🗞️ Parking the Union: How a Valet Contractor's Hiring Gambit Backfired at Stony Brook Hospital

When Parking Systems Plus, Inc. won a competitive bid in 2023 to take over valet parking services at Stony Brook University Hospital on Long Island, New York, company managers were aware they were stepping into a unionized operation. What they may not have fully anticipated was how thoroughly their own internal communications would document the decision to sidestep that union obligation, and how costly that decision would prove.

On June 9, 2026, the National Labor Relations Board issued a decision, with the Board majority affirming the administrative law judge in full and one member partly dissenting on a narrow remedial issue, finding that Parking Systems violated federal labor law when it refused to hire the unionized valet attendants employed by its predecessor, Classic Valet Parking, Inc. Those workers, more than 30 in number according to Classic's final payroll records, had been represented since 2015 by Local 1102 of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, United Food and Commercial Workers.

The case turned on a concept central to American labor law: the successor employer doctrine. Under the framework established by the Supreme Court in NLRB v. Burns International Security Services (1972) and refined in Fall River Dyeing & Finishing Corp. v. NLRB (1987), a new employer that takes over a business in substantially unchanged form and retains a majority of the predecessor's workforce inherits an obligation to recognize and bargain with the incumbent union. The successor is not required to adopt the predecessor's collective bargaining agreement outright, but must negotiate in good faith before altering terms and conditions of employment.

Parking Systems argued it was exempt from that obligation because it won the hospital contract through a competitive bidding process rather than purchasing Classic's assets, and because it claimed it never intended to hire Classic's workers at all. The Board rejected both arguments. On the first point, it reaffirmed longstanding precedent that successorship attaches regardless of how a new contractor acquires the work. On the second, the record evidence pointed in a different direction.

An October 2023 email from account representative Andrew Goldsmith, a longtime company manager who had helped open new locations and was described by colleagues as familiar with company policy, referred to retaining Classic employees as the "biggest domino" in the transition and described Classic's roster of roughly 32 workers as "the staff we already have in place." No manager corrected him. The company also never produced the written no-poaching policy it claimed to have in its corporate handbook.

The pivot came in November, shortly after the company received a letter from the union's attorney requesting recognition and assumption of the existing collective bargaining agreement. Within days, account executive Robert Gust circulated an internal calculation of the additional cost of applying the Classic contract to 35 employees. By month's end, management had authorized interviewing only one Classic employee, Francis Gil Reyes, a cancer center attendant personally recommended by hospital administrators.

At a November 25 interview held at a nearby casino hotel where Parking Systems operated another account, Gust told Gil Reyes and her colleague Edward Arias that the company could not hire most Classic workers "because you guys have a union and we don't work with the union." Administrative Law Judge Benjamin W. Green, whose findings the Board majority adopted in full, credited Gil Reyes and Arias over the managers who denied the statement was made. The judge noted that the company had neither called a key manager who had witnessed the interview nor produced documentary evidence that could have supported its stated defense, drawing adverse inferences from both omissions.

Because the refusal to hire was found to be discriminatory, the Board applied a legal presumption that Classic's employees would have constituted a majority of Parking Systems' workforce at the hospital absent the unlawful conduct, thereby triggering full successorship obligations. The Board further found that by unilaterally imposing employment terms that diverged from the Classic contract, Parking Systems committed an additional unfair labor practice.

The remedial order is broad in scope. Parking Systems must offer reinstatement to 34 named former Classic employees, pay backpay with interest, compensate workers for job-search costs and adverse tax consequences, and retroactively restore the predecessor's wage rates and benefits, including a $40-per-month shoe allowance and six paid days off annually, maintaining those terms until the parties reach a new agreement or bargain to impasse.

The decision also carries a significant procedural chapter. In December 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed a district court ruling that had denied the NLRB's petition for emergency injunctive relief under Section 10(j) of the National Labor Relations Act, remanding the case with instructions to enter the injunction. The district court's four-sentence order denying relief had been found insufficient on its face. The appellate intervention, while not a final ruling on the merits, reflected the Board's view that the harm being inflicted on displaced workers warranted immediate action.

The ruling adds to a body of precedent establishing that competitive bidding does not insulate a new service contractor from successor employer obligations, and that the timing of a hiring policy change, particularly when it follows closely on the receipt of a union recognition demand, may itself constitute probative evidence of unlawful motivation.

Key Points

• Parking Systems Plus won the Stony Brook University Hospital valet parking contract through competitive bidding in 2023, replacing Classic Valet Parking, Inc., whose workforce of more than 30 attendants was represented by RWDSU Local 1102.
• Internal company emails from October 2023 show managers originally planned to evaluate and retain Classic workers; the decision to exclude them materially shifted after the company received a union recognition demand letter in November 2023.
• At a November 25, 2023 job interview, account executive Robert Gust told a Classic employee the company would not hire the workforce because "you guys have a union and we don't work with the union," a statement credited by the administrative law judge over management's denials.
• The NLRB found violations of Sections 8(a)(1), 8(a)(3), and 8(a)(5) of the National Labor Relations Act, covering coercive statements to employees, discriminatory refusal to hire based on union status, and failure to recognize and bargain with the union.
• Because the refusal to hire was discriminatory, the Board applied a legal presumption of successorship, meaning Parking Systems inherited the obligation to recognize and bargain with Local 1102 regardless of how many Classic workers it ultimately employed.
• Winning a valet contract through competitive bidding, rather than acquiring assets or purchasing the predecessor business, does not preclude a finding of successorship under established Board and Supreme Court precedent.
• In December 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed a district court's denial of the NLRB's petition for a Section 10(j) injunction and remanded with instructions to enter the requested relief, an unusual appellate intervention in a labor dispute at the preliminary stage.
• The remedial order requires offers of reinstatement to 34 named employees, backpay with interest, restoration of prior contract terms including wages, a $40-per-month shoe allowance, and six annual paid days off, all to remain in place until good-faith bargaining produces an agreement or reaches impasse.

Primary Source Author: Chairman James R. Murphy and Member David M. Prouty (majority); Member Scott A. Mayer (concurring in part, dissenting in part); ALJ Benjamin W. Green

Primary Source: Parking Systems Plus, Inc. and Local 1102, RWDSU, UFCW, 374 NLRB No. 123 (June 9, 2026), Case 29–CA–331253

Primary Source Link: www.nlrb.gov/case/29-CA-331253

Supplemental Links

• NLRB v. Burns International Security Services, 406 U.S. 272 (1972), Justia
• Fall River Dyeing & Finishing Corp. v. NLRB, 482 U.S. 27 (1987), Justia
• Second Circuit reversal and remand, Poor v. Parking Systems Plus, 162 F.4th 335 (2d Cir. 2025), Bloomberg Law
• NLRB ruling coverage, Bloomberg Law
• Classic Valet union certification, NLRB Case 29-RC-148399
• Stony Brook valets rally for reinstatement, RWDSU press release
• Overview of the successorship doctrine, Kelley Drye