In May 2016, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that an International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) local unlawfully used strikes and grievances in an effort to obtain certain work on construction sites that had been given to members of another union.  That decision was challenged in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which upheld the NLRB’s ruling on Oct. 31.

While the NLRB allows a union to utilize these mechanisms to preserve work that it had previously performed, that was not the issue here because the board had handled a previous dispute and had awarded the work in question to another union.