🗞️ What Happens at the Bargaining Table Stays at the Bargaining Table

A years-long labor dispute between Stericycle, Inc., a medical waste company operating out of Southampton, Pennsylvania, and Teamsters Local 628 has produced a ruling with implications that reach well beyond one attendance policy disagreement. In a supplemental decision issued June 1, 2026, the National Labor Relations Board reaffirmed an established rule: bargaining notes taken during contract negotiations are generally exempt from disclosure, even when a union requests them to resolve a live dispute over what the parties actually agreed to.

The underlying conflict traces back to the 2020 Memorandum of Agreement between Stericycle and the union, which modified the company's attendance policy. The union maintained the new language eliminated the practice of assigning disciplinary attendance points when workers used their five contractual paid sick days. Stericycle disagreed and, beginning January 1, 2021, continued issuing those points, triggering progressive discipline that ultimately resulted in four workers being discharged.

When a Stericycle representative asserted that the company's bargaining notes would support its interpretation of the attendance policy, the union requested those notes. Stericycle refused. The Administrative Law Judge, applying a 2021 Board precedent known as Stericycle I, dismissed the allegation. The full Board, in a 2-1 vote, upheld that dismissal.

On the merits of the attendance policy dispute itself, the Board had ruled in 2023 that Stericycle's unilateral modification of the contract was unlawful, the language was unambiguous, and the company had no "sound arguable basis" for its interpretation. Twenty employees had received discipline they should not have received under the agreement; four had been wrongfully discharged and were owed reinstatement and back pay.

The narrower but legally significant question reserved for this supplemental ruling — whether Stericycle separately violated the law by withholding its notes — was decided in the company's favor.

The Dissent

Member David M. Prouty filed a dissent, arguing that Stericycle I's blanket exemption for bargaining notes represents an unnecessary departure from the Board's long-established information disclosure framework. Under existing Board doctrine, a party asserting confidentiality over requested information must demonstrate a legitimate and substantial confidentiality interest and must seek a reasonable accommodation even when such an interest is established. Stericycle, Prouty noted, never asserted privilege or confidentiality; it declined to produce the notes on the sole ground that the union was not entitled to them.

Prouty drew a distinction between notes that reflect a party's internal strategy or caucus deliberations, which he agreed may warrant protection, and notes that record what was said by each party, at what time, and by whom, at sessions where both parties were present. The latter, he argued, constitutes a factual record of a shared event rather than confidential strategy, and withholding it deprives both parties and the Board of evidence that is often the most reliable account of what occurred during negotiations.

He noted that the result in this case was particularly difficult to square: the company's own representative had cited the notes as proof of Stericycle's position, yet those same notes were shielded from production when the union sought to examine them.

Why It Matters

The ruling maintains a legal framework that both labor and management practitioners have closely tracked. Under Section 8(a)(5) of the National Labor Relations Act, employers carry a broad statutory obligation to furnish unions with information that is relevant and necessary to their role as collective bargaining representatives. Unions hold a corresponding, though somewhat narrower, duty to provide relevant information under Section 8(b)(3). Bargaining notes occupy a distinct exception to those obligations, one that Prouty and the General Counsel argued should be narrowed.

For employers, the decision provides continued protection for the internal documentary record of negotiations, particularly where contract interpretation disputes proceed to arbitration or Board litigation. For unions, it means the evidentiary record of what transpired at the negotiating table remains largely within the control of the party that took the notes.

The decision arrives at a moment of considerable activity at the Board. Standards governing workplace rules, joint employer status, and union recognition procedures have all shifted in recent years, and the current Board's decision to leave Stericycle I intact suggests a preference for continuity on the notes question, at least for now.

Key Points

• The NLRB ruled 2-1 that Stericycle was not required to provide the union with its bargaining notes, reaffirming the Stericycle I (370 NLRB No. 89, 2021) precedent that such notes are generally exempt from disclosure under the NLRA.
• On the underlying contract violation, the Board had ruled in 2023 that Stericycle unlawfully modified the attendance policy by continuing to issue points for sick day use, a change that produced discipline against 20 employees and four wrongful discharges.
• The union requested the bargaining notes after a Stericycle representative stated the notes would support the company's interpretation of the 2020 MOA; Stericycle never asserted a confidentiality interest and declined solely on grounds of non-entitlement.
• Member Prouty's dissent argued that notes recording what each party said at the table, as distinct from internal deliberations or strategy, carry no legitimate confidentiality interest and should be evaluated under the Board's standard relevance-and-balancing framework.
• The employer's obligation to furnish relevant information under Section 8(a)(5) is broad; bargaining notes represent a categorical exception to that obligation, one the majority declined to revisit.
• This decision has no bearing on the Board's separate 2023 Stericycle ruling establishing a new standard for evaluating the lawfulness of employer workplace rules, which is a distinct line of precedent.

Primary Source Author: Chairman James R. Murphy and Member Scott A. Mayer (majority); Member David M. Prouty (dissent)

Primary Source: Stericycle, Inc. and Teamsters Union Local No. 628, 374 NLRB No. 121 (June 1, 2026), NLRB Case No. 04-CA-277775

Primary Source Link: https://www.nlrb.gov/case/04-CA-277775

Supplemental Sources

• Stericycle I, 370 NLRB No. 89 (2021), establishing the bargaining notes exemption
• NLRB Edge summary of the June 2026 supplemental decision
• Bloomberg Law case note on Stericycle, Inc., 374 NLRB No. 121
• NLRB official news release on the 2023 Stericycle workplace rules standard
• Fisher Phillips, What Employers Should Expect from the NLRB in 2026
• NLRB v. Acme Industrial Co., 385 U.S. 432 (1967), Supreme Court precedent on the employer duty to furnish relevant information