The Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe in Michigan has filed an appeal in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the National Labor Relations Board’s recent ruling that the NLRB has jurisdiction over employees at the tribe’s Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort in Mount Pleasant. The tribe has claimed the federal law that allows for union organizing, the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, does not apply to federally recognized Indian tribes or their gaming facilities.
Saginaw Chippewa spokesman Frank Cloutier said, “The tribe’s position rests on two legal principles: one, that the federal law does not apply to state governments and Indian tribes are not mentioned at all in the law; and two, that the application of the federal law to the tribe would violate the tribe’s rights under its treaties of 1855 and 1864.”
At issue is the NLRB’s October 27 decision ordering the tribe to rehire an employee who had been fired for union organizing and pay her four years in back salary. Also, the NLRB said tribe must post notices throughout the workplace admitting that it had violated federal labor law and stating that employees have the right to unionize. The NLRB said the tribe is engaged in interstate commerce and that gives it jurisdiction over the casino employees. The tribe does not acknowledge the board’s authority and refuses to abide by the order, Cloutier said.
This will be the second time the 6th Circuit Court will hear an appeal in the 4-year-old case, but the first time the court will issue a ruling, which could be petitioned to the U.S. Supreme Court by the tribe or the NLRB, Cloutier said. “At the end of the day, the better of two evils is probably to build your tribal labor ordinances and work well together. However, to this point, I can tell you that our leadership have dug their heels in and said the NLRB just simply does not have jurisdiction. More than 75 years of precedent is being ignored, plus the fact that we’ve been involved in ‘interstate commerce’ for hundreds of years, and the fact it’s a violation of our treaties. Those treaties were here before the NLRB and certainly supersede the NLRB.”
On the same day the NLRB issued its decision against the Saginaw Chippewa, a vote was held to unionize Soaring Eagle’s security employees into the Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America union. Only 129 of the 159 eligible employees voted, and only 16 of them voted in favor of joining the union, Cloutier said. Soaring Eagle Interim Chief Executive Officer Bob VanWert said, “I am extremely pleased that nearly 90 percent of our security staff wish to remain union free. I look forward to our continued teamwork and sincerely appreciate their vote of confidence.”
