## Facts

- A truck dealership’s factory branch in Allentown, Pennsylvania had a bargaining unit represented by a machinists’ union local.
- Managers formed a new company that purchased the branch’s assets and began operating as an independent dealership, retaining 32 of 45 former employees.
- Before and after the sale, multiple employees made statements to management indicating diminished support for the incumbent union; eight employees made similar statements during job interviews.
- The union shop steward and bargaining-committee member told management that employees did not want a union and that, if a vote occurred, the union would lose.
- The new employer refused the union’s demand for recognition and bargaining, asserting a good-faith reasonable doubt about the union’s majority status.
- The employer conducted a secret-ballot poll supervised by a neutral accounting firm; employees voted 19–13 against union representation.
- The union filed unfair labor practice charges; an ALJ and the NLRB found the poll unlawful for lack of the required objective basis and ordered recognition and bargaining.
- The court of appeals enforced the order; the Supreme Court granted review.

## Issues

1. Whether the NLRB’s “good-faith reasonable doubt” standard governing employer polling of union support is rational and consistent with the National Labor Relations Act.
2. Whether substantial evidence supported the Board’s finding that the employer lacked a good-faith reasonable doubt of the union’s majority status when it polled employees.

## Decision

- The Court held that the Board’s “good-faith reasonable doubt” test for employer polling is facially rational and consistent with the Act.
- The Court held that the Board’s finding that the employer lacked such doubt was not supported by substantial evidence on the record as a whole.
- The Court reversed and remanded.

## Legal Principles

- An employer faced with uncertainty about an incumbent union’s majority support may seek a Board-supervised election, withdraw recognition, or poll employees; polling and withdrawal of recognition are unlawful absent a good-faith reasonable doubt about majority support.
- Courts defer to the Board’s policy choices and interpretations if they are rational and consistent with the Act and are not arbitrary or capricious.
- Substantial-evidence review requires that agency factfinding be judged against the legal standard the agency states; reviewing courts take that standard “to mean what it says.”
- Consistent agency under-application of its announced standard does not change the legal rule used for judicial review.
- Circumstantial evidence, including employee statements bearing on majority support, must be given fair weight in evaluating whether an employer had reasonable grounds for doubt.

## Conclusion

The Court sustained the NLRB’s authority to require a good-faith reasonable doubt before an employer may poll employees about union support, but it rejected the Board’s application of that standard here because the record evidence made the employer’s uncertainty about majority support rational and the contrary agency finding unsustainable under substantial-evidence review.


Allentown Mack Sales & Service, Inc. v. NLRB, 522 U.S. 359 (1998)