Source: https://casetext.com/case/nlrb-v-teamsters-allied-wkrs
Timestamp: 2018-10-20 08:44:42
Document Index: 663724876

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 160', '§ 8', '§ 158', '§ 158', '§ 158', '§ 158', '§ 158', '§ 158', '§ 158']

N.L.R.B. v. Teamsters Allied Wkrs, 313 F.2d 655 | Casetext
N.L.R.B. v. Teamsters Allied Wkrs
313 F.2d 655 (9th Cir. 1963)
Teamsters Allied Wkrs
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth CircuitJan 29, 1963
…Indeed, it has been held that threats made to a small number of a group of employees can support an order…
Sheraton-Kauai Corporation v. N.L.R.B
…Compare Super Markets General Corp., 170 N.L.R.B. No. 61 (1968), and Sunset House, 167 N.L.R.B. No. 132…
The National Labor Relations Board, hereinafter called the Labor Board or the Board, has petitioned this Court for enforcement of the order which the Board, on December 27, 1961, made against the respondents. The Board's order is reported at 134 N.L.R.B., No. 157. Section 10(e) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, 29 U.S.C. § 160(e), confers jurisdiction upon this Court to enforce the Board's orders in proper cases. The Board's finding that the employment relations involved in the case were sufficiently concerned with commerce to enable the Board to take jurisdiction of the case is not contested by the respondent.
There has been much consideration in the report of the Board's Trial Examiner, the Board's decisions, and the briefs and arguments of the parties in this case, of the language and meaning of the Meyer letter. The Board concluded that the agreement embodied in the letter constituted a closed shop contract between Fox Film and Rutledge's Hawaii Local 996. Such a contract is, under § 8(b)(2) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 158(b)(2), an unfair labor practice. We will discuss the Meyer letter later in this opinion. For present purposes, the letter clearly committed Rutledge to making available to Fox Film drivers "in such numbers as may, in our [Fox Film's] best judgment be necessary to properly service our construction requirements." This was, of course, a weighty obligation on the shoulders of Rutledge and his local, in view of the remoteness of the location where the work was to be done.
Section 8(b)(2) of the N.L.R.A., 29 U.S.C. § 158(b)(2), provides:
When Rutledge got back to Hawaii, having available jobs for members of his Teamsters' Local, he decided to put in order a matter which had been annoying him. One E.F. Nilson, a contractor operating on Kauai, had a considerable number of drivers in his employ. They, with other Nilson employees, had in May, 1957, joined the Operating Engineers union, which was also affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Nilson had been requested to recognize the Operating Engineers union and bargain with it, but had rejected the request, and about June 17 most of his employees had struck in protest against the refusal to recognize their union.
In the meantime, after the July 7 meeting of Rutledge and Kuhia with the Nilson strikers, several strikers who had signed cards applying to join the Teamsters obtained jobs with Fox Film. Fox Film's Location Captain Palamountain, who had been advised by Rutledge that when the project needed drivers Palamountain should request them from Kuhia, used Kuhia as "a hiring hall, sort of." Kuhia, himself a Fox Film driver as well as being vice president of Local 996, would prepare time cards, obtain social security numbers and tax forms for the persons whom he selected for employment and assign the employees to the vehicles or equipment which they were to operate. The number and kind of available jobs depended on the stage of progress of the film project.
The Board's finding that the discharges were discriminatory and were violations of Section 8(b)(1)(A) and 8(b)(2) of the National Labor Relations Act is well supported by the evidence set out above. Since the Fox Film project in Hawaii was a temporary one, the Board did not order reinstatement of the discharged employees. It did, however, order the payment by the respondent union of back pay to the discharged employees for the period during which they were deprived of employment as a result of the unfair labor practices, but it deferred determination of the amount of back pay to the "compliance stage" of its proceeding. These actions of the Board are approved.
The Board ordered the union respondent, Teamsters Local 996, to reimburse each of the drivers and special equipment operators who worked on Fox Film's South Pacific project "for all money unlawfully exacted from them for initiation fees, dues, and weekly assessments." The Board's order incorporated by reference the Trial Examiner's report as to this phase of the case. From that report we learn that the Board regarded as "unlawfully exacted" all initiation fees, dues and weekly assessments which were paid to Teamsters Local 996 by any person employed on the project who was not, before obtaining that employment, a member of the Teamsters union. The persons found to have been members before their employment on the project were the drivers who came from Honolulu to Kauai and three named residents of Kauai. As to those persons, already members of the union, they were ordered reimbursed only for the payments which they made in excess of the regular union dues, i.e., the assessments of 10% of their wages. We will discuss the evidence relating to the collection of these sums by Local 996.
It will be remembered that Rutledge and Kuhia, in the series of meetings with the Nilson strikers on July 5, 6 and 7, told them that they could not get employment on the Fox Film project unless they joined Teamsters Local 996, and that the initiation fee would be $50, the monthly dues $5 and that there would be an additional assessment of 10% of their wages. All these exactions as conditions of obtaining employment are forbidden by the National Labor Relations Act. Even if a union has already been chosen by the majority of employees in a unit, and has made a union shop contract, which is the most stringent form of union security contract which the law permits, with the employer, initial hiring of employees may not be conditioned upon union membership. All that can be required is that new employees, after thirty days of employment, must begin to pay, and continue thereafter to pay, the regular union charges, 29 U.S.C. § 158(b) (2) and (b)(1)(A).
29 U.S.C. § 158(b)(2) appears in footnote 1, supra.
29 U.S.C. § 158(b)(1)(A) provides:
The Board, as we have seen, has ordered the union respondent to reimburse all these employees for these charges, distinguishing, however, between those who were already Teamster members and those who were not, as to the types of charges which should be reimbursed. The union vehemently protests this feature of the Board's order. It urges that the Board's order is based on the assumption that no one joins a union and pays the union's initiation fee and dues and assessments unless he is coerced to do so. It says that reimbursement is not justified unless it is reimbursement to an individual person who is proved to have been, individually, unlawfully coerced into making the payments in order to get or keep his job. It urges that the Supreme Court of the United States, in Local 60, United Brotherhood of Carpenters v. N.L.R.B., 365 U.S. 651, 81 S.Ct. 875, 6 L.Ed.2d 1 (1961), in effect so holds. We do not so read the Local 60 case. In that case, Local 60 made an illegal closed shop contract with an employer. But the employees were already members of the Carpenters' union, and to them it made no difference whether they worked under a closed shop, which the law forbade, or a union shop, which would have been lawful. The illegal effect of the closed shop was only upon non-employees, who could not get jobs unless they first joined the union. The union members were, presumably, as willing to pay their dues as they had been before the closed shop agreement was made. The effect of requiring reimbursement of such dues would not have been to put money back in the pockets of workmen from whose pocket it had been abstracted against their will, but to punish the union for violating the law. Since the procedure provided in the National Labor Relations Act is an administrative, quasi-judicial procedure employing orders to cease and desist, and to restore the status quo ante, rather than a criminal procedure employing fines or imprisonment as sanctions, the Board may not order reimbursement which is only punitive. Republic Steel Corporation v. N.L.R.B., 311 U.S. 7, 61 S.Ct. 77, 85 L.Ed. 6 (1940).
Local 60 seems to us to decide nothing about the necessity for a finding of particularized individual coercion brought to bear upon each separate employee. It would be a unique doctrine of law that would prevent the Board, if it is convinced by the evidence that, in the circumstances, an illegal threat of discharge made to one or several of a relatively small body of workmen had the effect of coercing others or all of the workmen in the group, from making a finding to that effect and basing an order on that finding. In the Board's appraisal of the problem, the circumstances would be of great importance.
The respondents urge that Fox Film's contract with Studio Transportation Drivers, Local 399 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which is a Hollywood local of the same International union with which Local 996 was affiliated, was applicable to Fox Film's employment of drivers on Kauai. The respondents urge that since the Studio contract provided for a union shop, what they did on Kauai was lawful. On the respondent's own assumption, their conduct would not have been lawful. A union shop contract would only have justified Fox Film in requiring that drivers hired by it become union members within the first 30 days of their employment or be discharged at the end of the 30 days, and would have justified the respondents in insisting that Fox Film enforce those conditions. But it would not have legalized Rutledge's and Kuhia's representations to men who had not yet been employed by Fox Film that they could not be employed unless they joined the union. Nor would it have legalized Kuhia's discharge of the complainants within the first thirty days of their employment, because of pique at their not having voted for his union. Nor would it have legalized the collection of larger than usual initiation fees or the irregular assessment of 10% upon the earnings of the drivers. The application of the Studio contract to the Kauai project would, then, have made little if any difference in the outcome of the case.
See Section 8(a)(3), 29 U.S.C. § 158(a)(3), in footnote 1, supra.
As to the respondent's contention that by oral agreement between Rutledge and Fox Film, or by some prior oral agreement made expressly or by implication from conduct of the parties, the Studio contract was made applicable to the South Pacific project, we suppose it is not competent for parties to an existing labor agreement to expand or contract at their will the scope of the unit which shall be covered by the agreement. When the question of the scope of the unit is formally contested, the decision is made by the Board. In the absence of any formal contest and determination by the Board, it would seem not to be permissible for an employer which is setting up a new plant or project a thousand miles away from its existing plant to agree with a union that its employees in the new plant must become members of the union. The employees should have a voice in deciding that question which is of primary interest to them.
Meyer's letter of July 2 summarizing the July 1 agreement read, in pertinent part, as follows:
"* * * you have assured us that without limitation or hindrance of whatever nature, you will make available and furnish us Teamster Members of the AFL-CIO in such numbers as may, in our best judgment, be necessary to properly service all our Construction requirements * * * The men so furnished by you during their employment by us will be and remain Members in good standing of the AFL-CIO."
The meaning of the letter is by no means unambiguous. But the last sentence in the quoted portion of the letter does say that union membership should be a condition precedent to employment. The Teamsters union says that in the actual application of the agreement on the job, Teamster membership was not regarded as necessary for employment. It points out that as late as July 17, Fox Film was trying to obtain drivers through one Aki, a representative of the Honolulu Building and Construction Trades Council. A local of the Operating Engineers union was affiliated with that council, and that union accepted motor vehicle drivers as members, as we have seen in the discussion of the Nilson election. But whether or not Fox Film's efforts in this direction indicated their interpretation of Meyer's letter as not being an exclusive hiring agreement with Teamsters seems unimportant. There is no evidence that the Teamsters' officers and representatives, Rutledge and Kuhia, acquiesced in such an interpretation. And early in the project, Fox Film made Kuhia a supervisory employee with power to hire and discharge employees, and acquiesced in his discharge of the former Nilson employees a few days after they were hired because, as he said, they were not in good standing with the Teamsters union.
Teamsters points out that, of the 89 drivers who worked on the project at one time and another, 56 never were union members. In the circumstances, however, this apparently impressive figure does not prove that there was open hiring on the job, as the law requires. It proves only that Kuhia was not able to keep the job manned, as Rutledge had agreed with Fox Film that it would be manned, if he made Teamster membership an inflexible condition of employment. It would have been intolerable that a temporary project such as the filming of South Pacific on a remote island should be obstructed or seriously delayed because otherwise available drivers could not pay union initiation fees before they began to earn wages. The job having no future and most of the men having no interest in the future of the union, they worked but did not join the union, and 26 of the drivers never paid anything to the union.
Enforcement granted, with a modification.
"(2) to cause or attempt to cause an employer to discriminate against an employee in violation of subsection (a)(3) or to discriminate against an employee with respect to whom membership in such organization has been denied or terminated on some ground other than his failure to tender the periodic dues and the initiation fees uniformly required as a condition of acquiring or retaining membership."
Subsection 8(a)(3), 29 U.S.C. § 158 (a)(3) provides:
"(3) by discrimination in regard to hire on tenure of employment or any term or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization: Provided, That nothing in this Act, or in any other statute of the United States, shall preclude an employer from making an agreement with a labor organization (not established, maintained, or assisted by any action defined in section 8(a) of this Act as an unfair labor practice) to require as a condition of employment membership therein on or after the thirtieth day following the beginning of such employment or the effective date of such agreement, whichever is the later, (i) if such labor organization is the representative of the employees as provided in section 9(a), in the appropriate collective-bargaining unit covered by such agreement when made, and (ii) unless following an election held as provided in section 9(e) within one year preceding the effective date of such agreement, the Board shall have certified that at least a majority of the employees eligible to vote in such election have voted to rescind the authority of such labor organization to make such an agreement: Provided further, That no employer shall justify any discrimination against an employee for nonmembership in a labor organization (A) if he has reasonable grounds for believing that such membership was not available to the employee on the same terms and conditions generally applicable to other members, or (B) if he has reasonable grounds for believing that membership was denied or terminated for reasons other than the failure of the employee to tender the periodic dues and the initiation fees uniformly required as a condition of acquiring or retaining membership."