Opinion ID: 349985
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Proscribed Conduct.

Text: 18 Our standard for determining whether certain pre-election speech constitutes proscribed conduct is found in NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co., 395 U.S. 575, 89 S.Ct. 1918, 23 L.Ed.2d 547 (1969), and was analyzed by this circuit in Lenkurt Electric Co., supra. These authorities establish that the employer is free to express opinions with respect to the consequences of unionization which have some reasonable basis in fact. Threats, veiled or direct, are proscribed. The line between proscribed threats and permissible predictions was drawn in Lenkurt Electric Co., supra, as follows: 19 It appears clear that an employer may not make predictions which indicate that he will, of his own volition and for his own reasons, inflict adverse consequences upon his employees if the union is chosen. This would constitute a threat of retaliation. Also, an employer may not, in the absence of a factual basis therefor, predict adverse consequences arising from sources outside his volition and control. This would not be a retaliatory threat, but would be an improper restraint nevertheless. N.L.R.B. v. C. J. Pearson Co., 420 F.2d 695 (1st Cir. 1969). Thus, an employer may not impliedly threaten retaliatory consequences within his control, nor may he, in an excess of imagination and under the guise of prediction, fabricate hobgoblin consequences outside his control which have no basis in objective fact. 20 438 F.2d at 1106. 21 Application of these guides to the statements which Olson, a low-level supervisor, made to employee, Dippel, suggests that some transgressed the bounds of protected speech. Olson suggested that the union would not help the workers because they already had everything they could hope for. (Tr. 98). Judging from the record, this would appear to be an opinion without a reasonable basis in fact, as the Hearing Officer concluded. At the very least it may be considered a hobgoblin consequence. On the other hand, the statement that the union was a bad deal because workers were paid better at Hecla than those at six other mines, worse than those at one mine and the same as those at another mine (Tr. 98) is merely a statement of fact. Similarly a statement that the free transfer policy of the company between work sites might be incompatible with the union structure, under which different unions, each with its own seniority system, organized different sites, is a factually-based opinion. See NLRB v. Lenkurt Electric Co., supra. 22 Another example of an opinion reasonably based on fact is that by Huntington, another low-level supervisor, to employee Reed to the effect that the latter might not obtain the front loader job he wanted because that position would be under the jurisdiction of a different union. (Tr. 85). Although the Hearing Officer concluded this constituted a threat, we think otherwise. It is an opinion framed as a prediction of adverse consequences arising from sources outside the employer's control which is reasonably based on fact. Other comments made by Huntington to Reed are improper, however. Huntington's conclusion that paid vacations would end if the union came in are not reasonably based on fact. Nonetheless, Huntington, as we shall see, was in no position to formulate company policy with respect to vacations. 23