🗞️ Stall Tactics and a Suspect Poll: How a New Jersey School Bus Company Ran Afoul of Federal Labor Law

For nearly three years, Layla Transportation, Inc., a New Jersey school bus operator serving the Piscataway school district, and Teamsters Local Union No. 469 worked steadily toward a first collective bargaining agreement, meeting regularly by Zoom, exchanging proposals, and resolving dozens of issues one by one. By late 2022, only three items remained on the table: wages, union security, and the contract's duration. Then the relationship collapsed.

The rupture came in December 2022, when the union discovered that Layla had quietly raised employee wages by approximately five dollars per hour, a figure that had never been disclosed at the bargaining table, where both sides had been negotiating wage proposals based on the old, lower numbers. When the union pressed the company for an explanation, it received none. What followed was a months-long pattern of deferred responses: the company's attorney repeatedly told the union she would check with her client and follow up, and repeatedly did not. Between March and August 2023, four separate commitments to respond, on March 27, June 29, August 2, and August 23, went unfulfilled.

Rather than return to the table, Layla took a different approach. On October 27, 2023, the company notified the union it intended to poll employees on November 14 to gauge their continued support for union representation. The poll was conducted at the company's Ethel Road facility, and 31 of 38 employees voted against union representation. The company promptly asked for a pause in bargaining.

Administrative Law Judge Jeffrey P. Gardner, writing in a decision dated June 5, 2026, found both moves unlawful. On the bargaining front, the judge found that Layla's sustained non-response reflected an intent to stall negotiations in violation of Sections 8(a)(5) and (1) of the National Labor Relations Act, which require employers to bargain in good faith. On the poll, the judge identified a threshold problem: Layla lacked sufficient objective evidence that the union had lost majority support. Many of the employee conversations that the company's owner, Wael Hamed, cited as the basis for his doubts were years old, involved workers who had since left the company, or reached him secondhand. His own sworn affidavit, given a year before trial, had named only two current employees as having raised concerns during the critical period before the poll.

Even had that threshold been cleared, the judge found the poll itself failed two of the five safeguards required under Struksnes Construction Co., 165 NLRB 1062 (1967), the controlling NLRB standard for employer-conducted polls. While the judge found that the poll's stated purpose was properly communicated to employees and that adequate non-retaliation assurances were given, the company produced no firsthand testimony confirming what actually transpired in the storage-room voting area, leaving the secret-ballot requirement unproven. More significantly, the company's dispatcher was stationed in an adjacent office, visible to employees throughout the voting day, and the security cameras in the drivers' room had been unplugged without employees being notified, conditions the judge found created a coercive atmosphere. Most critically, the poll was conducted against the backdrop of Layla's own ongoing unfair labor practice, the refusal to bargain, which independently rendered the environment coercive and the poll's results unreliable.

The ruling orders Layla to resume good-faith bargaining with the Teamsters, to cease polling employees without a legitimate, objectively grounded basis for doubting the union's majority, and to post a notice to employees at its Piscataway facility for 60 consecutive days acknowledging the violations.

The case adds to a growing body of NLRB decisions examining the line between hard bargaining and unlawful delay. Under current law, the standard remedy for a refusal-to-bargain violation is an order to resume negotiations, a framework that employer-side attorneys argue appropriately limits Board intervention in the substance of negotiations, while union advocates contend does too little to offset the advantage gained from prolonged delay. Broader remedies, including reimbursement of union bargaining costs, have been tested in recent cases but were neither sought nor ordered here.

Key Points

• Layla Transportation took over the Piscataway, NJ school bus contract in 2018 and, after an initial union-recognition dispute, agreed in a 2019 settlement to bargain with Teamsters Local 469.
• After nearly three years of negotiations, talks broke down in early 2023 when it emerged the company had raised employee wages by approximately $5 per hour without informing the union, a figure exceeding what either party had been proposing at the table.
• Between March and August 2023, the company's attorney made four separate commitments to respond to the union's outstanding requests and fulfilled none of them.
• On October 27, 2023, Layla notified the union of its intent to poll employees; 31 of 38 voters ultimately opposed union representation on November 14, 2023.
• ALJ Gardner found the poll failed two of the five Struksnes safeguards: the secret-ballot requirement was not affirmatively proven through firsthand testimony, and the presence of a supervisory figure adjacent to the polling area, combined with unplugged security cameras employees were not informed about, created a coercive atmosphere.
• The poll was also conducted while Layla's own refusal-to-bargain violation was ongoing and unremedied, which the judge found independently rendered the poll unlawful under the fifth Struksnes safeguard.
• Hamed's credibility on the good-faith-doubt question was undermined by a conflict between his trial testimony and his own earlier sworn affidavit, which had identified only two current employees as raising concerns in the relevant period.
• A scrivener's error in the Conclusions of Law section of the decision cites the bargaining violation as beginning "March 27, 2025"; the correct date, consistent with the decision's findings of fact throughout, is March 27, 2023.
• The remedy is limited to a bargaining order and a 60-day employee notice posting, consistent with the NLRA's established remedial framework for refusal-to-bargain violations.

Primary Source Author: Administrative Law Judge Jeffrey P. Gardner, NLRB Division of Judges

Primary Source: Layla Transportation, Inc. a/k/a Layla Transportation and Trading, Inc., JD-36-26, Case No. 22-CA-325151 (June 5, 2026)

Primary Source Link: https://www.nlrb.gov/case/22-CA-325151

Supplemental References

• NLRB: Bargaining in Good Faith, Employer Rights and Obligations (Section 8(a)(5))
• Struksnes Construction Co., 165 NLRB 1062 (1967), the foundational standard for employer polling of union-represented employees
• Proskauer Rose: Hard Bargaining Gone Bad: D.C. Circuit Upholds NLRB's Bad-Faith Finding (July 2025)
• The Century Foundation: Remedying Employers' Unlawful Refusal to Bargain (January 2024)
• OnLabor: A New Remedy for Bad-Faith Bargaining? (April 2024)
• Ogletree Deakins: NLRB Adopts New Union-Friendly Recognition Standard (October 2023)