Opinion ID: 1548941
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Discriminatory Discharges.

Text: We shall next consider the question whether the Board could, under the evidence, order the reinstatement of the claimant Sheppard with back wages. The petitioners contend that Sheppard was an executive, and not an employee within the meaning of the Act; that a proper evidentiary basis for the order is lacking; and that his reinstatement is unauthorized. We think that Sheppard was an employee within the meaning of the Act. The Trial Examiner was of the opinion that the evidence was insufficient to justify a finding that Sheppard was discriminatorily discharged. The Board found otherwise. The Board's determination must be accepted if sustained by substantial evidence. Sheppard was a graduate chemist who began his work in the Research Department of the Lead Company in 1926; thereafter he became Assistant Director of Research; later acting Director of Research; and again Assistant Director of Research. He was acting Director of Research in the summer and fall of 1935 because the Director, Dr. Shaeffer, had resigned in August to accept another position. Sheppard's salary was originally $350 a month and reached a high of $591.66 in 1929 and 1930. Due to the depression, it had been reduced to $450 a month in 1935. The business of the Research Department was to investigate and develop new and improved methods for making and using lead and zinc and their products and by-products. The duty of the Director of Research was to supervise and assist the chemists working under him. These chemists had been employed by Sheppard. Sheppard, after Shaeffer resigned, took orders from Mr. J. R. MacGregor, a vice-president of the Lead Company, whose office was in Cincinnati, Ohio. Neither Sheppard nor the chemists under him participated in the back-to-work movement or in the organization of the Tri-State Union. On August 27, 1935, Sheppard was requested or directed by Mr. Vaughn, Manager of the Joplin plant of the Lead Company, to request the chemists in the Research Department to join the Tri-State Union. Sheppard posted a notice on the Bulletin Board in the Research Department that applications could be procured from him; and reported that he had done so. Sheppard and the chemists, as professional men, were opposed to joining, or being forced to join, a labor union of mine, mill and smelter workers, and Sheppard, on August 28, 1935, wrote to Mr. MacGregor, at Cincinnati, a three-page letter, asking him, in effect, whether membership in the Tri-State Union was a condition of employment in the Research Department. On the same day, in another letter, he sent to MacGregor a petition of all but one of the chemists, asking that they be not required to join the Tri-State Union. Sheppard also wired MacGregor asking him to advise Sheppard whether such membership was compulsory in the Research Department. On August 29, 1935, MacGregor telephoned Sheppard that membership in the Union was not compulsory and to hold matters in abeyance until MacGregor came to Joplin on September 2, 1935. Sheppard had several conferences in Joplin with MacGregor, who criticised him for keeping records about this particular matter. On September 6, 1935, MacGregor notified the employees of the Research Department by letter that the management had no requirement that any employee belong to any organization. Shortly after this, Kelsey Norman, attorney for the Tri-State Union, requested permission of Sheppard to address the employees of the Research Department. Sheppard wrote MacGregor and asked him whether it was agreeable to the management of the Lead Company to grant Norman's request, stating that ordinarily he (Sheppard) would not entertain such a request. MacGregor telephoned Sheppard, directing him to grant the request. At about this same time, G. W. Potter, vice-president of the Mining Company, called Sheppard to his office, and advised him, in effect, that the Lead Company wished him and the employees under him to join the Tri-State Union, and that it was Sheppard's duty to bring this about without making it a matter of record. Sheppard questioned Potter's authority to give him instructions, since the Research Department was not a department of the Mining Company, but he stated to Potter that he would check up on Potter's authority. Sheppard then telephoned MacGregor and was told that Potter was in charge of all labor relations of petitioners in the District and to follow his instructions. This was confirmed by a letter of September 23, 1935. On September 25, 1935, Sheppard wrote MacGregor that he had granted permission to Norman to speak and that he would carry out the instructions received from Potter, although they will include instructions which I feel are not in the interests of good working of a research department. Kelsey Norman made his address to the employees of the Research Department, urging them to join the Tri-State Union, and thereafter, as heretofore stated, Sheppard told them that he and they must join. Thereupon they all made out applications and became members of the Tri-State Union. Sheppard wrote Potter that he had carried out his instructions. In October, 1935, E. W. McMullen, a consulting chemical engineer, of Cincinnati, Ohio, was employed by the Lead Company to make a survey and investigation of the Research Department. McMullen was informed by the president of the Lead Company, its vice-president MacGregor, and its secretary-treasurer, that they desired to move the Research Department to Cincinnati and to improve its efficiency. McMullen then went to Joplin and spent two or three weeks investigating the operation of the Research Laboratory there. On November 13, 1935, he submitted to MacGregor a report in which he recommended the removal of the Research Department to Cincinnati. He criticised the efficiency of the Department and expressed the opinion that its constructive work could be doubled. At the hearing before the Examiner, McMullen testified that he found the relations between Sheppard and the employees under him to be bad, and that the employees were critical of Sheppard. McMullen testified that, after making his report, he was offered by the Lead Company the position of Research Director, and that he made it a condition of his acceptance that Sheppard, whom he considered inefficient, dictatorial and uncooperative, should be dismissed. The Board found that before McMullen went to Joplin the Lead Company had determined to employ him and to discharge Sheppard, and that in discharging Sheppard it discriminated in regard to his hire and tenure of employment, and thus interfered with the rights of its employee guaranteed in § 7 of the Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 157. A majority of the Court are of the view that the Board's finding as to the discriminatory discharge of Sheppard is supported by substantial evidence. Such evidence, they feel, is found in the inferences arising from the facts that the Lead Company had employed McMullen to investigate Sheppard's department within a period of two weeks after part of the difficulty regarding his joining the Tri-State Union had occurred; that the Company had expressed dissatisfaction with Sheppard's attitude regarding the forcing of the members of his department to join the Tri-State Union, and had indicated that his reluctance constituted an obstruction to the Tri-State Union's program in the plant; that the Company appeared to have been especially irritated by Sheppard's attempt to keep a correspondence record of all that occurred with respect to labor matters in his department; and that McMullen's testimony fairly showed that it was contemplated at the time he first went to Joplin, and before he ever had prepared or submitted any report on Sheppard's department, that he was to succeed Sheppard. McMullen testified: Q. Didn't you know    during the time that you were having these preliminary discussions with the gentlemen in Cincinnati, and after you come down here, that there was a very good possibility of you taking charge down here? A. There was a possibility, but it was not at all settled.    The surroundings of the position, the work that was required of the position, were all unknown to me. I had to find out what they were before I could accept it. These circumstances, together with the indisputable fact that the petitioners were guilty of a continuing course of unfair and discriminatory labor practices toward those employees who refused to conform to petitioners' Tri-State unionization plan and membership requirements satisfy the majority that the Board's finding with respect to Sheppard's discharge did not rest upon speculation or conjecture but upon substantial evidence. The writer of this opinion disagrees with the majority view as to the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the finding of the Board that Sheppard's discharge was discriminatory, because he regards the evidence as equally consistent with two conflicting hypotheses, which are (1) that Sheppard was discharged for conduct connected with union activities, and (2) that he was discharged for the reasons testified to by McMullen, who was an unimpeached and credible witness. The Board's finding that Timothy Rayon was discharged because of his activities on behalf of the International Union, of which he was a member is supported by substantial evidence.