Source: https://m.openjurist.org/494/us/775
Timestamp: 2019-12-10 14:39:34
Document Index: 329536217

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 157', '§ 158', '§ 152', '§ 158', '§ 159', '§ 156']

494 U.S. 775 - National Labor Relations Board v. Curtin Matheson Scientific Inc
494 US 775 National Labor Relations Board v. Curtin Matheson Scientific Inc
The extent to which a union demands displacement of permanent replacement workers logically will depend on the union's bargaining power. Under this Court's decision in NLRB v. Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co., 304 U.S. 333, 58 S.Ct. 904, 82 L.Ed. 1381 (1938), an employer is not required to discharge permanent replacements at the conclusion of an economic strike to make room for returning strikers; rather, the employer must only reinstate strikers as vacancies arise. The strikers' only chance for immediate reinstatement, then, lies in the union's ability to force the employer to discharge the replacements as a condition for the union's ending the strike. Unions' leverage to compel such a strike settlement will vary greatly from strike to strike. If, for example, the jobs at issue do not require highly trained workers and the replacements perform as well as the strikers did, the employer will have little incentive to hire back the strikers and fire the replacements; consequently, the union will have little bargaining power. Consumers' reaction to a strike will also determine the union's bargaining position. If the employer's customers have no reluctance to cross the picket line and deal with the employer, the union will be in a poor position to bargain for a favorable settlement. Thus, a union's demands will inevitably turn on the strength of the union's hand in negotiations. A union with little bargaining leverage is unlikely to press the employer—at least not very forcefully or for very long—to discharge the replacements and reinstate all the strikers. Cognizant of the union's weak position, many if not all of the replacements justifiably may not fear that they will lose their jobs at the end of the strike. They may still want that union's representation after the strike, though, despite the union's lack of bargaining strength during the strike, because of the union's role in processing grievances, monitoring the employer's actions, and performing other nonstrike roles. Because the circumstances of each strike and the leverage of each union will vary greatly, it was not irrational for the Board to reject the antiunion presumption and adopt a case-by-case approach in determining replacements' union sentiments.9
Moreover, even if the interests of strikers and replacements conflict during the strike, those interests may converge after the strike, once job rights have been resolved. Thus, while the strike continues, a replacement worker whose job appears relatively secure might well want the union to continue to represent the unit regardless of the union's bargaining posture during the strike. Surely replacement workers are capable of looking past the strike in considering whether or not they desire representation by the union.10 For these reasons, the Board's refusal to adopt an antiunion presumption is not irreconcilable with its position in Service Electric, supra, and Leveld Wholesale, 218 N.L.R.A. 1344 (1975), regarding an employer's obligation to bargain with a striking union over replacements' employment terms.
Furthermore, the Board has not deemed picket-line violence or a union's demand that replacements be terminated irrelevant to its evaluation of replacements' attitudes toward the union. The Board's position, rather, is that "the hiring of permanent replacements who cross a picket line, in itself, does not support an inference that the replacements repudiate the union as collective-bargaining representative." Station KKHI, 284 N.L.R.B., at 1344 (emphasis added). In both Station KKHI and this case, the Board noted that the picket line was peaceful, id., at 1345; 287 N.L.R.B., at 352; and in neither case did the employer present evidence that the union was actively negotiating for ouster of the replacements. To the extent that the Board regards evidence of these factors relevant to its evaluation of replacements' union sentiments, then, respondent's contentions ring hollow. Cf. Stormor, Inc., 268 N.L.R.B. 860, 866-867 (1984) (concluding that replacements' crossing of picket line in face of continued violence, together with other evidence, overcame Board's former presumption that replacements favored the union); IT Services, 263 N.L.R.B. 1183, 1185-1188 (1982) (holding that picket line violence and union's adamant demand that replacements be terminated, together with antiunion statements by most of replacements, overcame prounion presumption).11
The Board's refusal to adopt an antiunion presumption is also consistent with the Act's "overriding policy" of achieving " 'industrial peace.' " Fall River, 482 U.S., at 38, 107 S.Ct., at 2233 (quoting Brooks v. NLRB, 348 U.S. 96, 103, 75 S.Ct. 176, 181, 99 L.Ed. 125 (1954)).12 In Fall River, the Court held that the presumption of continuing majority support for a union "further[s] this policy by 'promot[ing] stability in collective-bargaining relationships, without impairing the free choice of employees.' " 482 U.S., at 38, 107 S.Ct., at 2233 (citation omitted). The Court reasoned that this presumption "enable[s] a union to concentrate on obtaining and fairly administering a collective-bargaining agreement without worrying that, unless it produces immediate results, it will lose majority support." Ibid. (citing Brooks v. NLRB, supra, at 100, 75 S.Ct., at 179). In addition, this presumption "remove[s] any temptation on the part of the employer to avoid good-faith bargaining in the hope that, by delaying, it will undermine the union's support among the employees." 482 U.S., at 38, 107 S.Ct., at 2233.
Furthermore, it was reasonable for the Board to decide that the antiunion presumption might chill employees' exercise of their statutory right to engage in "concerted activities," including the right to strike. See 49 Stat. 452, as amended, 29 U.S.C. § 157 ("Employees shall have the right . . . to engage in . . . concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection"). If an employer could remove a union merely by hiring a sufficient number of replacements, employees considering a strike would face not only the prospect of being permanently replaced, but also a greater risk that they would lose their bargaining representative, thereby diminishing their chance of obtaining reinstatement through a strike settlement. It was rational for the Board to conclude, then, that adoption of the antiunion presumption could chill employees' exercise of their right to strike.13
By refusing to allow the employer to resort to what would seem to be commonsense assumptions about the views of an entire class of workers—those hired to replace strikers—the Board sharply limits the means by which an employer might satisfy the "good-faith doubt" requirement. Although the Board's opinion in this case does not preclude a finding of good-faith doubt based on circumstantial evidence, some recent decisions suggest that it now requires an employer to show that individual employees have "expressed desires" to repudiate the incumbent union in order to establish a reasonable doubt of the union's majority status. See Tube Craft, Inc., 289 N.L.R.B. 862, n. 2 (1988); Johns-Manville Sales Corp., 289 N.L.R.B. 358, 361 (1988); Tile, Terrazzo & Marble Contractors Assn., 287 N.L.R.B. 769, n. 2 (1987). It appears that another of the Board's rules prevents the employer from polling its employees unless it first establishes a good-faith doubt of majority status. See Texas Petrochemicals Corp., 296 N.L.R.B. No. 1057, 1064 (1989) (the standard for employer polling is the same as the standard for withdrawal of recognition). I have considerable doubt whether the Board may insist that good-faith doubt be determined only on the basis of sentiments of individual employees, and at the same time bar the employer from using what might be the only effective means of determining those sentiments. But that issue is not before us today.
Justice SCALIA's dissent, as I read it, rests upon the belief that the Board was correct in Service Electric and Leveld Wholesale, and that its decision in the instant case is therefore substantively irrational. Certainly the views expressed in Service Electric and Leveld Wholesale accord with my own understanding of industrial reality. It seems to me eminently foreseeable that a striking union will disfavor the workers who have been hired to break the strike; that the union will attempt, as an element of the ultimate settlement, to secure the discharge of replacement employees; and that the replacements will be aware of the antagonism between the union's interests and their own.1 But if the expert agency were to determine that the participants in the collective-bargaining process no longer behave in this fashion, and if it consistently acted upon this determination, I cannot say at this juncture that the Board's decision would be irrational. To invalidate the Board's order in the present case, it is not necessary to assert that the decision is based upon an implausible assessment of industrial reality. Rather, it is enough to say that the Board in this case has departed, without explanation, from principles announced and reaffirmed in its prior decisions. The agency has made no effort to explain the apparent inconsistency between the decision here and its analyses in Service Electric and Leveld Wholesale, and its order is invalid on that basis alone.2
I am struck, moreover, by the Board's lack of empirical support for its position—a significant point in view of the fact that for 25 years the Board presumed that replacement workers opposed the striking union. If the Board's refusal to adopt such a presumption is based, at least in part, on policy concerns (e.g., the fear that employers would abuse the bargaining process by "hiring their way out" of their statutory duty), it seems reasonable to expect the Board to show (or at least to assert) that such abuses actually occurred during the period the presumption was in place. I am also troubled by the fact, noted in THE CHIEF JUSTICE's concurring opinion, ante, at 797, that while the Board appears to require that good-faith doubt be established by express avowals of individual employees, other Board policies make it practically impossible for the employer to amass direct evidence of its workers' views.3 The point, I emphasize, is that thepropri ety of the no-presumption rule cannot be determined simply by asking whether the rule, in isolation, is irrational or rests on a demonstrably misguided view of the facts. Rather, the reviewing court also must ask whether the agency's decision is the product of an adequate deliberative process and is consonant with other agency pronouncements in analogous areas.
The Board relies upon this reality of "diametrically opposed" interests as the basis for two of its rules: First, that an employer does not commit an unfair labor practice by refusing to negotiate with the incumbent union regarding the terms and conditions of the replacements' employment. See Service Electric Co., 281 N.L.R.B. 633, 641 (1986). Second, that the union's duty of fair representation does not require it to negotiate in the best interests of the strike replacements regarding the terms and conditions of their employment—in other words, that the union may propose "negotiations leading to replacements being terminated to make way for returning strikers," ibid. See id., at 639 ("[I]t is not logical to expect [the striking bargaining] representative to negotiate in the best interests of strike replacements during the pendency of a strike") (internal quotation omitted; citation omitted); id., at 641 (even after the strike has ended, the "inherent conflict between the two groups remains" until the underlying contractual dispute has been resolved); Leveld Wholesale, supra, at 1350 ("It would be asking a great deal of any union to require it to negotiate in the best interests of strike replacements during the pendency of a strike, where the strikers are on the picket line").
The Court finds this reasoning persuasive: "Economic concerns, for instance, may force a replacement employee to work for a struck employer even though he otherwise supports the union and wants the benefits of union representation." Ante, at 789. These responses are entirely inadequate. The question is not whether replacement employees accept employment for economic reasons. Undoubtedly they do—the same economic reasons that would lead them to oppose the union that will likely seek to terminate their employment. Nor is the question whether replacements would like to be represented by a union. Some perhaps would. But what the employer is required to have a good-faith doubt about is majority support, not for "union representation" in the abstract, but for representation by this particular complainant union, at the time the employer withdrew recognition from the union.
"On 16 July the Union, on behalf of the striking
Surely an offer "on behalf of the striking employees . . . to return to work" can only be accepted by allowing the striking employees to return to work. Does the Court really mean to interpret the union's action as agreement that the strike replacements shall stay on the job under the terms of the May 25 collective-bargaining proposal, and the strikers remain unemployed? Or as a proposal that the employer should double its work force, paying both the replacement workers and the returning strikers under the terms of the May 25 offer? Surely the very most that can be said is that the union's offer left the status of the replacement workers for later negotiation. No more is necessary to establish a reasonable doubt that the replacement workers would support the union—which, in any such negotiations, could be expected (indeed, would have a legal obligation) to seek displacement of the strikebreakers by the returning strikers. As the Board said in Service Electric:
The trouble with this is that it posits a species of replacement worker that will rarely exist unless and until the union has agreed (as it had not in this case) to accept the replacements' employment status—i.e., until "job rights have been resolved." How can there be "a replacement worker whose job appears relatively secure" when the employer agrees to negotiate in good faith with a union that will surely seek the reinstatement of all its strikers? Even a replacement worker who has clear seniority over other replacement workers, and who somehow knows (by what means I cannot imagine) that some of the striking workers no longer want their jobs back,1 has no means of assurance that the union will do him the favor of bargaining for the employer to honor his seniority among strike-breakers. It seems overwhelmingly likely that the union will want its returning members to have their old jobs back, or better jobs, regardless of the relative seniority of the strikebreakers who would thereby be displaced. I do not dispute that "replacement workers are capable of looking past the strike in considering whether or not they desire representation by the union," ibid.—in the same way that a man who is offered $1 million to jump off a cliff is capable of looking past the probable consequence of his performance to contemplate how much fun he would have with $1 million if he should survive. Surely the benefits strike replacements anticipate from their poststrike representation by this particular union must be expected to weigh much less heavily in their calculus than the reality that if this particular union does the bargaining and gets its way, they will not have poststrike jobs.
It is the proper business of the Board, as of most agencies, to deal in both presumptions (i.e., presumptions of law) and inferences (presumptions of fact). The former it may create and apply in the teeth of the facts, as means of implementing authorized law or policy in the course of adjudication. An example is the virtually irrebuttable presumption of majority support for the union during the year following the union's certification by the Board, Station KKHI, 284 N.L.R.B., at 1340. The latter, however—inferences (or presumptions of fact)—are not creatures of the Board but its masters, representing the dictates of reason and logic that must be applied in making adjudicatory factual determinations. Whenever an agency's action is reversed in court for lack of "substantial evidence," the reason is that the agency has ignored inferences that reasonably must be drawn, or has drawn inferences that reasonably cannot be. As I have discussed above, that is what happened here.2
Of course the Board may choose to implement authorized law or policy in adjudication by forbidding a rational inference, just as it may do so by requiring a nonrational one (which is what a presumption of law is). And perhaps it could lawfully have reached the outcome it did here in that fashion—saying that even though it must reasonably be inferred that an employer has good-faith doubt of majority status when more than half of the bargaining unit are strike replacements whose job rights have not been resolved, we will not permit that inference to be made. (This would produce an effect close to a rule of law eliminating the good-faith doubt defense except for cases in which the employer can demonstrate, by employee statements, lack of support for the union.) But that is not what the agency did here. It relied on the reasoning of Station KKHI, which rested upon the conclusion that, as a matter of logic and reasoning, "the hiring of permanent replacements who cross a picket line, in itself, does not support an inference that the replacements repudiate the union as collective-bargaining representative." Id., at 1344. That is simply false. It is bad factfinding, and must be reversed under the "substantial evidence" test.
Second, by upholding as a counterfactual policy determination a ruling that was made, and defended before the Fifth Circuit, as ordinary factfinding plus the refusal to adopt a counterfactual policy determination, we would be depriving respondent of possible legal defenses that it had no occasion to present to the courts. Section 8(a)(5) of the NLRA is violated only if the employer refuses to bargain "with the representatives" of his employees. 29 U.S.C. § 158(a)(5). The Act does not define the term "representatives," except to say that it "includes any individual or labor organization." § 152(4). Specifically, it does not say or anywhere suggest that a certified union is the "representative" for purposes of § 158(a)(5) unless and until it is decertified. Because the Board has long acknowledged the good-faith doubt defense, there has been no occasion to test in the courts the proposition that the employer can be liable for refusing to bargain with a certified union that patently does not have majority support. The only presumption of law that is applied to effect a policy exception to this defense the almost irrebuttable presumption of union support for one year after its certification—is arguably authorized as an implementation of the policy of § 159(e)(2), which precludes certification elections more frequently than annually. Even if, moreover, the Board can generally require the employer to bargain with a union that is not a "representative" in the sense of having majority support, there is the further question whether it can require him to bargain with a union that is a "representative" neither in that sense nor in the sense that it is obligated to bargain in the best interests of the majority of employees. See my earlier discussion of the Board's rule that the union has no duty to represent the interest of replacement employees, supra, at 806-807. The Board did not have to confront these issues in the present case, because it did not purport to be deciding the case on the assumption that the union lacked majority support. It found respondent guilty of an unfair labor practice on the ground that there was, in fact, no reasonable doubt of the union's majority status; and it is exclusively that finding which respondent challenged, both here and in the Fifth Circuit. If we permitted the Board's order to be enforced on the quite different ground that it does not matter whether respondent had a reasonable, good-faith doubt, we not only would be making for the Board a decision it has not yet reached, but also would be depriving respondent of judicial review of that decision.3
Despite the fact that the NLRB has explicit rulemaking authority, see § 156, it has chosen—unlike any other major agency of the Federal Government—to make almost all its policy through adjudication. It is entitled to do that, see NLRB v. Bell Aerospace Co., 416 U.S. 267, 294-295, 94 S.Ct. 1757, 1771-1772, 40 L.Ed.2d 134 (1974), but it is not entitled to disguise policymaking as factfinding, and thereby to escape the legal and political limitations to which policymaking is subject. Thus, when the Board purports to find no good-faith doubt because the facts do not establish it, the question for review is whether there is substantial evidence to support that determination. Here there is not, and the Board's order should not be enforced.
The Court apparently believes that it is all right for the Board to ignore proper factfinding now, so long as it promises to make proper factfinding later. The Court says that "assuming for the sake of argument that . . . unions 'almost certain[ly]' demand displacement of all strike replacements . . ., such demands will be a factor in the Board's analysis in most cases. There is no reason, however, to force the Board to apply a presumption based on the premise that unions always make such demands. . . ." Ante, at 793, n. 11. This presumably means that when the respondent, having been compelled by the Board to negotiate with this union, is presented with a proposal for displacement of strike replacements, it may then break off negotiations on the grounds that it has a good-faith doubt of the union's majority status. I doubt very much that this is what the Board has in mind. But even if it is, it does not justify the Board's compelling the respondent to negotiate in the first place, when any reasonable person must have entertained a "reasonable doubt" of the union's majority status—which the Board continues to affirm is enough.