United States Court of Appeals
          For the Eighth Circuit
    ___________________________

            No. 22-2958
    ___________________________

    Strategic Technology Institute, Inc.

                          Petitioner

                     v.

     National Labor Relations Board

                  Respondent
    ___________________________

            No. 22-3045
    ___________________________

    Strategic Technology Institute, Inc.

                      Respondent

                     v.

     National Labor Relations Board

                     Petitioner
              ____________

     National Labor Relations Board
             ____________

     Submitted: September 20, 2023
        Filed: December 6, 2023
             ____________
Before LOKEN, WOLLMAN, and BENTON, Circuit Judges.
                                    ____________

BENTON, Circuit Judge.

       Strategic Technology Institute, Inc. (“STI”) petitions for review of the
National Labor Relations Board’s order that it violated subsections 8(a)(1) and (3)
of the National Labor Relations Act, 

(a)(1) and (3). See Strategic
Tech. Inst., Inc. and Int’l Ass’n of Machinists & Aerospace Workers, AFL-CIO,

, 

 (Sept. 13, 2022). The Board seeks to enforce
the order. Having jurisdiction under 

(f), this court grants the petition
for review, vacates the order, and remands.

                                          I.

       From August 2017 until July 2020, STI had a contract to maintain engines and
propellers for the U.S. Air Force. Tyler Boyd of STI fired 17 employees from its
Little Rock facility—three on September 27, 2019, and fourteen on October 9, 2019.
Boyd, the program manager for the contract, who was based in Texas, did not visit
the Little Rock facility before the terminations. He managed remotely through site
supervisor Gerald Kiihnl, who resigned the day after the last terminations.

       In the summer before the terminations, STI’s Little Rock employees began
discussing unionizing. Mechanic Eric Rambo resigned on August 30, 2019. That
day, by a phone call, he told Boyd that employees were discussing unionizing. In an
exit interview, Rambo told Kiihnl that employees were considering “trying to get a
union in.” Kiihnl relayed this to Boyd in a phone call.

      From March to September 2019, the Air Force issued STI five corrective
action reports (“CARs”) for safety and performance issues. On September 18, a
CAR cited STI with leaving a screwdriver in an aircraft engine it had serviced. The
CAR required STI to explain the corrective acts it would take to prevent similar

                                         -2-
issues. STI responded with tool-accountability training and procedural changes. STI
added: “Training and re-training have unfortunately proven not to be effective.
Counseling is in order before loss of limb or life occurs. These issues shall require
actions to be taken.”

       STI found three employees responsible for the error. On September 23, Kiihnl
verbally reprimanded them (the first discipline for the three). Later that day Boyd
told Kiihnl that the discipline should be more severe. On September 27, Boyd fired
the three employees.

      On September 20, the day after learning of the CAR, Boyd had instructed
Kiihnl to evaluate and rank 41 Little Rock employees, STI’s first rankings at Little
Rock. Kiihnl completed this evaluation on September 23. He scored each employee
as “3-out-of-5.” He then ranked them based on performance, attendance, and how
well they worked with others. There is no evidence that union activity was
considered in the rankings.

      On October 9 (a day after Kiihnl returned from vacation), Boyd fired the 14
lowest ranked employees for “poor performance.” Boyd prepared an identical
verbal-counseling form for each fired employee’s personnel file. The ALJ and Board
found that these forms, which cited the five 2019 CARs, were “full of fal