Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/365/651
Timestamp: 2019-10-18 14:00:02
Document Index: 397444805

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 158', '§ 10', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 158', '§ 8', '§ 8']

LOCAL 60, UNITED BROTHERHOOD OF CARPENTERS AND JOINERS OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO, et al., Petitioners, v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD. | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
365 U.S. 651 (81 S.Ct. 875, 6 L.Ed.2d 1)
Argued: Feb. 28 and March 1, 1961.
The Board found that petitioners had violated § 8(b)(1)(A) and § 8(b)(2) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended by the Taft-Hartley Act, 61 Stat. 136, 141, as amended, 29 U.S.C. 158, 29 U.S.C.A. § 158, in maintaining and enforcing an agreement which established closed-shop preferential hiring conditions and in causing the Company to refuse to hire the two applicants. 122 N.L.R.B. 396.
'(A)s we find that dues, nonmembership dues, assessments, and work permit fees, 1 were collected under the illegal contract as the price employees paid in order to obtain or retain their jobs, we do not believe it would effectuate the policies of the Act to permit the retention of the payments which have been unlawfully exacted from the employees.' It added that the remedial provisions 'are appropriate and necessary to expunge the coercive effect' of petitioners' unfair labor practices.
In neither of those cases nor in the present case was there any evidence that the union membership, fees, or dues were coerced. The Board as well as the Court of Appeals held that fact to be immaterial. Both said that the case was governed by Virginia Electric & Power Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 319 U.S. 533, 63 S.Ct. 1214, 87 L.Ed. 1568; and the Court of Appeals added that coercion was to be inferred as 'there was present an implicit threat of loss of job if those fees were not paid.' 273 F.2d at page 703. The Board argues, in support of that position, that reimbursement of dues where hiring arrangements have been abused is protective of rights vindicated by the Act and authorized by § 10(c). 2
The Board has broad discretion to adapt its remedies to the needs of particular situations so that 'the victims of discrimination' may be treated fairly. See Phelps Dodge Corp. v. National Labor Relations Board, 313 U.S. 177, 194, 61 S.Ct. 845, 852, 86 L.Ed. 1271. But the power of the Board 'to command affirmative action is remedial, not punitive, and is to be exercised in aid of the Board's authority to restrain violations and as a means of removing or avoiding the consequences of violation where those consequences are of a kind to thwart the purposes of the Act.' Consolidated Edison Co. of New York v. National Labor Relations Board, 305 U.S. 197, 236, 59 S.Ct. 206, 220, 83 L.Ed. 126. Where no membership in the union was shown to be influenced or compelled by reason of any unfair practice, no 'consequences of violation' are removed by the order compelling the union to return all dues and fees collected from the members; and no 'dissipation' of the effects of the prohibited action is achieved. National Labor Relations Board v. District 50, United Mine Workers, supra, 355 U.S. 463, 78 S.Ct. 392. The order in those circumstances becomes punitive and beyond the power of the Board. 3 Cf. Republic Steel Corp. v. National Labor Relations Board, 311 U.S. 7, 10, 61 S.Ct. 77, 78, 85 L.Ed. 6. As judge Pope said in Morrison-Knudsen Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 9 Cir., 276 F.2d 63, 76, 'reimbursing a lot of old-time union men' by refunding their dues is not a remedial measure in the competence of the Board of impose, unless there is support in the evidence that their membership was induced, obtained, or retained in violation of the Act. It would be difficult, even with hostile eyes, to read the history of trade unionism except in terms of voluntary associations formed to meet pressing needs in a complex society. 4
The Board now emphasizes that its Brown-Olds remedy has a substantial tendency to deter employer-union encouragement of union membership in violation of §§ 8(a)(3) and 8(b)(2). But it also correctly recognizes that in light of the Republic Steel case, supra, it must show more than that the remedy will tend to deter unfair labor practices. The Board must establish that the remedy is a reasonable attempt to put aright matters the unfair labor practice set awry. As I understand its contentions, the Board attempts to make this showing by arguing that wherever there has been a not insignificant unlawful encouragement to union membership all members should be taken to have been under the influence of coercion, whether or not they were aware of this influence or would have acted differntly without it. The employees are said to have been coerced in much the same sense that a man contentedly sitting in the living room of his house may be said to be imprisoned by the barring of the doors whether or not he wants to leave. 1 Accordingly, the Board has considered unnecessary an actual showing of employee unwillingness to belong to the union.
I think the Board should be denied the use of its Brown-Olds remedy in situations where, as here, it is not unlikely that a substantial number of employees were willing to pay dues for union membership because, as I see it, the amount of dues or other exactions paid is not a tenable way of estimating the value a willing union member would place on his right to choose freely whether or not he would be or remain a union member—as it were, on his right to change his mind. The amount of dues paid does perhaps provide a means of estimating the value of benefits received from the union. Or the amount of dues paid does perhaps measure the cost coercion imposes upon an employee who, if free to choose, would be unwilling to join the union (although even in this case a proper adjustment might have to take some account of the union benefits the employee would not have received had he been merely a nonunion employee in a unionized bargaining unit). But I can find no rational relationship at all between the amount of dues paid and the value an employee who is willing to join a union would place on his freedom to change his mind. 2 In the absence of a showing of such a relationship, the Board's Brown-Olds order can no more be sustained than could its orders in the Phelps Dodge or Republic Steel cases.
The contract involved here not only required persons seeking employment in the unit to be members of the union, but also required each of them to obtain from the 'Council' and present to the 'union steward' on the job a 'work permit' before going to work. That this closed-shop hiring arrangement 'coerce(d) employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 7,' and 'cuase(d) (the) employer to discriminate against * * * employee(s) in violation of subsection (a)(3)' of the Act, contrary to the explicit provisions of §§ 8(b) (1)(A) and 8(b)(2) of the Act, 29 U.S.C. 158, 29 U.S.C.A. § 158 is not here denied.
To hold that the Board is without power to do more than order the unions not to violate the Act in the future would be to deny any remedy whatever for violations. It is certain that Congress did not intend by the Act 'to hold out to (employees) an illusory right for which it was denying them a remedy.' Graham v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, 338 U.S. 232, 240, 70 S.Ct. 14, 18, 94 L.Ed. 22. In directing the Board to order 'such affirmative action * * * as will effectuate the policies of this Act,' Congress seems clearly to have directed the Board to fashion and enforce a remedy 'which it * * * deem(s) adequate to that end.' Republic Steel Corp. v. National Labor Relations Board, 311 U.S. 7, 12, 61 S.Ct. 77, 79, 85 L.Ed. 6. In 'fashioning remedies to undo the effects of violations of the Act, the Board must draw on enlightenment gained from experience.' National Labor Relations Board v. Seven-Up Bottling Co., 344 U.S. 344, 346, 73 S.Ct. 287, 289, 97 L.Ed. 377. And see Radio Officers' Union of Commercial Telegraphers Union, A.F.L. v. National Labor Relations Board, 347 U.S. 17, 49, 74 S.Ct. 323, 340, 98 L.Ed. 455. Based on its long experience up to 1956, that, despite the ban which the Taft-Hartley Amendments had imposed nine years earlier, closed-shop practices were still being followed in some industries, 1 the Board concluded that a remedy more effective than a cease-and-desist order was required. And, following the teaching of this Court's opinion in Virginia Electric & Power Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 319 U.S. 533, 63 S.Ct. 1214, 87 L.Ed. 1568, the Board decided that an appropriate additional remedy would be to require that the monies paid to the union under the illegal arrangement be refunded to the employees, and it accordingly so held in 1956 in United Association of Journeymen, etc., and Brown-Olds Plumbing & Heating Corp., 115 N.L.R.B. 594. 2
It is argued that the Virginia case is distinguishable on the ground that it dealt with an employer-dominated union. But the question is one of power. The fact that the unfair labor practice there was by the employer rather than by the union, as here, is not a distinguishing difference. Nor does the fact that employees' rights were there infringed by a violation of § 8(a)(1), (2) and (3) of the Act, whereas they are here infringed by a violation of §§ 8(b)(1)(A) and 8(b)(2) of the Act, make any difference. In each instance the violation constituted an unfair labor practice, and the question is whether, in fashioning a remedy to effectuate the policies of the Act, the Board has power, in its informed discretion, to order reimbursement of the dues paid under the illegal arrangement. It would seem that if the Board had power so to order in the Virginia case, as this Court held, it similarly has power so to order in this case. Nothing in the Virginia case appears to limit the Board's power of restitution to cases involving employer-dominated unions or to any other particular type of violation, but the power seems clearly enough to be invocable in any appropriate case, in the informed discretion of the Board, and such has been the understanding of the courts. 3
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. NEWS SYNDICATE COMPANY, Inc., et al.