Opinion ID: 6929865
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the corporate-wide scope of the order

Text: Beverly challenges the Board’s order insofar as it directs it to post the usual notice at all of its facilities nationwide and to cease and desist from unfair labor practices at all of those facilities. Beverly is a nationwide operation that owns and operates 985 nursing homes and has close to 100,000 employees. The Board found that Beverly committed over 130 violations of the Act at 33 homes. At the time of the violations, Beverly divided its operations into five divisions: Eastern, Central, Southern, Western, and Texas. At least one violation was found in each of its operating divisions, although the bulk of the violations occurred in Pennsylvania and Michigan, which were at the pertinent time part of the Eastern Division. Each division was overseen by a divisional headquarters, which typically was staffed by ten to twelve employees, including a “labor relations supervisor” and several “human resources professionals” who assisted individual facilities with employment matters and union campaigns. 1 Individual facilities typically were managed by an administrator, an assistant administrator, a director of nursing, an assistant director of nursing, and several other lower-level administrators. The facilities were staffed by registered nurses, licensed practical nurses, licensed vocational nurses, nursing assistants, dietary aides, and laundry aides. These latter employees are represented by unions at about 160 of Beverly’s facilities. The NLRB’s order commands Beverly to post notices on a nationwide basis and to refrain from unfair labor practices at any of its facilities. Beverly contends that the evidence in this case does not warrant a corporate-wide remedy. We agree. The Board has discretion in fashioning orders so long as they “effectuate the policies of [the Act].” 29 U.S.C. § 160(c); Fibreboard Paper Prods. Corp. v. NLRB, 379 U.S. 203, 216, 85 S.Ct. 398, 406, 13 L.Ed.2d 233 (1964). The Board’s orders must be remedial, however, rather than punitive. Manhattan Eye Ear & Throat Hosp. v. NLRB, 942 F.2d 151, 156-57 (2d Cir.1991). Relief “must be sufficiently tailored to expunge only the actual, and not merely speculative, consequences of the unfair labor practices.” Sure-Tan, Inc. v. NLRB, 467 U.S. 883, 900, 104 S.Ct. 2803, 2813, 81 L.Ed.2d 732 (1984); Manhattan Eye Ear & Throat Hosp., 942 F.2d at 157. A corporate-wide order is properly remedial where either the evidence supports an inference that the employer will commit further unlawful acts at a substantial number of other sites or the record shows that employees at other sites are aware of the unfair labor practices and may be deterred by them from engaging in protected activities. See NLRB v. S.E. Nichols, Inc., 862 F.2d 952, 960-61 (2d Cir.1988), cert. denied, 490 U.S. 1108, 109 S.Ct. 3162, 104 L.Ed.2d 1025 (1989). In S.E. Nichols, we emphasized the numerous unfair labor practices at one of the company’s stores, a fifteen-year history of violations of the Act, the geographic proximity of the stores, transfers of employees between stores, the centralized control over the firm’s labor policy by the company’s president, and the personal involvement of the company’s president and a division-level manager in spreading threats of unfair labor practices. Id. at 961. Based on these facts, we concluded that there was substantial evidence of a “conscious corporate-wide policy to coerce company employees in the exercise of their right to join or form labor unions.” Id. We therefore enforced an order requiring notice at eight stores in upstate New York and Ohio — the area under the supervision of one district supervisor who was behind a number of the unfair labor practices. Id. The record in the instant matter does not support a similar order. We turn first to the question of whether the record supports an inference that unlawful acts are reasonably probable at a substantial number of Beverly’s nursing homes that are not the subject of unfair labor practice findings. We believe that it does not. Beverly is, to be sure, opposed to the unionization of its employees, but it has the right to take that position. The order in question thus must be justified, if at all, by the nature of Beverly’s past conduct. Although the Board emphasized that Beverly committed over 130 violations at 33 sites, the evidentiary weight of these statistics is substantially diminished when related to the size of Beverly and the types of violations found. At pertinent times, Beverly had nearly 1000 facilities including 160 sites with collective bargaining agreements, and 100,-000 employees. The Board also relied upon the fact that “27 employees at 11 facilities were unlawfully discharged, refused rehire, or removed from their jobs for their activities on behalf of the Union.” Beverly Cal. Corp., 310 N.L.R.B. No. 37, slip op. at 19 (Jan. 29, 1993). However, 17 of these employment decisions involved a single incident at a single nursing home, the Fayette Health Care Center. Moreover, Beverly reinstated and gave full backpay to the 17 affected employees in less than four months after the incidents, and the person responsible for the 17 unlawful employment decisions is no longer with Beverly. The other unfair labor practices were not the kind of hallmark violations found in cases enforcing expanded remedial orders. Cf. S.E. Nichols, 862 F.2d at 960—61; United Steelworkers of Am. v. NLRB, 646 F.2d 616, 639-40 (D.C.Cir.1981); J.P. Stevens & Co., Inc. v. NLRB, 380 F.2d 292, 304 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 389 U.S. 1006, 88 S.Ct. 564, 19 L.Ed.2d 600 (1967). Moreover, the proof in many cases, while sufficient to support the decision, was ambiguous, and contrary decisions would have been as sustainable. Non-hallmark violations at 3% of a company’s facilities does not show an anti-union animus amounting to a proclivity to violate the Act. Nor was there a showing that the unfair labor practices stemmed from a corporate-wide labor policy. See S.E. Nichols, 862 F.2d at 961. The evidence indicated that most employment actions were handled at the facility level and never rose above the division level. In fact, the only evidence the Board cited of a national corporate headquarters’ connection to unfair labor practices was the headquarters’ participation in ruling on information requests from two unions involving corporate-wide financial information and the participation of Vice-President Ken Sanders in the negotiations at one home. There was evidence that labor negotiators were transferred among divisions, but only a small percentage of the unfair labor practices were committed by negotiators. Moreover, the types of unfair labor practices committed by Beverly’s negotiators—mostly delays or disputes over information requests—are not the types of hallmark violations that evidence a corporate policy of unlawful opposition to union activities. In sum, the only centrally coordinated labor policy shown in this case was Beverly’s admitted—and legal—policy of opposing unionization at its facilities. There is thus no basis in the record for concluding that unfair labor practices are reasonably to be expected at a substantial number of other sites. The Board also relied on the fact that most of the refusals to bargain were committed by labor relations personnel at the divisional level. Although this proposition is true, the conclusion drawn from it ignores several essential facts. First, almost half of those violations seem to have been caused by what amounted to carelessness by one of Beverly’s negotiators, Judy Mollinger. Second, there were no hallmark violations of the Act by divisional personnel. The Board dismissed surface bargaining allegations at the three facilities where the bulk of the pertinent unfair labor practices were found, and all three facilities had collective bargaining agreements in place well before the hearing in this case. This fact in particular, stands in marked contrast to other cases, such as J.P. Stevens and United Steelworkers, where the employer’s publicized refusal to enter into bargaining with unions provided much of the basis for the Board’s expanded orders. The examples of division personnel condoning flagrant unfair labor practices (most notably the firing of the “Fayette 17”) were isolated and the exception. By and large, the presence of divisional personnel in union campaigns at individual facilities appears to have had a positive effect, and Beverly should not be punished merely because isolated unfair labor practices occurred when division personnel were present. In contrast, in S.E. Nichols the company’s President personally participated in unfair labor practices and castigated employees who testified before the Board. 862 F.2d at 961. With regard to whether employees at other Beverly sites knew of the unfair labor practices in question and would be chilled by them, there is simply no evidence to support such a conclusion. Beverly operates 985 nursing homes, and nothing in the record suggests that employees at other sites had any knowledge of, much less were chilled by, the unfair labor practices. There was no evidence that Beverly’s line employees were transferred from facility to facility, see id,., or that other means of communication spread information about such events. In support of the breadth of its nationwide posting and cease and desist order, the Board relies upon a number of decisions that are easily distinguishable. In J.P. Stevens Co. v. NLRB, 380 F.2d at 304, we enforced an order requiring posting and mailing of notices to employees at forty-three of Stevens’ plants in North and South Carolina when flagrant unfair labor practices were found at each of the twenty plants in that region at which union campaigns were started. In doing so, however, we stressed that the plants were in close geographic proximity, that the company’s labor policies were centrally determined, and that the company’s practices were publicized in a way that warranted the conclusion that they affected employees at other plants. Id. In United Aircraft Corp. v. NLRB, 440 F.2d 85, 100 (2d Cir.1971), we enforced a Board order requiring the posting of notices at United Aircraft’s six Connecticut plants when violations occurred at five of them. We noted the company’s demonstrated anti-union animus and practices, and the proximity of the plants in question as reasons justifying the order. Id. In NLRB v. Jack La Lanne Management Corp., 539 F.2d 292, 293 (2d Cir.1976), we enforced an order requiring the posting of notices at all of the company’s ten New York City health spas after flagrant unfair labor practices were found at one of the facilities. However, the company’s violations were repetitive in nature, and the affected workers were freely transferred among the New York City facilities. Id. at 295. Finally, in United Steelworkers, 646 F.2d at 640-41, an announced, prolonged and well-publicized campaign of unlawful union resistance at geographically proximate sites supported a broad order.