Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, LABOR—ORGANIZING, ELECTIONS—NLRB: New CBA lacked effective date on face; contract-bar rule not applicable, (Aug 7, 2026)

By Ronald Miller, J.D.

Because the agreement’s effective and termination dates are “not apparent from the face of the contract, without resort to parol evidence, the contract will not serve as a bar.”

A divided three-member panel of the NLRB granted an employer’s request for review of a regional director’s order dismissing a decertification petition under the Board’s contract-bar rule. The regional director erred in dismissing the petition based on a collective bargaining agreement lacking an effective date on the face of the document. This case was governed by the Board’s established rule that, to have bar quality, the effective and expiration dates of an agreement must be clear from the face of the document, without resort to parol evidence, so that employees and rival unions can determine the appropriate time for filing a representation petition. Member Prouty filed a separate dissenting opinion (SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital, 375 N.L.R.B. No. 26 (Aug. 4, 2026)).

Placeholders. The employer and the union were parties to a CBA effective December 13, 2019, through June 15, 2023. In May 2023, they began negotiating a successor agreement. On July 22, 2024, they held their final bargaining session and signed a tentative agreement that day. An article in the tentative agreement contained placeholders for the effective date and the expiration date. Further, an article covering compensation similarly provided another placeholder for the date on which the final wage increase would be granted.

The union’s membership ratified the tentative agreement on July 27 and the union informed the employer of that event on that day. On July 31, an employee filed a decertification petition. There was no evidence that the union and the employer inserted the missing dates and initialized the insertion before the employee filed her decertification petition.

On August 30, 2024, the regional director found that the July 22 version of the agreement barred further processing of the decertification petition and dismissed the petition.

Contract-bar doctrine. Under the Board’s contract-bar doctrine, a contract of definite duration will bar an election petition filed by any employee or rival union for a term of up to three years, provided that the contract is a written agreement that contains substantial terms and conditions of employment and has been signed by both parties prior to the petition. “Both an effective date and an expiration date are material terms of a contract,” and “[u]nless these dates are apparent from the face of the contract, without resort to parol evidence, the contract will not serve as a bar.”

Here, the effective date of the CBA could not be determined from the face of that document. Although an article in the CBA included placeholders for the effective and termination dates, the contract ratification date was not stated anywhere in the agreement. To determine that date, an employee or rival union must look outside the four corners of the document to discover the date upon which the union membership ratified the tentative agreement. Similarly, to determine the expiration date, an employee or rival union would need information not discernible from the agreement to learn the date upon which the employer’s first payroll period starts.

Accordingly, because the agreement’s effective and termination dates—material terms of the agreement—are “not apparent from the face of the contract, without resort to parol evidence, the contract will not serve as a bar.”

Thus, the Board found that the union failed to satisfy its burden of proving that a bar-quality collective-bargaining agreement was in place at the time the decertification petition was filed.

Dissent. In dissent, Member Prouty argued that the regional director correctly dismissed the decertification petition based on her finding that it was barred by the collective-bargaining agreement between the employer and the union. The dissent observed that Board precedent does not preclude the application of extrinsic evidence to determine when ratification took place in order to determine whether an agreement was in effect at the time the petition was filed. Thus, Prouty disagreed with the majority’s view that asking an employee or third party wishing to file a rival petition to recognize that the agreement’s ratification and effective dates are the same is verboten.

The slip opinion is 375 NLRB No. 26.

Attorneys: Harrison Kuntz (Seyfarth Shaw) for SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital. Micah Lynn Berul, National Nurses Organizing Committee-National Nurses United, for Marissa Martinez and National Nurses Organizing Committee-National Nurses United, AFL-CIO.

Companies: SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital; National Nurses Organizing Committee-National Nurses United, AFL-CIO

Cases: Labor OrganizingElections Procedure AgencyNews