Opinion ID: 267171
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: nature of the strike

Text: 38 Both the Board and its Examiner found, and Southland in its brief agrees, that the 'immediate cause' of the strike was the posting of 'help wanted' signs and touring applicants through the plant. Their agreement, however, goes no further. 39 The Trial Examiner concluded that there was no causal connection between the strike and Southland's prior unfair labor practice in refusing to bargain in good faith. This conclusion was based on his view that Murphy's sole reason for calling the strike was his feeling that Southland intended to discharge union members and hire new applicants, and that Murphy's later references to Southland's unfair labor practices were afterthoughts, conceived after April, 1963, when the union filed charges. The Board found that: 40 'the evidence in its entirety, including all of Murphy's testimony, supports the inference that Respondent's unfair labor practices were    a principal cause of the strike call and the walkout by the employees.' 41 It therefore concluded that even if Southland's recruitment procedures did not violate section 8(a)(1), the strike was an unfair labor practice strike. 42 Agreement of the parties that the touring episode 'triggered' the strike still fails to provide the answer as to the cause and nature of the strike. The triggering event did not displace all that had gone before, as the company argues and the Examiner seemed to think. On the other hand, it would not necessarily constitute an independent threat violative of section 8(a)(1), as the Board held. In the view we take of the case we find it unnecessary to characterize with precision the touring of applicants through the plant. It is sufficient to say that the Board was well warranted in holding that the underlying cause, as distinguished from the immediate cause of the strike, was the intransigence of the employer and its dilatory tactics in respect to bargaining sessions. The aphorism concerning 'the straw that broke the camel's back' expresses less than the truth if it is understood to attribute to the final straw sole responsibility while exonerating the much heavier burden imposed by the many straws that preceded it. Even if the parading through the plant was the exasperating 'last straw,' it did not outweigh the persistent accumulation of earlier violations, and it would be an unjustifiable perversion of the record to conclude that they had no bearing on the union's decision to strike. That the strike was the full grown fruit of seeds earlier sown by Southland is most clearly demonstrated by the fact that the authorization pursuant to which Murphy called the strike was given him by the union in January, 1963, after he had expressed increasing concern about Southland's failure to bargain in good faith. Rather than being afterthoughts, as found by the Examiner, Murphy's concerns were of a much earlier vintage. 43 It is the Board's conclusion which we review, but in a case such as this where the findings of the Board are in conflict with those of its Trial Examiner, the record, including the Trial Examiner's report, must be subjected to particular scrutiny. And, as stated by the Supreme Court in Universal Camera Corp. v. National Labor Relations Board, 340 U,.s. 474, 496, 71 S.Ct. 456, 469, 95 L.Ed. 456 (1951): 44 'evidence supporting a conclusion may be less substantial when an impartial, experienced examiner who has observed the witnesses and lived with the case has drawn conclusions different from the Board's than when he has reached the same conclusion.' 45 We must keep in mind, however, that the Examiner's report is to be given only 'such probative force as it intrinsically commands.' Universal Camera, supra, p. 495, 71 S.Ct. p. 468. Otherwise, the Examiner's report would always control the Board. As indicated above, we think that there was ample support for the Board's conclusion that the strike was caused by Southland's unfair labor practices.