Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/99-1340/99-1340a-2011-03-24.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 07:13:16+00:00

Document:
Deputy Associate General Counsel. Frederick Havard, Super- visory Attorney, entered an appearance.
Rogers, Circuit Judge: The Alois Box Company petitions the court for review of a National Labor Relations Board order finding that the company violated ss 8(a)(1) and (5) of the National Labor Relations Act, see 29 U.S.C. s 158(a)(1), (5) (1994), for refusing to bargain with Graphic Communica- tions Union Local 415-S, AFL-CIO at the company's factory in Illinois. The company does not deny that it refused to bargain but contends that the union was never properly certified because three ballots were improperly excluded from the election tally. In addition, the company contends that the Board's grant of summary judgment was inappropriate, and contrary to Board Rule 102.24, because the company's re- sponse to the rule to show cause indicated that a genuine issue for hearing may exist. Because there is substantial evidence to support the Board's finding with regard to one of the three invalidated ballots and the company forfeited its right to challenge the Board's disposition of a second ballot, even if the Board's finding with regard to the third ballot is unsupported by substantial evidence, the result of the election would not change. Accordingly, because there are no legally significant factual issues as would preclude summary judg- ment, we deny the petition and grant the Board's cross- application for enforcement.
opened ballots was 19 in favor of the union, 14 opposed to the union. Aside from the 33 opened ballots, seven unopened ballots were challenged by the union on the ground that they were cast by employees who were ineligible to vote in the representation election.
A hearing officer, considering six of the seven challenged ballots,1 found in favor of the union with respect to four of the six ballots--those cast by Jeff Miller, Manuel Garcia, Julius Rimdzuis, and Mato Brasic--on the grounds that Miller and Garcia are supervisors, that Rimdzuis lacks a community of interest with the bargaining unit, and that Brasic receives special privileges as the brother of the plant manager. The company filed exceptions to the hearing officer's recommen- dations, and the Board reversed as to Garcia, but otherwise affirmed the hearing officer's recommendations. As a result, four of the seven challenged ballots were determined to be ineligible. With the four ineligible ballots, the total number of valid ballots was reduced from 40 to 36, with 19 valid and counted for the union, 14 valid and counted against the union, and three--Garcia and the two employees the union chal- lenged unsuccessfully before the hearing officer--uncounted. Because the three unopened ballots would not be determina- tive of the result of the election, the Board declined to order them opened and counted, and issued a certification of repre- sentation to the union. See Alois Box Co., Inc., 326 N.L.R.B. No. 110 (1998) (with one member dissenting on the finding that Miller was a supervisor and another member dissenting on the finding that Rimdzuis was ineligible to vote).
__________ 1 The parties stipulated that one of the seven challenged ballots was filed by an ineligible former employee.
work assignments he did not exercise independent judgment, as clarified by recent Board and court precedent, and that Rimdzuis was a regular part-time employee who shared a community of interest with the unit employees. The Board's General Counsel moved for summary judgment on the grounds that the company sought to relitigate eligibility determinations that were "exhaustively" examined in the representation case, and that the company's "technical refusal to bargain" was sufficient to find that the company had violated ss 8(a)(1) and (5) of the Act, under Skandia Foods, Inc., 301 N.L.R.B. No. 35 (1991).
In response to the notice to show cause why summary judgment should not be granted, the company argued that the Board had erroneously adopted the hearing officer's bare- bones conclusion that Miller was a supervisor based on work assignments that were never identified and independent judg- ment that was never described, and that more recent cases demonstrated the findings were insufficient to show supervi- sory status.2 With regard to Rimdzuis, the company argued the Board's error was clear from Time Warner Cable v. NLRB, 160 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 1998). The company also argued that Board Rule s 102.24 did not require it to set forth precise facts through affidavits or exhibits in order to defeat a motion for summary judgment, as long as it was clear from the face of the answer that a genuine issue of fact exists. The Board granted summary judgment, ruling that all representation issues were or could have been litigated in the prior representation proceeding, and noting that the company neither offered to present at a hearing any newly discovered and previously unavailable evidence nor alleged any special circumstances requiring the Board to reexamine its earlier decision. See Alois Box Co., 328 N.L.R.B. No. 134 (1999).
__________ 2 The company relied on Custom Mattress Manufacturing, Inc., 327 N.L.R.B. No. 30 (1998); Ryder Truck Rental, Inc., 326 N.L.R.B. No. 149 (1998); Board of Social Ministry, 327 N.L.R.B. No. 57 (1998), as well as VIP Health Services, Inc. v. NLRB, 164 F.3d 644 (D.C. Cir. 1999), and Cooper/T. Smith, Inc. v. NLRB, 177 F.3d 1259 (11th Cir. 1999).
In petitioning for review of the Board's certification of the union as the exclusive bargaining representative of all "full time and regular part-time production, maintenance and ship- ping employees," the company's contentions that the Board erred in disqualifying three ballots hinge largely on its inter- pretation of the evidence in the light most favorable to it, and with regard to Miller, on its reading of Board and court precedent regarding supervisors. If the Board is affirmed with regard to at least two of the three unopened ballots at issue here (Miller, Rindzuis, and Brasic), the outcome of the election remains unchanged regardless of whether the re- maining unopened ballots were voted against the union. The Board's factual findings are entitled to be affirmed if sup- ported by substantial evidence on the record as a whole, see Passaic Daily News v. NLRB, 736 F.2d 1543, 1550 (D.C. Cir. 1984), and with regard to the determination of supervisory status, given the large measure of informed discretion in- volved and the Board's corresponding expertise in this area, the substantial evidence test "takes on special significance." Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Int'l Union v. NLRB, 445 F.2d 237, 241 (D.C. Cir. 1977).
We address first, the company's challenge to the Board's determination that Miller was a supervisor; second, the com- pany's challenge to the Board's finding that Rimdzuis lacked community of interest with members of the bargaining unit; and third, the company's attempt to challenge the Board's determination that Brasic received special work-related bene- fits as a result of being the brother of the plant manager.
status in 1995 due to unsatisfactory performance, that he accepted a non-supervisory position instead, that he eats his lunch in the maintenance area, that he punches a time clock, and that his main area of operation is in the maintenance shop and out on the floor fixing machines. Although ac- knowledging that Miller "has been assigned the job of report- ing early in the morning and handing out some work orders which Brasic, the Plant Manager, has assigned for that day," the company contends that Miller exercised no independent judgment in carrying out such tasks and that absent such evidence he cannot be a supervisor. Yet there was evidence that Miller independently assigns work to employees, changes the plant manager's assignments, instructs employees to cease work, and has been held out by the company as a supervisor even after he was officially stripped of supervisory authority in 1995, causing some employees to regard Miller as having supervisory authority. Moreover, the company's fail- ure to call Miller as a witness, and its failure to explain its decision, warrants the inference that his testimony would have been unfavorable to the company. See Cadbury Bever- ages, Inc. v. NLRB, 160 F.3d 24, 29 (D.C. Cir. 1998); UAW v. NLRB, 459 F.2d 1329, 1336 (D.C. Cir. 1972). Given the evidence to support the Board's determination that Miller is a supervisor, the underlying issue is whether, as the company contends, recent Board and judicial precedent require that more be shown.
any individual having authority, in the interest of the employer, to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees, or responsibly to direct them, ... if ... the exercise of such authority is not of a merely routine ... nature, but requires the use of independent judgment. 29 U.S.C. s 152(11).
definition. See, e.g., Micro Pacific Dev. Inc., v. NLRB, 178 F.3d 1325, 1330-31 (D.C. Cir. 1999). Necessarily an ambigu- ous term in contrast to authority of a "routine or clerical nature," the Board is to be given room to apply the term "independent judgment." VIP Health Servs., Inc. v. NLRB, 164 F.3d 644, 647 (D.C. Cir. 1999). But in concluding an employee exercises such judgment the Board must be able to answer three questions in the affirmative: (1) does the em- ployee have authority to engage in one of the twelve listed activities; (2) does the exercise of that authority require the use of independent judgment; and (3) does the employee hold the authority in the interests of the employer. See NLRB v. Health Care & Retirement Corp., 511 U.S. 571, 573-74 (1994). With these considerations in mind, however, the court in Beverly Enter.-Massachusetts, Inc. v. NLRB, 165 F.3d 960, 962 (D.C. Cir. 1999), cautioned that "the Board must guard against construing supervisory status too broadly to avoid unnecessarily stripping workers of their organizational rights." Id. at 962. Noting that in construing s 2(11) of the Act, the Board has ruled that it is the possession of superviso- ry authority and not its exercise that is critical, see id., the court rejected the notion that mere job titles or manage- ment's desires could be determinative, and required in the absence of the exercise of supervisory authority that there be tangible examples demonstrating the existence of such au- thority. See id. at 962-63.
company considers Ryder Truck Rental, Inc., 326 NLRB No. 149 (1998), to offer an even closer parallel to Miller's situa- tion, for in Ryder the employee followed plant management's job assignments unless presented with an unanticipated job, in which event he selected another employee to do the job based on management's assessment of that employee's skills, and the Board stated that "[a]ssignment of work by area of expertise does not involve the exercise of independent judg- ment when carried out according to the instructions of man- agement." Id. The company maintains as well, citing Byers Engineering Corp., 324 NLRB 740, 741 (1997), that previous Board precedent indicated that "independent judgment" in the context of assigning work requires more than merely equalizing employees' work.
from assigning employees to work on complicated machines. So, too, in Mississippi Power & Light Co., 328 NLRB No. 146, 1999 WL 551405 (N.L.R.B. July 26, 1999), the Board relied on evidence, unlike that in Miller's case, that the employees followed specific instructions or procedures that management had designed and had to check with higher authority before performing planned work. See id. at *4-5.
evidence that Miller made adjustments to the work assign- ments made initially by the plant manager. Based on this and other evidence, the hearing officer's finding that Miller used independent judgment in performing supervisory duties is supported by substantial evidence.
the court has recognized before that can provide a sufficient evidentiary basis. See Cadbury Beverages, 160 F.3d at 29; UAW, 459 F.2d at 1336. While it is undoubtedly true that the company is confronted with the somewhat unusual cir- cumstance of a former supervisor continuing to function in critical respects as a supervisor making work assignments and evaluating employees' skills in making such assignments, the warning in Beverly Enterprises that titles and manage- ment's desires are not dispositive of supervisory status is no less applicable when management seeks to deny supervisory status based in part on the absence of such a title and the absence of evidence it could have presented.
In challenging the Board's determination that Rimdzuis does not have a community of interest with unit employees, and thus is not a regular part time employee, the company persuasively contends that Rimdzuis "regularly perform[s] duties similar to those performed by unit employees for sufficient periods of time to demonstrate that [he] ha[s] a substantial interest in working conditions in the unit." Mar- tin Enters., Inc., 325 N.L.R.B. 714 (1998). But we need not decide this question because even were the company to gain a vote against the union from Rimdzuis' ballot, it needs at least two votes to change the election result, and the company has forfeited its right to challenge the Board's decision that Mato Brasic was ineligible to vote.
ballot in the court by not raising it in the unfair labor practice proceeding, and, alternatively, that the Board's decision in the representation proceeding excluding Brasic from the bargain- ing unit is supported by substantial evidence in the record. We do not reach the merits of the company's contention, however, because we agree with the Board that the company has forfeited its right to challenge Brasic's exclusion in this court.
no objection that has not been urged before the Board ... shall be considered by the court, unless the failure ... shall be excused because of extraordinary circumstances. 29 U.S.C. s 160(e).
issues already presented to the Board in the representation hearing.
However, the company cites no authority for its position, and both the Second and Ninth Circuits have held to the contrary. See NLRB v. Star Color Plate Serv., 843 F.2d 1507, 1510 n.3 (2d Cir. 1988); NLRB v. Best Prods. Co., 765 F.2d 903, 910 (9th Cir. 1985). The company distinguishes the Second Circuit's case on the basis that in Star Color, the issue in question was first presented to the court in the reply brief, ignoring the fact that the Second Circuit made clear that was an independent alternative holding to its holding that, by failing to raise the issue before the Board in the unfair labor practice proceeding, the issue regarding the Board's decision in the representation proceeding could not be raised in the court on appeal from the unfair labor practice decision. See Star Color, 843 F.2d at 1510, n.3. Neither the Board nor the employer cites or discusses Best Products setting forth the Ninth Circuit's rationale that issues can be abandoned and that the Board is entitled to know in the unfair labor practice proceeding what objections to its representation decision are being pursued. See Best Prods., 765 F.2d at 903. Thus, in Best Products, the Ninth Circuit concluded that while it would not require a party to give in the unfair labor practice proceeding "a full-blown, yet necessarily unavailing, re- argument of an issue that has already been decided against that party in a representation hearing," a party must at least give "[a] firm indication to the Board of the objecting party's non-abandonment of the issue ... to preserve it for ... review [by the court on appeal from the unfair labor practice proceeding under section 10(e)]." Id. at 910.
proceeding that it was continuing to contest the Board's disposition of Brasic's ballot in the representation proceeding.
__________ 5 In any event, an employer will not necessarily pursue all objections in the unfair labor practice proceeding that it raised in the representation proceeding, and the Board is entitled to know which objections are being pursued because its decision in the unfair labor practice proceeding is a final appealable order. See Best Prods., 765 F.2d at 903.
909 (citing NLRB v. Southwest Equip. Corp., 736 F.2d 1332 (9th Cir. 1984), and NLRB v. Giustina Bros. Lumber Co., 253 F.2d 371, 374 (9th Cir. 1958)), absent any notice to the Board in the unfair labor practice proceeding, the company has forfeited its right to challenge the Board's disposition of Brasic's ballot in the representation proceeding.
Finally, the company contends that the Board erred in granting summary judgment because it was entitled to a hearing in the unfair labor practice proceeding, in accordance with the Board's rules. Section 102.24(b) of the Board Rules on motions provides that a motion for summary judgment may, in the Board's discretion, be denied "where the opposing party's pleadings, opposition and/or response indicate on their face that a genuine issue may exist." 29 C.F.R. s 102.24(b) (1999). The Rule states further that "[i]t is not required that either the opposition or the response be supported by affida- vits or other documentary evidence showing that there is a genuine issue for hearing." Id. Because the company pre- sented new cases affecting the Board's interpretation of su- pervisory status, the company maintains that a hearing was required. This contention is meritless.
changed. Because the company had an opportunity to liti- gate all relevant issues of fact and only determinations of law remained, as set forth in the company's filings with the Board, an evidentiary hearing would have served no purpose. See NLRB v. Mar Salle, Inc. 425 F.2d 566, 572 (D.C. Cir. 1969). The company submitted its legal arguments in its filings to the Board, and as noted in Part II(A), the cases relied upon by the company did not show a change in governing law. Thus, in the absence of any basis for the Board to reconsider its previous decision, the Board properly granted summary judgment. See Sitka Sound Seafoods, Inc. v. NLRB, 206 F.3d 1175, 1182-83 (D.C. Cir. 2000); Thomas- Davis Med. Ctrs., P.C. v. NLRB, 157 F.3d 909, 912 (D.C. Cir. 1998).
Because we conclude that there is substantial evidence in the record to support the Board's finding that Miller was a supervisor and that the company forfeited its right to chal- lenge the Board's disposition of Brasic's ballot, and, therefore, both were ineligible to vote in the representation election, the outcome of the election is unchanged even assuming the Board erred by excluding Rimdzuis' ballot. Because, further, the company failed to present legal authority indicating that the Board had changed its standard for determining supervi- sory status, or to claim to have newly discovered evidence, summary judgment was appropriate. Accordingly, we deny the petition for review and grant the Board's cross-application for enforcement.
The hearing officer seized on the differences between Rimdzuis's working conditions and those of other employees and determined the differences left Rimdzuis without suffi- cient connection to the bargaining unit, that is, without a "community of interest." JA 178. The Board, over the dissent of Member Hurtgen, adopted the hearing officer's recommendation and the reasoning therefor. Hurtgen relied on Rimdzuis's twenty hours of unit work weekly for seven years and determined that "[t]he fact that he schedules his own 20 hours does not detract from his regular part-time status." JA 171 n.4. Our precedent as well as the Board's precedent plainly support the dissent.
[W]e find that once this standard has been met, it is both unnecessary and inappropriate to evaluate other aspects of the [part-time1] employee's terms and conditions of employment in a kind of second tier community-of- interest analysis. That is, inclusion of a [part-time] employee within a particular unit does not depend on a showing of community-of-interest factors in addition to the regular performance of a substantial amount of unit work. 286 N.L.R.B. at 188 (footnote and internal citation omitted).
__________ 1 The Board in Oxford Chemicals addresses "dual function" em- ployees but notes that the same standard applies for determining eligibility of part-time employees. See 286 N.L.R.B. at 187; see also Time Warner, 160 F.3d at 6 n.12.
reject work when offered."); Henry Lee Co., 194 N.L.R.B. 1107, 1107 (1972) ("Where, as here, part-time employees are engaged in unit work for substantial periods each week, even though on an unscheduled basis, it is customary Board policy to include them in the unit as regular part-time employees."). Moreover, neither Rimdzuis's fixed wage nor his exclusion from certain fringe benefits negates the substantial interest he has in the working conditions he shares with others in the bargaining unit approximately twenty hours each week. Ac- cordingly, I believe the Board clearly erred in disenfranchis- ing Rimdzuis.

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