NLRB Dismisses Complaint That Art Directors Guild Fired Accountant For Unionizing Its Office Staff

deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: In a major legal victory for the Art Directors Guild and Chuck Parker, its national executive director, the National Labor Relations Board has dismissed a complaint filed by the guild’s former head accountant who claimed that she was fired back in 2020 because she’d been a leader of the successful campaign to unionize the guild’s office staff.

In dismissing the complaint, the NLRB overruled an administrative law judge who determined last year that the accountant, Nicole Oeuvray, had been fired for her union activities, and that the stated reasons that Parker had given for her termination were “pretextual and her discharge was discriminatorily motivated.” “We disagree,” a three-member NLRB panel, headed by NLRB Chairwoman Lauren McFerran, said in a ruling handed down on Tuesday. “The reasons listed in the termination notice concerned performance matters that preceded Oeuvray’s union activities.” Therefore, the panel ruled, “We find the discharge was not unlawful.” McFerran and the panel concluded that the 3,500-member guild, IATSE Local 800, “established that it would have discharged Oeuvray even absent her protected organizing activities.

The complaint is therefore dismissed.” See the ruling dismissing the complaint here. Oeuvray, who had been the guild’s accountant for 16 years, had been a leader of the campaign to unionize the guild’s staff back in 2019 under the auspices of Local 537 of the Office of Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU).

The unionization effort was opposed by Parker and the guild – the “Respondent” in the complaint Oeuvray filed with the NLRB in November 2020.