Opinion ID: 360524
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: misrepresentations concerning wage rates

Text: 32 The Board decided the case before us on June 20, 1977, while Shopping Kart was decided on April 8, 1977. Presumably, therefore, the Shopping Kart rule is applicable to this case. See Natter Mfg. Corp. v. NLRB, supra, 580 F.2d at 950; Shalom Nursing Home, 1977, 230 NLRB No. 145. The Board did not expressly apply Shopping Kart in this case, however. It merely summarily denied review of the Regional Director's order, and in its grant of summary judgment in the unfair labor practice proceeding concluded that all issues raised by Oshman's were, or could have been, litigated in the representation proceeding. In its brief, the Board suggests that we need not pass on the Shopping Kart rule because the claimed misrepresentations in this case are not grounds for setting aside the election under the Board's former and more stringent standards established in Hollywood Ceramics Co., 1962, 140 NLRB 221, which Shopping Kart overrules. We agree with the Board. 33 On May 5, 1976, Oshman's sent a letter to its employees in which it stated that it intended to raise wages but was prohibited by law from doing so while an election was pending. In response, Teamster organizer Aloise sent a letter to Oshman's on May 6, copies of which were distributed to the employees. The letter stated, in part, You know full well that the law allows an employer to grant regularly scheduled wage increases any time the employer cares to. (Even during union organizing campaigns) . . . It is obvious that your company Never intended to establish regular wage increases, because under Federal Law you certainly had the right to grant raises right along. The author went on to assert that The United States Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics has determined that the prevailing area wage rate for warehouse personnel is the union wage rate in the area. It is as follows. Hourly wage rates for four types of warehouse labor were then specified. These rates were identified as wage rates . . . contained in our area agreements. 34 On May 11, two days before the election, Oshman's distributed a responsive notice in which it announced retroactive wage increases. It stated that its new rates were lower than those cited in the Teamster letter but also said: While every union, not just Local 860, would like to think that its rates are the U.S. government's 'official' wage rates for the area, it is obvious that the rates are not all the same and that they can't all be right. Oshman's believes that (its) wage rates are appropriate and competitive. . . . 35 Before the Board, Oshman's argued that the Teamsters' assertions that wages could be raised while an election was pending, and that the company never intended to raise wages, were misleading and improper. Before this court the company appears, quite wisely, to have abandoned this argument. Oshman's could, of course, have granted regularly scheduled wage increases during the pendency of the election, NLRB v. Gruber's Super Market, 7 Cir., 1974, 501 F.2d 697, 701. 36 Oshman's concentrates its fire on the Teamsters' statement that the hourly wage rates cited in Aloise's letter were rates which the government had determined to be prevailing in the area. These figures were not, in fact, government figures; the author of the Teamster letter lied when he said that they were. He did not lie, however, when he said that these were wages which Teamsters' members were earning in the area for comparable labor. 37 The Regional Director concluded that the Teamsters' false statement about the wage statistics was harmless. Oshman's employees were primarily interested in what wages the Teamsters could obtain for them; not in government statistics. Moreover, Oshman's had an opportunity to respond effectively and Did respond effectively, to the misrepresentation. In its May 11 notice, the last word that the employees heard about wages, the company stated clearly and convincingly that the Teamsters' figures were not official figures, although the Teamsters wished to represent them as such. The Regional Director properly concluded that the misrepresentation about area wage rates was immaterial. 38