Case Name: AUBURNDALE FREEZER CORP., and Minute Maid Company, Petitioners, v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Respondent
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
Jurisdiction: United States
Decision Date: 1970-12-03
Citations: 434 F.2d 1219
Docket Number: No. 28522
Parties: AUBURNDALE FREEZER CORP., and Minute Maid Company, Petitioners, v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Respondent.
Judges: Before JONES, WISDOM, and COLEMAN, Circuit Judges.
Reporter: Federal Reporter 2d Series
Volume: 434
Pages: 1219–1227

Head Matter:
AUBURNDALE FREEZER CORP., and Minute Maid Company, Petitioners, v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Respondent.
No. 28522.
United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.
Dec. 3, 1970.
Granville M. Alley, Jr., Tampa, Fla., William R. Radford, Miami, Fla., for petitioners.
Bernard Kleiman, Gen. Counsel, Pittsburgh, Pa., Bredhoff, Gottesman & Cohen, Washington D. C., Cooper, Mitch & Crawford, George C. Longshore, Birmingham, Ala., for intervenor United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO.
Marcel Mallet-Prevost, Asst. Gen. Counsel, Abigail C. Baskin, Atty., N. L. R. B., Washington, D. C., Harold A. Boire, Director, Region 12, N. L. R. B., Tampa, Fla., for respondent.
Jesse S. Hogg, Miami, Fla., for American Warehousemen’s Assn, amicus curiae.
Benjamin Werne, New York City, for Nat’l. Assn, of Refrigerated Warehouse-es, Inc., amicus curiae.
Before JONES, WISDOM, and COLEMAN, Circuit Judges.

Opinion:
COLEMAN, Circuit Judge:
The issue for decision is whether a labor union by picketing the premises of neutral employers committed a secondary boycott in violation of § 8(b) (4) (i) and (ii) (B) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended.
The Hearing Examiner found in the affirmative and recommended the issuance of a cease and desist order. The National Labor Relations Board, by a vote of 3 to 2, held to the contrary, dismissing the consolidated complaints.
We grant the petition for review, vacate the Order of the Board, and remand for the entry of the recommended cease and desist order.
The neutral employers were Auburn-dale Freezer Corporation and Minute Maid, another corporation.
Auburndale is the sole owner of a public cold storage warehouse at Auburn-dale, Florida. It has only three employees, a general manager, an office secretary, and a maintenance man.
By contract with Minute Maid, the work of unloading deliveries to the warehouse, furnishing bills of lading, placing contents in storage, and servicing outgoing shipments on freight cars and trucks (common carriers) is performed by thirty employees of Minute Maid. Those employees work under the direction of Minute Maid's superintendent, who takes his instructions from Auburndale's general manager.
Auburndale's freezer plant can store approximately three million cases of citrus concentrate at any one time. Auburndale has about twenty cold storage customers, such as Minute Maid, from its nearby citrus processing plant, General Foods, Florida Home Juice, Cypress, and others.
About five or six miles from Auburn-dale, at Eloise, Florida, Cypress Gardens Citrus Products, the primary employer in this dispute, operates a citrus processing plant, including some warehouse facilities. No employee of Cypress has ever worked at the Auburndale warehouse. Cypress had a contract with Auburndale which obligated the latter to furnish the former storage space for up to 300,000 cases of citrus concentrate (approximately 10% of the Auburndale storage space) at a specified price. If Cypress wished to store any of its processed products at Auburndale its trucks, loaded with its product, driven by its employees, went to the warehouse facility. The Minute Maid employees unloaded the Cypress truck by forklift and placed the product in storage. A receipt was given the Cypress driver, who then left the warehouse. Cypress is not allotted any particular portion of or space in the warehouse. Its goods, however, are placed in identifiable rows or stacks, as is the case with other customers of the warehouse. When Cypress sold the goods (not at retail) it issued Auburn-dale instructions to ship the product. The Minute Maid employees then load the goods, as per instructions, on either railroad cars or trucks.
The busiest period at Auburndale is from March until July, peaking in June, the height of the citrus season.
On October 15, 1967, after a breakdown in bargaining negotiations, Local 6991, United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO, struck Cypress. The Union had no dispute with either Auburndale or Minute Maid or any other employer which stored its products at the warehouse. Two days later, about fifteen striking Cypress employees began picketing the entrance at Auburndale, ordinarily used by Cypress drivers and the warehouse employees. Occasionally, the railroad siding where it enters the Au burndale plant was also picketed. The pickets carried signs which read as follows:
"Employees of Cypress Gardens Citrus Products are ON STRIKE. We have no dispute with any oher employer. United Steel Workers of America, Local 6991, AFL-CIO."
After two weeks the pickets had diminished to two in number. The picketing was maintained at all times when the Minute Maid employees were working at the warehouse.
October was a very slack time in citrus operations. Cypress sent no trucks to Auburndale while it was being picketed. Neither did Auburndale ship any of the Cypress products via common carrier. Auburndale had nothing to do with product sales.
Auburndale and Minute Maid separately charged the Union with engaging in an unfair labor practice. The General Counsel consolidated the eases and issued a complaint that the Union had engaged in picketing, etc., with the object of forcing and requiring Auburndale, Minute Maid, and others to cease using, selling, handling, transporting, or otherwise dealing in the products of and to cease doing business with Cypress, contrary to the statute.
Pursuant to a hearing held in due course, the Trial Examiner concluded that the picketing
"Induced and encouraged individuals employed by Auburndale and other secondary employers (emphasis ours) to cease performing services for their respective employers, and (2) coerced and restrained Auburndale, an object thereof being to force or require Auburndale to cease doing business with Cypress in violation of § 8 (b) (4) (i) and (ii) (B) of the Act."
A majority of the Board [3-2] disagreed with the Trial Examiner. It held that Cypress' activities at Auburndale constituted an integral part of the Cypress production process (emphasis ours) and that the warehouse, "to the extent that [it] is a part of the Cypress operation" constituted a common situs. The majority further concluded that "the picketing conformed in all respects with Moore Dry Dock requirements for legitimate common situs picketing".
The Board based its decision on "sufficient presence" of the primary employer at the secondary site, that there was a direct and immediate relationship between the picketing and the object of the picketing sufficient to support a finding of purely primary picketing. It held that the concentrate while stored at the warehouse was, for all practical purposes, under the control of Cypress, that common carriers there received Cypress goods for delivery to Cypress customers.
The dissenting Board Members pointed out that Auburndale was furnishing warehouse services on its own separate premises to various citrus processors, that Cypress employees performed no function at Auburndale other than the delivery of products by truck, that Cypress sent no trucks to Auburndale while picketing was in progress, that Cypress' presence at Auburndale was nothing more than the presence of the "primary employer's product on the separate premises of a neutral employer independently engaged in the business of providing cold storage services to its customers, and that Cypress provided only a minor portion of the Auburndale business". '
The dissenting Members further stated that the Board had never hitherto held that the mere presence of a primary employer's goods on the premises of a neutral employer, pursuant to an established business relationship, is sufficient in and of itself to convert the picketing of such neutral premises from unlawful secondary to lawful primary picketing.
These Board Members concluded that "the only possible thrust of Respondent's picketing appeal must have been directed to the neutral Auburndale, to the neutral employees engaged in warehousing tasks, or to neutral employees of Auburndale's other customers (emphasis ours). This is the classic example of the secondary boycott proscribed by the statute".
This case is of supreme public importance. The inescapable effect of the Board decision would be to inject a public warehouse operator and other employers who use his facilities into the labor disputes of all customers. A public warehouse could be subject to picketing at any time a labor organization engages in a dispute with any employer who happens to be a customer of the warehouse. The impact on the general welfare could be especially critical in those instances where, as here, perishable food products intended for human consumption are substantially involved.
On the undisputed facts in this record we are of the opinion that this case may not properly be decided on strained or ephemeral extensions or constructions of situs, applied out of context. The subsidiary question of situs may not obliterate the major question: On the undisputed facts, did the picketing at Auburn-dale violate the statute ?
The statute, 29 U.S.C.A. § 158(b) (4) (i) and (ii) (B) unmistakably makes it an unfair labor practice for a union to coerce or restrain any person with the object of forcing or requiring him to cease handling the products of any other producer or processor except by primary strikes or primary picketing [Fn. 1].
There was no strike against Auburn-dale or Minute Maid or against the nineteen other employers who stored their products at that warehouse.
The processing plant of Cypress, five miles from Auburndale, was, of course, struck and picketed. That is where-the employees of Cypress processed the citrus. That was the real situs of both the dispute and the strike. That was the place for primary picketing. No Cypress employees were at work at Auburndale, and never had been.
The statute prescribes the reviewing role of this Court. We are first to determine if the Board findings are supported by substantial evidence, viewing the record as a whole. Then we are to determine whether the Board correctly applied the law, 29 U.S.C.A. § 160(e), (f). The basic evidentiary facts in this case are not in dispute.
On the undisputed facts it is "quite clear what the truth" of this ease is, see N. L. R. B. v. Smith Industries, Inc., 5 Cir., 1968, 403 F.2d 889, 893. There is no rational basis in this record upon which reasonable men might differ as to the facts.
We hold that the real, indeed the only substantial, object for the picketing at Auburndale, by means of a picket line away from the true situs of the controversy, was to shut down operations at a frozen food storage warehouse in which the stored products of the primary employer then constituted only 5% of the total capacity of the facility and could never have exceeded ten per cent. Inescapably, the purpose was to halt the operations of other employers who were entitled to use not less than 90% of the space and who were total strangers to the whole controversy.
It necessarily follows that the finding of the majority of the Board that the picketing was entitled to primary classification is not supported by substantial evidence from the record as a whole and was legally erroneous.
The picketing was prohibited by the plain terms of the statute.
The Order of the Board dismissing the consolidated complaints is vacated and the case is remanded with directions to enter the cease and desist order recommended by the Trial Examiner.
Vacated and remanded, with directions.
. 29 U.S.C.A. § 158(b) (4) (i) and (ii) (B).
Section 8(b) (4) of the amended Act makes it an unfair labor practice for a union
(i) to engage in, or to induce or encourage any individual to engage in, a strike or a refusal in the course of his employment to use, manufacture, process, transport, or otherwise handle or work on any goods, articles, materials, or commodities or to perform any service; or
(ii) to threaten, coerce, or restrain any person where in either case an object thereof is:
(B) forcing or requiring any person to cease using, selling, handling, transporting, or otherwise dealing in the products of any other producer, processor, or manufacturer, or to cease doing business with any other person ; Provided, That nothing contained in this clause (B) shall be construed to make unlawful, where not otherwise unlawful, any primary strike or primary picketing.
. 177 NLRB No. 108, June 30, 1969.