🗞️ NLRB Grants Kansas Warehouse Workers a Say on Joining Union Ranks

The National Labor Relations Board has ordered a new election that will let warehouse workers at Wheatland Electric Cooperative, a rural utility serving southwestern Kansas, decide whether to join an existing union bargaining unit, reversing a regional director who had denied them that opportunity. The case centers on a specialized labor law mechanism known as an Armour-Globe self-determination election, which allows employees who share enough in common with an already unionized group to vote on whether to be folded into that group's existing bargaining unit.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 304, which has represented Wheatland's linemen, servicemen, and other field crews for 65 years, petitioned to add three additional classifications: a vehicle maintenance coordinator, warehousemen, and a warehouse supervisor. The cooperative did not contest adding the vehicle maintenance coordinator, who has since voted to join the unit, but argued that the warehouse positions were too different from the existing unit's field workers to share a genuine community of interest.

A regional director sided with the cooperative in October 2024, limiting the election to the uncontested coordinator role. The union sought Board review, and a three member panel found that the regional director had applied the wrong legal standard and had compared the warehouse jobs only to the highest paid classification in the unit, journeyman linemen, rather than weighing the unit's full wage range, which also includes lower paid groundmen and meter technicians.

Reassessing the record, the Board found that warehouse pay rates were comparable to several existing unit jobs, that warehouse staff and field crews were closely interdependent through a work order system in which crews requisition supplies and equipment, and that the two groups maintained regular, substantive contact through shared breakrooms and daily coordination calls. Those factors, the Board concluded, were sufficient to establish a shared community of interest, even as it agreed with the regional director that there was little evidence of employees actually interchanging between the two types of roles.

The ruling remands the case to the regional office, which will schedule an election allowing warehouse employees to decide for themselves whether to join the union's existing bargaining unit.

Key Points

• The Board reversed a regional director's decision that had denied warehouse workers at Wheatland Electric Cooperative the chance to vote on joining an existing IBEW bargaining unit.
• The regional director's approach was found flawed for relying on the wrong legal standard and for comparing warehouse pay only to the highest paid unit classification instead of the full range of jobs.
• The Board found that wages, functional interdependence between crews and warehouse staff, and regular daily contact were sufficient to establish a shared community of interest.
• The Board agreed that evidence of employees interchanging between warehouse and field roles was minimal, but this did not outweigh the other factors.
• The case is remanded for a self-determination election allowing warehouse employees to vote on union inclusion; a related vote for the vehicle maintenance coordinator, who already joined the unit, is unaffected.

Primary Source Author: National Labor Relations Board (Chairman James R. Murphy and Members David M. Prouty and Scott A. Mayer)

Primary Source: Wheatland Electric Cooperative, Inc., 375 NLRB No. 16 (July 29, 2026)

Primary Source Link: NLRB Case 14-RC-351691

Supplemental Links:

• NLRB Edge summary of the underlying regional director decision (October 25, 2024)
• NLRB Edge explainer on a related Armour-Globe election at Stanford Health Care, citing foundational cases
• Background discussion of Armour-Globe department-organization factors, Region 32