Atlantic Veal & Lamb has been processing and distributing meat products at its Brooklyn facility since its opening in 1956 by Phil Peerless’ father. Phil joined the company as a college student, putting together cardboard boxes. He eventually took the helm and today runs Atlantic Veal with help from his son, who serves as COO.
Phil is proud of the family business and its longevity, despite a dwindling veal industry that’s barely 11% of what it was in 2000.
However, two monumental events—COVID-19 and unionization—thrust Atlantic Veal into the crosshairs of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and a bogus tribunal within the agency’s own walls, under its own rules, and before its own employees.
In December 2019, Atlantic Veal’s New York processing and warehouse employees voted to form a union. In April 2020, the NLRB certified their representation by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, and negotiations began on a collective bargaining agreement.
Between the employees’ vote and the NLRB’s certification, the COVID-19 pandemic—and the draconian responses to contain its spread—hit. The COVID lockdowns devastated the restaurant and cruise-ship industries, two key customers of the veal business. As a result, Atlantic Veal was forced to lay off 38 employees at the end of March 2020 and began making plans to shut down its Brooklyn processing facility.
As negotiations and pandemic restrictions continued, Atlantic Veal advised the union of plans for layoffs and the end of its processing operations. When economic realities gave Atlantic Veal no choice but to let six employees go, the union complained to the NLRB that the company provided neither notice of those layoffs nor supposedly related information about other business decisions. The NLRB’s general counsel then filed an enforcement action claiming Atlantic Veal committed unfair labor practices.
To prosecute these allegations, the NLRB doesn’t have to go beyond its own walls. Instead, the agency’s general counsel filed its case in-house, applying the NLRB’s own rules, in front of an NLRB-employed administrative law judge (ALJ). Any appeal of the ALJ’s decision goes to the NLRB itself. The result is a cakewalk for the agency through a sham process of its own making.
Unsurprisingly, the ALJ agreed with the allegations against Atlantic Veal. When Atlantic Veal appealed, the NLRB not only affirmed the ALJ’s decision but also tacked on a compensatory-damage award—exercising a power the NLRB first discovered it had in 2022, almost 90 years after the National Labor Relations Act was enacted.
The Constitution guarantees the right to a fair trial before an impartial judge and jury. But that guarantee means nothing when the same agency that brings charges also writes the rules, runs the courtroom, and hears the appeal.
The Constitution also reserves the power to adjudicate legal disputes and impose punishment exclusively for independent federal courts—not for administrative law judges who answer to an agency, an administration, or a political interest. Even though the NLRB claims to run a perfectly fair process, it doesn’t have the constitutional authority to run one at all—that power was never Congress’ to give away.
Labor disputes, like any other legal dispute, should be heard in a courtroom—not redirected to an agency tribunal where the normal rules of due process are suspended. Nor can the NLRB claim authority to add compensatory damages and take further advantage of these disputes just to expand its own power.
Atlantic Veal’s operation once had around 100 employees. It’s now down to two. Today, Phil and his company are fighting back with free representation by Pacific Legal Foundation. Their federal lawsuit challenges the NLRB’s sham court that stripped their right to a fair trial.
What’s At Stake?
- The Constitution guarantees everyone the right to a fair trial in a court of law, before a neutral judge and, when money “damages” are sought, a jury of one’s peers. When an agency like the NLRB instead holds in-house hearings—where it acts as prosecutor, judge, jury, and appellate tribunal in its own cases—it renders that constitutional guarantee meaningless.
- The Constitution gives the power to decide legal disputes exclusively to independent federal courts. That power belongs to the courts alone, and it was never Congress’ to give away.
