Source: http://openjurist.org/590/f2d/19/national-labor-relations-board-v-kent-county-association-for-retarded-citizens-j
Timestamp: 2017-08-17 18:19:55
Document Index: 592238916

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 10', '§ 160', '§ 8', '§ 158', '§ 2', '§ 152', '§ 159', '§ 152']

590 F2d 19 National Labor Relations Board v. Kent County Association for Retarded Citizens J | OpenJurist
590 F. 2d 19 - National Labor Relations Board v. Kent County Association for Retarded Citizens J
590 F2d 19 National Labor Relations Board v. Kent County Association for Retarded Citizens J
590 F.2d 19
100 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2305, 85 Lab.Cas. P 10,996
The KENT COUNTY ASSOCIATION FOR RETARDED CITIZENS d/b/a J.
Arthur Trudeau Center, Respondent.
This case is before us on the application of the National Labor Relations Board, pursuant to § 10(e) of the National Labor Relations Act (the "Act"), 29 U.S.C. § 160(e), for enforcement of its October 1977 order against the Kent County Association for Retarded Citizens d/b/a J. Arthur Trudeau Center (the "Center"), ordering the Center to cease and desist from refusing to bargain collectively with its certified union in violation of §§ 8(a)(5) and (a)(1) of the Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 158(a)(5), (a)(1), and to take affirmative action to remedy certain unfair labor practices. In response, the Center contests the Board's jurisdiction over its labor relations, as it did below, in both the representation and unfair labor practice proceedings before the Board.1
The Center is a nonprofit Rhode Island corporation, operating a facility for the rehabilitation and training of retarded children and adults. It claims, first, that unless it can be classified as a "health care institution", its status as a charitable, nonprofit organization removes it from the ambit of the term "employer", § 2(2) of the Act, 29 U.S.C. § 152(2), and thus insulates it from the Board's jurisdiction, under the Act, 20 U.S.C. §§ 159(c)(1), 160(a). Second, it argues that even if the Board can properly assert jurisdiction over the Center as an "employer", there is no substantial evidence in the record to show that the Center is engaged in commerce, as defined by sections 2(6) and 2(7) of the Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 152(6), (7). We find that neither assertion has merit and grant the Board's application for enforcement of its order.
The Board at one time relied on the language of this Conference Report as signalling congressional approval of its declination of jurisdiction not only over nonprofit hospitals but over most other nonprofit employers as well. See Office Employers International Union, Local No. 11, AFL-CIO v. NLRB, 353 U.S. 313, 318-19, 77 S.Ct. 799, 1 L.Ed.2d 846 (1957).
The Center relies on this passage from the Conference Report for the proposition that Congress intended to eliminate the Board's jurisdiction over nonprofit charitable institutions unless "exceptional" circumstances exist, although it declined to write that exemption into the statute. This argument is not unfamiliar to this circuit. In NLRB v. Wentworth Institute, 515 F.2d 550 (1st Cir. 1975), we determined whether a statutory exclusion for a private nonprofit educational institution should be implied from the legislative history leading to passage of the Taft-Hartley Amendments. Starting from the premise that "Congress intended to and did vest in the Board the fullest jurisdictional breadth constitutionally permissible under the commerce clause", NLRB v. Reliance Fuel Oil Corp., 371 U.S. 224, 226, 83 S.Ct. 312, 313, 9 L.Ed.2d 279 (1963), we concluded that there was no basis for reading exemptions into the section 2(2) definition of employer that simply were not there. Id. at 553-54. We found the legislative history insufficient to disturb that conclusion:
"The supposed Board practice prior to 1947 of taking jurisdiction 'only in exceptional cases and in connection with purely commercial activities' seems never to have existed. See generally Sherman & Black, The Labor Board & Private Nonprofit Employer: A Critical Examination of the Board's Worthy Cause Doctrine, 83 Harv.L.Rev. 1323, 1331-37 (1970) . . . This notion is said to have been picked up by the House conferees from the House committee's minority report and may have been a way of saving face after conceding to the Senate. . . .
We find the Center's attempts to distinguish Wentworth Institute, supra, unpersuasive. Although it is true that the Board, in asserting jurisdiction over nonprofit institutions of higher learning, Cornell University, 183 N.L.R.B. 329 (1970), found that the impact of such institutions on interstate commerce, as a class, had altered significantly, and that in exercising its jurisdiction over institutions such as the Center, it found that the nonprofit-profit distinction had lost its validity and discarded it completely in favor of a case by case determination of an institution's impact on commerce, we see no significance in the distinction. "Reviewing courts are of course not 'to stand aside and rubber stamp' Board determinations that run contrary to the language or tenor of the Act", NLRB v. Weingarten, Inc., 420 U.S. 251, 266, 95 S.Ct. 959, 968, 43 L.Ed.2d 171 (1975), but there is nothing in the Act, nor in the little if any gloss provided by the 1947 Conference Report, that prohibits the Board's jurisdiction here or mandates that its reason for shifting from a declination to an assertion of jurisdiction over a group of nonprofit, charitable institutions be a class-wide change in impact on commerce. The statute at no time compelled the Board to decline jurisdiction over institutions such as the Center, and the Board need not make such a stringent showing to assert jurisdiction now.
In St. Aloysius Home, as in Cornell University, the Board "reached a fair and reasoned balance upon a question within its special competence, its newly arrived at construction of (its exercise of jurisdiction) does not exceed the reach of (the Act), and the Board has adequately explicated the basis of its interpretation." NLRB v. Weingarten, Inc., supra, 420 U.S. at 267, 95 S.Ct. at 968. Nor can the Board's change of policy be described as an abuse of its discretion: "with respect to our national labor policy, some degree of change is essential to keep that policy responsive to the problems of complex industrial life." NLRB v. Children's Baptist Home of Southern California, 576 F.2d 256, 260 (9th Cir. 1978); See NLRB v. Weingarten, Inc., supra, 420 U.S. at 265-66, 95 S.Ct. 959; NLRB v. Wentworth Institute, supra, 515 F.2d at 555.
Our reading of recent Board decisions corroborates the Board's assertion that, at present, it utilizes a variety of alternative jurisdictional tests, sometimes asserting jurisdiction on the basis of gross revenue amounts alone. See, e. g., Abilities and Goodwill, Inc., 226 N.L.R.B. 1224 (1976); St. Aloysius Home, 224 N.L.R.B. 1344 (1976); Beverly Farm Foundation, Inc., 218 N.L.R.B. 1275 (1975). And although a case conceivably could arise in which an institution, having the requisite amount of gross revenue to satisfy the jurisdictional yardstick, nonetheless was a wholly local operation, leaving the Board without jurisdiction, See International Longshoremen, Local 113, 124 N.L.R.B. 813 (1959), we are not faced with such a situation here. Although the Board based its exercise of jurisdiction in the representational proceeding on the basis of the gross revenue amount alone, the record amply illustrates that the Center has more than a De minimis impact on the flow of interstate commerce. The Board need show no more. See NLRB v. International Rice Milling Co., Inc., 341 U.S. 665, 684-85, 71 S.Ct. 961, 95 L.Ed. 1277 (1951); NLRB v. Fainblatt, 306 U.S. 601, 607, 59 S.Ct. 668, 83 L.Ed. 1014 (1939).