Can an Old Settlement Limit a Union’s Request for Named Salary Data?

An old settlement can matter to a union’s request for named salary data, but its age and an employer’s assertion of waiver do not decide the dispute. Read the precise information obligation, the agreement’s duration and nonadmission clauses, later side letters, and what the parties actually negotiated. The Washington Post proceeding shows why those documents can point in different directions.

Identify the right being asserted

This is a bargaining representative’s request for information about bargaining-unit compensation. It is not the same question as whether individual employees may discuss wages, whether a business must publish everyone’s salary, or whether its pay decisions are discriminatory. Keeping the requested data and the reason for requesting it clear prevents a confidentiality argument from replacing the actual labor-law issue.

In WP Company, JD-04-26, at 10–12, the judge treated the name-linked salary request as presumptively relevant. The union wanted to evaluate pay equity and bargaining proposals. The employer did not win simply by saying unnamed data was adequate or that negotiations had succeeded without names.

Read what the earlier agreement actually promised

The 1989 settlement established a detailed non-name-linked data arrangement, a separate employee-name list and a neutral verification procedure. Its obligations continued until mutual written modification or termination. A later side letter expanded electronic production and timing while preserving the settlement. That history is materially different from an employer pointing to a generic management-rights clause and asserting that all information rights disappeared.

For another request, compare the fields sought with the fields covered: Names, employee identifiers, hourly rates, salary histories, departments and demographic information are not interchangeable. A dispute over linking names to salary should not be described as a complete refusal to provide all compensation information if the employer supplies a substantial other dataset.

A nonadmission clause can affect proof without ending the agreement

The judge declined to use the 1989 agreement as evidence of an express waiver because its nonadmission provision barred that use. The judge separately held that the agreement remained enforceable. Those conclusions are not contradictory: One concerns an evidentiary use of the document; the other concerns whether its continuing contractual obligations survived. WP Company, at 12–15.

When preparing a review packet, include the entire agreement, not only the paragraph describing the data. A nonadmission or reservation-of-rights clause may change the argument that can be made from a production provision. A duration clause may also prevent the assumption that expiration of a later CBA automatically ended a separate settlement.

Document negotiation over the specific request

The opinion’s waiver conclusion also depended on bargaining history and past practice. It identified repeated negotiations over named salary data, proposals not included in resulting agreements, and responses following the established arrangement. The judge considered those circumstances together under the clear-and-unmistakable-waiver framework. WP Company, at 15–17.

A useful chronology therefore identifies what was proposed, discussed, accepted, rejected and ultimately signed. Preserve the actual request, employer response, bargaining notes and relevant drafts. Simply recording that a union previously received unnamed data is not the same as showing it consciously yielded the specific statutory interest now asserted. Likewise, a single rejected proposal is not automatically a universal waiver rule.

Choose the next step from the actual obstacle

If the dispute concerns relevance, explain the bargaining task the requested fields serve. If it concerns a continuing agreement, identify the language and any valid modification. If the parties want to change the arrangement, clarify whether negotiation must address a separate settlement as well as the current CBA. Do not assume a fresh request alone terminates a mutual written agreement, or that the employer may ignore requests outside its proved scope.

The January 6, 2026 ALJ decision, corrected January 8, initially recommended dismissal. For the current update, the Board’s March 5 adoption order made that dismissal operative after no exceptions were filed. That later event was not already true on the January 13 editorial date. Our full case analysis explains the separate findings and procedural stages; it does not turn this specific outcome into a blanket rule against union salary requests.