NLRB reimposes requirement to keep dues checkoff clause in effect following expiration of CBA

The Biden Board has reversed a ruling by President Trump’s NLRB, returning to the Obama-era ruling, which had in turn reversed longstanding precedent regarding whether dues need to continue to be paid to a union even after the CBA requiring dues payment (a “dues checkoff” clause) had expired. Historically, the ruling had been, since at least the NLRB’s 1962 ruling in Bethlehem Steel that dues checkoff clauses expired with the CBA and, therefore, a company could stop withholding and paying them to a union. President Obama’s majority-appointed NLRB reversed that; then President Trump’s reversed it back, and now the current Board has returned to the Obama-era ruling, holding that dues must continue to be paid, with the Democrat-appointee Board members saying: “Payments via a dues-checkoff arrangement are similar to these other voluntary checkoff arrangements, and dues-checkoff arrangements should survive contract expiration just as other voluntary checkoff arrangements do.” The current decision is Valley Hospital Medical Center.