Opinion ID: 560347
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Promises and threats

Text: 38 An employer violates section 8(a)(1) by threatening to penalize employees if they choose union representation, see Southwire, 820 F.2d at 457, or by offering to reward employees if they reject it, see St. Agnes, 871 F.2d at 143. [W]e 'recognize the Board's competence in the first instance to judge the impact of utterances made in the context of the employer-employee relationship.'  Id. (quoting Gissel, 395 U.S. at 620, 89 S.Ct. at 1943). 39 Here, the ALJ found several violations. Within a few days before the April 24 midnight meeting, janitor Hamby asked supervisor Joe Ingram what he thought about the union. Ingram replied that the Union would cause the company to close the doors. ALJ Decision at 8. On April 27, the loquacious Hamby asked Denver Millsaps, the production manager, why the supervisors had held a meeting that afternoon. Millsaps replied that they had discussed whether to increase the pay of machine operators in order to keep the union out. Hamby asked if anything had been said about his own wages. Millsaps told Hamby to raise the matter with his supervisor. Prior to May 14, plant manager Willoughby told a fellow supervisor, Carl Farrell, that the company would pay fifty dollars to any employee who would rescind his union authorization. Farrell passed the offer on to Mac Coley, a quality control employee. On or about May 14, Willoughby told the assembled employees that if the union represented them, the company would deal more strictly with rulebreakers, whereas without a union, the company would be more generous with benefits. At the same gathering, president Klarich said that employees could expect more raises without a union. Finally, a few days before the election, Willoughby told the unit employees not to expect any more favors if they chose the union. 40 Avecor raises a number of arguments, only one of which merits discussion. The company argues that Ingram's prediction of a plant closure was harmless because Hamby signed a union authorization card three days later. The remark could not have been coercive, Avecor suggests, because Hamby was not coerced. The argument, however, misstates the law. We look at a remark's tendency to coerce, not at its actual impact. See Southwest Regional Joint Bd. v. NLRB, 441 F.2d 1027, 1031 (D.C.Cir.1970). 41 The ALJ's interpretation of the Ingram remark does give us pause, but for a different reason. The evidence shows that one supervisor, on one occasion, in response to a direct question, in the hearing of one employee, said that the plant would close if the union were elected. The objective facts, we think, fall short of the ALJ's conclusion that Avecor had committed a hallmark violation of the NLRA by [t]hreatening its employees that it would close its doors if they selected the Union to represent them. ALJ Decision at 49, 51. Cf. Montgomery Ward & Co. v. NLRB, 904 F.2d 1156, 1161 (7th Cir.1990) (Easterbrook, J., concurring) (If employees are indeed such wee, tim'rous beasties, then elections are pointless....). 42 We defer to the ALJ's conclusion that the Ingram remark violated the Act, though it skirts the outermost boundaries of our deference. We find that substantial evidence supports the other violations.