What the regional office does

This page is legal information, not legal advice. It describes what the law says. It cannot tell you what to do about your own situation.

The Board is five seats in Washington. The work is done in 26 regional offices, and a case that reaches Washington has already been through one of them.

What a region actually does

• Takes the filing. Charges and petitions are filed with the region covering the workplace, not with Washington.
• Investigates. A Board agent gathers evidence from both sides. This is where most cases begin and end.
• Decides whether to issue a complaint. That decision belongs to the regional director, acting for the General Counsel.
• Runs elections. The region decides the shape of the voting group, schedules the vote, counts the ballots and certifies the result.
• Settles cases. Most meritorious charges are settled by the region rather than tried.

Why the split matters

The General Counsel, not the Board, decides which charges become complaints. The Act gives the General Counsel final authority over that, and the Board itself has no say in it. So a charge that is dismissed never reaches the five members in Washington at all. The appeal from a dismissal goes to the General Counsel's office, not to the Board.

This is why the Board's published decisions are not a picture of what the agency does. They are a picture of the small share of cases that were litigated all the way through.

Where this comes from

• The General Counsel's authority over complaints: National Labor Relations Act, Section 3(d), codified at 29 U.S.C. § 153(d).
• The list of regional offices, their addresses and the states each covers, from nlrb.gov. Those offices are listed on this site's regions page.