Islamic Saudi Academy

National Labor Relations Board - Board Decisions

May 12, 2016

05-RC-080474 (N.L.R.B. May. 12, 2016)

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BEFORE THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
ISLAMIC SAUDI ACADEMY
Employer
and Case 05-RC-080474
ISLAMIC SAUDI ACADEMY EMPLOYEE
PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION (ISAEPA)
Petitioner
ORDER
The Employer’s Request for Review of the Regional Director’s Supplemental
Decision is granted as it raises substantial issues solely regarding the issue of whether the
Board must decline jurisdiction over the Employer’s non-teaching employees because the
Employer is a religious school. Under current precedent, the Board asserts jurisdiction
over secular, non-teaching employees of religiously affiliated organizations. See, e.g.,
Hanna Boys Center, 284 NLRB 1080 (1987), enfd. 940 F.2d 1295 (9th Cir. 1991), cert.
denied 504 U.S. 985 (1992). On review, the parties should address whether the Board
should adhere to its current precedent, extend the test articulated in Pacific Lutheran
University, 361 NLRB No. 157 (2014), to the non-teaching employees at issue here, or
take a different approach.1
The Employer has also requested review of the Regional Director’s June 14, 2012
Decision and Direction of Election in which he found that the Foreign Sovereign
Immunities Act (FSIA) did not prevent the Board from asserting jurisdiction over the
Employer because it is an instrumentality of a foreign government. In this respect, we
deny the Employer’s requests for review, filed on June 28, 2012 and September 29, 2015,

1 The Petitioner has not requested review of the Regional Director’s non-assertion of
jurisdiction over the Employer’s teaching employees and therefore we do not pass on this
issue.
Member Miscimarra joins his colleagues in granting review. However, as stated
in his dissenting opinion in Pacific Lutheran, Member Miscimarra disagrees with the
standard articulated in that case and would instead apply the standard articulated in
University of Great Falls v. NLRB, 278 F.3d 1335 (D.C. Cir. 2002), and he therefore
requests that the parties also address the potential applicability of Great Falls to the
secular, non-teaching employees at issue here.
2
for the reasons stated in the Regional Director’s Decision and Direction of Election.
MARK GASTON PEARCE, CHAIRMAN
PHILIP A. MISCIMARRA, MEMBER
KENT Y. HIROZAWA, MEMBER
LAUREN McFERRAN, MEMBER
Dated, Washington, D.C., May 12, 2016.