairman James R. Murphy, joined by Member Scott A. Mayer (Member David M. Prouty, dissenting)

Primary Source: American Postal Workers Union, Local 512 a/w American Postal Workers Union AFL–CIO (United States Postal Service) and JoAnn Britt, 374 NLRB No. 92 (April 8, 2026)

Primary Source Link: https://www.nlrb.gov/case/05-CB-241037

Supplemental Links

• NLRB: Right to Fair Representation
• National Labor Relations Act, Full Text (NLRB)
• 29 U.S.C. § 160, Section 10(b) Statute of Limitations (Cornell LII)
• Duty of Fair Representation (Wikipedia)
• NLRB GC Memorandum on Duty of Fair Representation Standards (ArentFox Schiff)
• Duty of Fair Representation: A Practical Guide for Members (Teamsters)
• Duty of Fair Representation Case Law Survey (American Bar Association)