A U.S. appeals court on June 11 upheld a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rule which speeds up the union election process. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the NLRB did not exceed its authority in issuing the rule that allows employees to vote on union representation 11 days after a petition for representation is filed.

As Reuters notes, this particular court in Texas is widely considered to be among the most conservative in the nation and is often used to mount challenges against Obama administration policies.

The election rule, labeled the “quickie” or “ambush” election rule by its detractors, was being challenged by the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). The anti-union groups argue that it limits an employer’s ability to contest voter eligibility and pre-election hearings. The irony is that pre-election tampering through tactics such as captive audience meetings was one of the primary reasons the rule was put in place.

The groups also argue that sections of the rule violate federal privacy laws. The Fifth Circuit did not agree.

In the opinion of the court, Judge Edith Brown Clement wrote: ”The board acted rationally and in furtherance of its congressional mandate in adopting the rule. Here, the board identified evidence that elections were being unnecessarily delayed by litigation and that certain rules had become outdated as a result of changes in technology.

"It conducted an exhaustive and lengthy review of the issues, evidence and testimony, responded to contrary arguments, and offered factual and legal support for its final conclusions.”

The rule was adopted in April of 2015 and has shortened the median duration between a union organizing petition and election from 38 days to just under two weeks. Companies can no longer bring legal challenges against the way a campaign is being conducted until after the election has taken place. Previously, companies used this tactic to delay elections and subject their employees to anti-union messaging.

When the case was brought before the appeals court after a federal court ruling in June 2015, Karen Harned, executive director of the NFIB Small Business Legal Center, said "despite the NLRB’s statutory charge to act as a ‘neutral arbiter,’ their ambush election rule heavily favors unionization over businesses and denies employers and employees their rights to weigh both options.”

She added: “If this ruling stands, small businesses, which typically do not have in-house labor counsel, will have very little time to make preparations for a union election. It could take 10 days just to find a labor lawyer and get a meeting. They would have very little time to educate their employees on how unionization could affect them, including the impact of union dues on their paychecks.”

Kyllan Kershaw, in the Employer Labor Relations blog, said the Fifth Circuit’s decision "is significant given its reputation as a relatively conservative court and forecasts that future challenges to these rules are also unlikely to succeed."

Law 360 said the NLRB also rejected the ABC’s challenge to provisions of the rule that require disclosure of personal employee information both before and after the pre-election hearing. The business groups failed to identify any federal law that restricts the disclosure of employee information to unions by employers, the appeals panel said.

After a year on the books, "the rule has sped up election procedures but has not led to the spike in representation petitions or increased union election wins that management-side lawyers had feared, according to statistics the NLRB issued," Law 360 said.

(We Party Patriots contributed)