🗞️ The Playbook That Backfired: How ADT's Effort to Dislodge a Union Landed It Before the Labor Board, Again
The NLRB found ADT, LLC committed multiple unfair labor practices against IBEW Local 369 in Kentucky, including engineering a decertification drive and bypassing union bargaining rights, and ordered sweeping remedies.
The National Labor Relations Board issued a decision on May 5, 2026, finding that ADT, LLC, the home and business security company, committed a series of violations of federal labor law at its Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky facilities. The ruling, by Chairman James R. Murphy and Members David M. Prouty and Scott A. Mayer, upheld findings by Administrative Law Judge Andrew S. Gollin and ordered ADT to recognize the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 369, bargain a new contract, and make employees and the union financially whole.
The case traces to the fall of 2021, when ADT and the IBEW were negotiating a successor to a collective-bargaining agreement that had governed the terms of employment for residential and small-business installers and service technicians at the two Kentucky facilities since 1971. As those talks were underway, ADT supervisors began meeting individually with workers to pitch a performance-based compensation program the company offered at its nonunion facilities, the Tech Force Excellence Program, and told employees they would need to remove the union to receive it. Supervisors distributed blank decertification petitions, coached employees on how to gather signatures, and monitored the effort's progress. On November 8, 2021, ADT received a petition bearing 19 signatures and, the following day, withdrew recognition of the union. Within days, the company overhauled wages, overtime calculations, job titles, pay periods, vacation accrual, and attendance policies without bargaining.
The Board found that the decertification petition was legally tainted because management had instigated and directed the effort. Under settled Board precedent, an employer cannot drive a decertification campaign and then invoke the results to justify withdrawing recognition. The Board also found that ADT violated its duty to bargain in good faith by presenting the Tech Force Excellence Program directly to employees several days before sharing it with the union, satisfying each element of the three-part test for unlawful direct dealing established in Permanente Medical Group, 332 NLRB 1143 (2000). ADT's defense, that it had a compensation proposal already on the bargaining table and was merely keeping employees informed, was rejected. The Board found that the communications were aimed at building employee support for decertification, not at advancing contract talks, and that the union was given no meaningful opportunity to review and respond to the program before it reached unit members.
The case drew additional scrutiny because of ADT's track record. The administrative law judge cited no fewer than six prior unfair labor practice findings against ADT dating to 2010, covering similar conduct at facilities in multiple states. Most recently, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 2022 enforced a Board order arising from ADT's handling of a union at its Rockford, Illinois facility, calling it a "recidivist violator" with "evident disdain for employees' rights." That history directly informed the breadth of the remedies ordered in the Kentucky case.
The Board dismissed two additional allegations. It found no violation in ADT's termination of Mark Frazier, a unit employee who had been appointed union steward for the Lexington facility on October 29, 2021, and was discharged four days later. The judge found that the decision to terminate Frazier for excessive absenteeism, which totaled nearly 50 days over roughly ten months, had been set in motion weeks before management learned of his steward appointment, and that ADT had been awaiting a determination on his pending leave requests before taking final action. The Board also declined to find that ADT had constructively discharged Marcus Rodriguez, the Louisville steward, concluding that Rodriguez had accepted a job offer from a competitor on or before October 29, 2021, more than a week before the company withdrew recognition and implemented its unilateral changes.
Key Points
- The Tech Force Excellence Program was presented to unit employees beginning October 4, 2021; the union did not receive a copy until October 8, after employees had already been solicited and decertification petitions were in circulation
- ADT supervisors, not employees, initiated the decertification effort; the Board found no evidence of employee disaffection or interest in removing the union before management began approaching workers individually
- The 19-signature petition included signatures from 7 "Technical Engineers" whose inclusion in the bargaining unit was itself a contested issue in negotiations; without those signatures, the petition reflected just 12 of 30 uncontested unit employees
- ADT failed to provide, or unreasonably delayed providing, basic pre-negotiation information the union requested in August 2021, including employee rosters, benefit plan details, and overtime data; some of that information was never provided at all
- The Board ordered ADT to bargain a new contract for a reasonable period, process all grievances pending at the time recognition was withdrawn, reimburse the union for dues not collected during and after the contract term, and make employees whole for wages and other losses resulting from the unilateral changes
- A broad cease-and-desist order and a mandatory notice-reading requirement, with attendance required of all managers and supervisors, were imposed in part because of ADT's demonstrated history of similar violations at other locations
- The unlawful discharge and constructive discharge allegations relating to stewards Mark Frazier and Marcus Rodriguez were dismissed; in both instances the record supported conclusions independent of union activity
Primary Source Author: Administrative Law Judge Andrew S. Gollin (ALJ Decision); Chairman James R. Murphy, Member David M. Prouty, Member Scott A. Mayer (Board Decision)
Primary Source: ADT, LLC and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local Union No. 369, AFL-CIO, 374 NLRB No. 104 (May 5, 2026)
Primary Source Link: https://www.nlrb.gov/case/09-CA-286231
