517 U.S. 781116 S.Ct. 1754135 L.Ed.2d 64
AUCIELLO IRON WORKS, INC.v.NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARDCertiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
No. 95-668.
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 22, 1996
Decided June 3, 1996

Syllabus*
The day after petitioner Auciello Iron Works's outstanding contract  offer was accepted by its employees' collective-bargaining  representative (Union), Auciello disavowed the agreement because of its  good-faith doubt, based on knowledge acquired before the offer's  acceptance, that a majority of its employees supported the Union.  The  National Labor Relations Board ruled, inter alia, that Auciello's  withdrawal from it was an unfair labor practice in violation of the  National Labor Relations Act and ordered that the agreement be reduced  to a formal written instrument.  The First Circuit enforced the order as  reasonable.
Held:  The Board reasonably concluded that an employer commits an unfair  labor practice when it disavows a collective-bargaining agreement  because of a good-faith doubt about a union's majority status at the  time the contract was made, when the doubt arises from facts known to  the employer before the union accepted its contract offer.  Pp. 4-10.
(a) In its efforts to achieve the Act's object of industrial peace and  stability fostered by collective-bargaining relationships, see e.g.,  Fall River Dyeing & Finishing Corp. v. NLRB, 482 U. S. 27, 38, the Board  has held that a union is entitled to, inter alia, a conclusive  presumption of majority status during a collective-bargaining  agreement's term, up to three years, see, e.g,. NLRB v. Burns Int'l  Security Services, Inc., 406 U. S. 272, 290, n. 12.  Upon the contract's  expiration, the employer may rebut the presumption of majority status by showing that it has a good-faith doubt, founded on a sufficient objective basis, of the union's majority support.  NLRB v. Curtin Matheson Scientific, Inc., 494 U. S. 775, 778. Auciello's assertion  that an employer may raise the latter defense even after a contract  period has apparently begun to run upon a union's acceptance of an  outstanding offer is rejected. Pp. 4-6.
(b) The same need for repose that first prompted the Board to adopt the  rule presuming a union's majority status during its collective-bargaining agreement's term also led the Board in this case  to rule out an exception for the benefit of an employer with doubts  arising from facts antedating the contract.  The Board's judgment in the  matter is entitled to prevail.  Auciello's argument for case-by-case  determinations of the appropriate time for asserting a good-faith doubt  in place of the Board's bright-line rule cutting off the opportunity at  the moment of apparent contract formation fails to point up anything unreasonable in the Board's position.  Its approach generally allows  companies an adequate chance to act on their preacceptance doubts before  contract formation, and Auciello's view would encourage bad-faith  bargaining by employers.  The Board could reasonably conclude that  giving employers flexibility in raising their good-faith doubts would  not be worth skewing bargaining relationships by such one-sided  leverage, and the fact that any collective-bargaining agreement might be  vulnerable to such a postformation challenge would hardly serve the  Act's goal of achieving industrial peace by promoting stable collective-bargaining relationships.  Moreover, rejection of the Board's  position is not compelled by the statutory right of employees to bargain  collectively through representatives of their own choosing and to  refrain from doing so.  The Board is entitled to suspicion when faced  with an employer's benevolence as its workers' champion against their  certified union, and there is nothing unreasonable in giving a short  leash to an employer as vindicator of its employees' organizational  freedom.  Pp. 6-9.
(c) Garment Worker's v. NLRB, 366 U.S. 731, 738-739, does not compel reversal; its rule concerning recognition agreements is not inconsistent  with this decision.  The Board reasonably found an employer's  precontractual, good-faith doubt inadequate to support an exception to  the conclusive presumption arising at the moment a collective-bargaining  contract offer has been accepted.  Pp. 9-10.  60 F. 3d 24, affirmed.
Justice Souter delivered the opinion of the Court.


1
The question here is whether an employer may disavow a collective-bargaining agreement because of a good-faith doubt about a  union's majority status at the time the contract was made, when the  doubt arises from facts known to the employer before its contract offer  had been accepted by the union.  We hold that the National Labor  Relations Board reasonably concluded that an employer challenging an  agreement under these circumstances commits an unfair labor practice in  violation of Section(s) 8(a)(1) and (5) of the National Labor Relations  Act, 49 Stat. 452, 453, as amended, 29 U. S. C. Section(s) 158(a)(1) and   (5).

I.

2
Petitioner Auciello Iron Works of Hudson, Massachusetts, had 23  production and maintenance employees during the period in question.  After a union election in 1977, the NLRB certified Shopmen's Local No.  501, a/w International Association of Bridge, Structural, and Ornamental  Iron Workers, AFL-CIO, as the collective-bargaining representative of  Auciello's employees. Over the following years, the company and the  Union were able to negotiate a series of collective-bargaining  agreements, one of which expired on September 25, 1988.  Negotiations  for a new one were unsuccessful throughout September and October 1988,  however, and when Auciello and the Union had not made a new contract by October 14, 1988, the employees went on strike.  Negotiations continued,  nonetheless, and, on November 17, 1988, Auciello presented the Union  with a complete contract proposal.  On November 18, 1988, the picketing  stopped, and nine days later, on a Sunday evening, the Union telegraphed  its acceptance of the outstanding offer.  The very next day, however,  Auciello told the Union that it doubted that a majority of the  bargaining unit's employees supported the Union, and for that reason  disavowed the collective-bargaining agreement and denied it had any duty  to continue negotiating.  Auciello traced its doubt to knowledge acquired before the Union accepted the contract offer, including the  facts that 9 employees had crossed the picket line, that 13 employees  had given it signed forms indicating their resignation from the Union,  and that 16 had expressed dissatisfaction with the Union.


3
In January 1989, the Board's General Counsel issued an administrative complaint charging Auciello with violation of Section(s)  8(a)(1) and (5) of the NLRA.1  An administrative law judge found that  a contract existed between the parties and that Auciello's withdrawal  from it violated the Act.  303 N. L. R. B. 562 (1991).  The Board  affirmed the administrative law judge's decision2 ; it treated  Auciello's claim of good-faith doubt as irrelevant and ordered Auciello  to reduce the collective-bargaining agreement to a formal written  instrument. Ibid.  But when the Board applied to the Court of Appeals  for the First Circuit for enforcement of its order, the Court of Appeals  declined on the ground that the Board had not adequately explained its  refusal to consider Auciello's defense of good-faith doubt about the  Union's majority status. 980 F. 2d 804 (1992).  On remand, the Board  issued a supplemental opinion to justify its position, 317 N. L. R. B.  364 (1995), and the Court of Appeals thereafter enforced the order as  resting on a "policy choice [both] . . . reasonable and . . . quite  persuasive."  60 F. 3d 24, 27 (CA1 1995).  We granted certiorari, 516 U.  S. ___ (1996), and now affirm.

II.
A.

4
The object of the National Labor Relations Act is industrial peace and stability, fostered by collective-bargaining agreements providing for the orderly resolution of labor disputes between workers  and employees. See 29 U. S. C. Section(s) 141(b); Fall River Dyeing &  Finishing Corp. v. NLRB, 482 U. S. 27, 38 (1987) (Fall River Dyeing).  To such ends, the Board has adopted various presumptions about the  existence of majority support for a union within a bargaining unit, the  precondition for service as its exclusive representative.  Cf. id., at  37-39.  The first two are conclusive presumptions.  A union "usually is  entitled to a conclusive presumption of majority status for one year  following" Board certification as such a representative.  Id., at 37.  A union is likewise entitled under Board precedent to a conclusive3 presumption of majority status during the term of any collective-bargaining agreement, up to three years.  See NLRB v. Burns  Int'l Security Services, Inc., 406 U. S. 272, 290, n. 12 (1972); see  generally R. Gorman, Basic Text on Labor Law: Unionization and  Collective Bargaining Section(s) 9, pp. 54-59 (1976). "These  presumptions are based not so much on an absolute certainty that the  union's majority status will not erode," Fall River Dyeing, 482 U. S.,  at 38, as on the need to achieve "stability in collective-bargaining  relationships."  Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). They address  our fickle nature by "enabl[ing] a union to concentrate on obtaining and fairly administering a collective-bargaining agreement" without worrying  about the immediate risk of decertification and by "remov[ing] any  temptation on the part of the employer to avoid good-faith bargaining"  in an effort to undermine union support. Ibid.


5
There is a third presumption, though not a conclusive one. At  the end of the certification year or upon expiration of the collective-bargaining agreement, the presumption of majority status  becomes a rebuttable one.  See NLRB v. Curtin Matheson Scientific, Inc.,  494 U. S. 775, 778 (1990); see n. 6, infra. Then, an employer may  overcome the presumption (when, for example, defending against an unfair  labor practice charge) "by showing that, at the time of [its] refusal to  bargain, either (1) the union did not in fact enjoy majority support, or   (2) the employer had a `good-faith' doubt, founded on a sufficient objective basis, of the union's majority support."  Curtin Matheson,  supra, at 778 (emphasis in original).4  Auciello asks this Court to  hold that it may raise the latter defense even after a  collective-bargaining contract period has apparently begun to run upon a  union's acceptance of an employer's outstanding offer.

B.

6
The same need for repose that first prompted the Board to adopt  the rule presuming the union's majority status during the term of a  collective-bargaining agreement also led the Board to rule out an  exception for the benefit of an employer with doubts arising from facts  antedating the contract.  The Board said that such an exception would  allow an employer to control the timing of its assertion of good-faith  doubt and thus to "`sit' on that doubt and . . . raise it after the  offer is accepted."  317 N. L. R. B., at 370.  The Board thought that  the risks associated with giving employers such "unilatera[l] control   [over] a vital part of the collective-bargaining process," ibid., would  undermine the stability of the collective-bargaining relationship, id.,  at 374, and thus outweigh any benefit that might in theory follow from vindicating a doubt that ultimately proved to be sound.


7
The Board's judgment in the matter is entitled to prevail. To  affirm its rule of decision in this case, indeed, there is no need to  invoke the full measure of the "considerable deference" that the Board  is due, NLRB v. Curtin Matheson Scientific, Inc., supra, at 786, by  virtue of its charge to develop national labor policy, Beth Israel Hospital v. NLRB, 437 U. S. 483, 500-501 (1978), through interstitial  rulemaking that is "rational and consistent with the Act."  Curtin  Matheson, supra, at 787.


8
It might be tempting to think that Auciello's doubt was expressed so soon after the apparent contract formation that little  would be lost by vindicating that doubt and wiping the contractual slate  clean, if in fact the company can make a convincing case for the doubt  it claims.  On this view, the loss of repose would be slight.  But if  doubts about the union's majority status would justify repudiating a  contract one day after its ostensible formation, why should the same  doubt not serve as well a year into the contract's term?  Auciello implicitly agrees on the need to provide some cutoff, but argues that  the limit should be expressed as a "reasonable time" to repudiate the  contract.  Brief for Petitioner 26-32.  That is, it seeks case-by-case  determinations of the appropriate time for asserting a good-faith doubt  in place of the Board's bright-line rule cutting off the opportunity at  the moment of apparent contract formation.  Auciello's desire is  natural, but its argument fails to point up anything unreasonable in the  Board's position.


9
The Board's approach generally allows companies an adequate chance to act on their preacceptance doubts before contract formation,  just as Auciello could have acted effectively under the Board's rule in  this case. Auciello knew that the picket line had been crossed and that  a number of its employees had expressed dissatisfaction with the Union  at least nine days before the contract's acceptance, and all of the  resignation forms Auciello received were dated at least five days before  the acceptance date.  During the week preceding the apparent formation  of the contract, Auciello had at least three alternatives to doing nothing.  It could have withdrawn the outstanding offer and then, like  its employees, petitioned for a representation election. See 29 U. S.  Employees, 475 U. S. 192, 198 (1986).5  "[I]f the Board determines,  after investigation and hearing, that a question of representation  exists, it directs an election by secret ballot and certifies the  result."  Ibid.  Following withdrawal, it could also have refused to  bargain further on the basis of its good-faith doubt, leaving it to the  Union to charge an unfair labor practice, against which it could defend  on the basis of the doubt. Cf. Curtin Matheson, 494 U. S., at 778.  And, of course, it could have withdrawn its offer to allow it time to investigate while it continued to fulfil its duty to bargain in good  faith with the Union.  The company thus had generous opportunities to  avoid the presumption before the moment of acceptance.


10
There may, to be sure, be cases where the opportunity requires  prompt action,6 but labor negotiators are not the least nimble, and  the Board could reasonably have thought the price of making more time  for the sluggish was too high, since it would encourage bad-faith  bargaining.  As Auciello would have it, any employer with genuine doubt  about a union's hold on its employees would be invited to go right on  bargaining, with the prospect of locking in a favorable contract that it  could, if it wished, then challenge.  Here, for example, if Auciello had  acted before the Union's telegram by withdrawing its offer and declining  further negotiation based on Rits doubt (or petitioning for decertification), flames would have been fanned, and if it ultimately  had been obliged to bargain further, a favorable agreement would have  been more difficult to obtain.  But by saving its challenge until after  a contract had apparently been formed, it could not end up with a worse  agreement than the one it had.  The Board could reasonably say that  giving employers some flexibility in raising their scruples would not be  worth skewing bargaining relationships by such one-sided leverage, and the fact that any collective-bargaining agreement might be vulnerable to  such a postformation challenge would hardly serve the Act's goal of  achieving industrial peace by promoting stable collective-bargaining  relationships.  Cf. Fall River Dyeing, 482 U. S., at 38-39; Franks Bros.  Co. v. NLRB, 321 U. S. 702, 705 (1944).


11
Nor do we find anything compelling in Auciello's contention that  its employees' statutory right "to bargain collectively through  representatives of their own choosing" and to refrain from doing so, 29  U. S. C. Section(s) 157, compels us to reject the Board's position.  Although we take seriously the Act's command to respect "the free choice  of employees" as well as to "promot[e] stability in  collective-bargaining relationships," Fall River Dyeing, supra, at 38   (internal quotation marks omitted), we have rejected the position that  employers may refuse to bargain whenever presented with evidence that  their employees no longer support their certified union.  "To allow  employers to rely on employees' rights in refusing to bargain with the formally designated union is not conducive to [industrial peace], it is  inimical to it." Brooks v. NLRB, 348 U. S. 96, 103 (1954). The Board is  accordingly entitled to suspicion when faced with an employer's  benevolence as its workers' champion against their certified union,  which is subject to a decertification petition from the workers if they  want to file one. There is nothing unreasonable in giving a short leash  to the employer as vindicator of its employees' organizational freedom.

C.

12
Merits aside, Auciello also claims that the precedent of Garment Workers v. NLRB, 366 U. S. 731 (1961), compels reversal, but it does  not.  In Garment Workers, we held that a bona fide but mistaken belief  in a union's majority status cannot support an employer's agreement  purporting to recognize a union newly organized but as yet uncertified.  We upheld the Board's rule out of concern that an employer and a union  could make a deal giving the union "`a marked advantage over any other   [union] in securing the adherence of employees,'" id., at 738 (quoting  NLRB v. Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines, Inc., 303 U. S. 261, 267 (1938)), thereby distorting the process by which employees elect the bargaining  agent of their choice.  366 U. S., at 738-739.  Here, in contrast, the  Union continued to enjoy a rebuttable presumption of majority support,  and the bargaining unit employees had ample opportunity to initiate  decertification of the Union but apparently chose not to do so.  With  entire consistency, the Board may deny employers the power gained from recognizing a union, even when it flows from a good-faith but mistaken  belief in a newly organized union's majority status, and at the same  time deny them the power to disturb collective-bargaining agreements  based on a doubt (without more) that its employees' bargaining agent has  retained majority status.  Good-faith belief can neither force a union's precipitate recognition nor destroy a recognized union's contracting  authority after the fact by intentional delay.  There is, indeed, a  symmetry in the two positions.


13
We hold that the Board reasonably found an employer's precontractual, good-faith doubt inadequate to support an exception to  the conclusive presumption arising at the moment a collective-bargaining  contract offer has been accepted.  We accordingly affirm the judgment of  the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.


14
It is so ordered.



*
 The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience  of the reader.  See United States v. Detroit Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321,  337.


1
 Section 8(a) of the National Labor Relations Act provides:
"It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer--
"(1) to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 157 of this title;
. . . .
"(5) to refuse to bargain collectively with the representatives of his employees, subject to the provisions of section 159(a) of this title." 29 U. S. C. Section(s) 158(a).
Section 7 of the Act provides:
"Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through  representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted  activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid  or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all  of such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected  by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a  condition of employment as authorized in section 158(a)(3) of this  title."  29 U. S. C. Section(s) 157.


2
 The Board has developed a number of criteria to assess  whether a collective-bargaining contract has been formed, see, e.g., Appalachian Shale Products Co., 121 N. L. R. B. 1160 (1958), which may  not always coincide with those that would govern in the general area of  contract law, see Ben Franklin Nat. Bank, 278 N. L. R. B. 986, 993-994   (1986). We accept for purposes of deciding this case the Board's  conclusion that a contract was formed here within the meaning of the  Act.  Our review of this case is thus limited to the narrow question  whether an employer may withdraw from a collective-bargaining contract  once formed when it possessed enough evidence to assert a good-faith  doubt about the union's majority status at the time of formation.
Auciello has suggested that the contract itself was invalid ab initio because the union in fact lacked majority support at the time of  acceptance.  Because the substantiation required to make this showing is  greater than that required to assert a good-faith doubt, see NLRB v.  Curtin Matheson Scientific, Inc., 494 U. S. 775, 788, n. 8 (1990), the  Board has not taken a position on whether such a claim could excuse an  employer's decision to repudiate an otherwise valid contract and disavow  its duty to bargain with the union.  Brief for Respondent 26, n. 7.  Auciello concedes that it failed to advance this claim in its answer to the General Counsel's complaint, Tr. of Oral Arg. 6, 28, the Board never  considered this question, and Auciello sought certiorari review only of  the question whether an employer is bound by a union's acceptance in  this context when "the Employer had a reasonable basis for a good faith  doubt."  Pet. for Cert. i. Accordingly, we conclude that this question  is not properly before us and decline to address it.


3
 This presumption may be overcome only in unusual circumstances, see, e.g., Brooks v. NLRB, 348 U. S. 96, 98-99 (1954)  (union dissolution, inter alia); 3 T. Kheel, Labor Law Section(s)  13A.04[5], p. 13A-26 (1995); R. Gorman, Basic Text on Labor Law:  Unionization and Collective Bargaining Section(s) 9, pp. 56-57 (1976),  none of which is present here.


4
 Auciello maintains that Curtin Matheson requires reversal  here since it appears that the employer in that case asserted its good-faith doubt after the union's acceptance of the contract offer.  Brief for Petitioner 19-21.  But the case is not authority on the issue  of timing. The question presented was whether the Board "in evaluating  an employer's claim that it had a reasonable basis for doubting a  union's majority support, must presume that striker replacements oppose  the union."  Curtin Matheson, 494 U. S., at 777 (emphasis in original).  We did not discuss or consider whether the timing of the employer's  assertion should affect the outcome of that case, and the decision does  not answer that question.


5
 We assume, without deciding, that the withdrawal of an  offer under these circumstances could not serve as a basis for the filingof an unfair labor practice complaint, which might trigger the  "blocking charge" rule that the Solicitor General concedes would be  implicated by an employer's unlawful withdrawal of recognition. See  Brief for Respondent 31, n. 10.


6
 We note that in the unusual circumstance in which evidence leading the employer to harbor such a doubt arises at the same time the  union accepts the offer, the Board has agreed to examine such  occurrences on a case-by-case basis.  317 N. L. R. B. 364, 374-375   (1995).


