Opinion ID: 512637
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Board's Finding Regarding the Picketers' Rights

Text: 14 The company argues that the Board did not correctly weigh the relative rights of the company and the picketers in deciding that the picketers' rights were more compelling than the employer's. It argues that the Board should have considered whether the picketers had available alternative means of communication. 15 Before we consider this argument, we note that our review of NLRB decisions is limited with few exceptions. Kankakee-Iroquois County Employers' Ass'n v. NLRB, 825 F.2d 1091, 1093 (7th Cir.1987). The Board has the special function of applying the general provisions of the Act to the complexities of industrial life. NLRB v. Erie Resistor Corp., 373 U.S. 221, 236, 83 S.Ct. 1139, 1150, 10 L.Ed.2d 308 (1963). We must, however, consider the record as a whole to determine whether the Board's findings are supported by substantial evidence. Universal Camera Corp. v. NLRB, 340 U.S. 474, 488, 71 S.Ct. 456, 464, 95 L.Ed. 456 (1951); Richmond Recording Corp. v. NLRB, 836 F.2d 289, 292 (7th Cir.1987). If the Board's findings do have substantial support in the record, we should defer to reasonable Board conclusions. UAW Local No. 1712 v. NLRB, 732 F.2d 573, 577 (7th Cir.1984); see also NLRB v. Burkart Foam, Inc., 848 F.2d 825, 829 (7th Cir.1988). 16 Sections 7 and 8(a)(1) of the Act guarantee employees the right to engage in union activity free from employer interference, restraint, or coercion. 29 U.S.C. Secs. 157, 158(a)(1). Section 13 expressly protects employees' rights to engage in peaceful strike activity against employers. 29 U.S.C. Sec. 163. See also Division 1287, Amalgamated Ass'n of Street Employees v. Missouri, 374 U.S. 74, 82, 83 S.Ct. 1657, 1662, 10 L.Ed.2d 763 (1963); NLRB v. International Rice Milling Co., 341 U.S. 665, 672-73 & n. 8, 71 S.Ct. 961, 964-65 & n. 8, 95 L.Ed. 1277 (1951). These rights include the right to picket an employer. NLRB v. Drivers Local Union No. 639, 362 U.S. 274, 281 n. 9, 80 S.Ct. 706, 710 n. 9, 4 L.Ed.2d 710 (1960). 17 Where employees seek to exercise their statutory rights on private property from which their employer seeks to exclude them, the Board must reach an accommodation between the employees' section 7 rights and the employer's property rights  'with as little destruction of one [right] as is consistent with the maintenance of the other.'  Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U.S. 507, 522, 96 S.Ct. 1029, 1038, 47 L.Ed.2d 196 (1976) (quoting NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., 351 U.S. 105, 112, 76 S.Ct. 679, 684, 100 L.Ed. 975 (1956)) (footnote omitted). The Board has the primary responsibility for determining how best to accommodate the conflicting rights in the context of each dispute. Hudgens, 424 U.S. at 522, 96 S.Ct. at 1037. 18 The Board, in Fairmont Hotel Co., 123 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 1257 (1986), reexamined its approach to these questions of accommodation between employees' and employers' rights, and announced a test that it believed would better comport with the Supreme Court decisions. The Board believed that it had been placing too much emphasis on the availability to striking employees of alternative means of communication at the expense of determining the nature and strength of the section 7 and private property rights in the context of disputes. The Board's new test provided as follows: 19 If the property owner's claim is a strong one, while the Section 7 right at issue is clearly a less compelling one, the property right will prevail. If the property claim is a tenuous one, and the Section 7 right is clearly more compelling, then the Section 7 right will prevail. Only in those cases where the respective claims are relatively equal in strength will effective alternative means of communication become determinative. 20 Id. at 1260 (footnote omitted). The Board suggested that in evaluating employees' section 7 rights it would consider 21 the nature of the right asserted, the purpose for which it is being asserted, the employer that is the target of the activity, the situs of the activity, the relationship of the situs to the target, the intended audience of the activity, and, possibly, the manner in which the right is being asserted. 22 Id. In determining the weight to give to an employer's property rights, the Board indicated it would consider several factors including the use to which the property in question is put; the restrictions, if any, that are imposed on public access to the property or to the facility located on the property; and the size and location of the private facility. Id. at 1259-60. 23 The company argues that this test ignores the fact that a reasonable alternative means of communication is most in accord with the Court's directive in Hudgens that the Board should accommodate both parties' rights  'with as little destruction of one as is consistent with the maintenance of the other.'  Hudgens, 424 U.S. at 522, 96 S.Ct. at 1038 (quoting Babcock, 351 U.S. at 112, 76 S.Ct. at 684). According to the company, the Fairmont test allows a union to choose the most effective place of communication, even if it means that employees would be picketing inside the work site. This argument implies that the Board has no choice but to rubber-stamp the union's activities. If the argument were true, one would expect that the employees' section 7 rights would always prevail. As the company itself notes, however, this is not the case. In the Fairmont case, for example, the Board found that the employer had a valid interest in minimizing congestion, although the hotel merely believed that pickets would cause congestion and had not proved any impediment. 123 L.R.R.M. (BNA) at 1260. In another case, Greyhound Lines, Inc., the Board found that an employer restaurant did not violate the Act when it had pickets removed from the lobby in the bus terminal in which the restaurant was located. The Board noted that the union's section 7 rights were not more compelling than the employer's property rights. 125 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 1266, 1267-68 (1987). Clearly, the Board is able to weigh the employees' and employers' competing interests in reaching an accommodation of both. 24 In regards to the Mooresville store, the Board, considering the nature of the company's property interest, found that its interest was diluted by the fact that it shared its leased premises with the neighboring drugstore. The Board also found that access to the premises was not restricted; the general public was invited to patronize the store, and the walkway and vestibule were open to virtually anyone. According to the Board, the employees' picketing activities did not impede customers seeking access to either store. Therefore, the Board found that the employer's property claim with respect to the Mooresville store was relatively weak. 25 As regards the Martinsville store, the Board found that the company owns the store and parking lot, and is the only business at that location. The employees, however, rather than picket near the store building, had stationed themselves near the entrance and exit to the parking lot. The Board found that the company placed no restrictions on public access to the store, the pickets were far from the store entrance, and there was no evidence of safety or other problems arising from the picketers' activities. Therefore, although the Board found that the company had a stronger property interest in its Martinsville store than it would have had if the store had been located in a shared mall area, it still found that the company's property interest in the parking lot was relatively limited. 26 By contrast, the Board found that the employees' rights to engage in peaceful, lawful picketing activity to support their strike in Mooresville were compelling, and their rights were not substantially diminished when they sought to assert them at the company's store in Martinsville. The Board took into account the employees' intended audience, nonstriking employees as well as suppliers and customers of the company, in finding that the employees' section 7 rights outweighed the company's property rights. This finding is substantially supported by the record evidence. 27 The company argues that even if the Fairmont test itself is legal, it has been applied in an arbitrary and capricious manner. We disagree. As we have demonstrated, the Board considered various factors in reaching its decision that the employees' rights were paramount over the company's rights. The company points out several cases that, it believes, prove that the Board applied Fairmont differently in this case than it has in others. 40-41 Realty Assocs., Inc., 288 N.L.R.B. No. 23 (1988); Browning's Foodland, Inc., 125 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 1264 (1987); Fairmont Hotel Co., 123 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 1257 (1986); Greyhound Lines, Inc., 125 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 1266 (1987). These cases are all distinguishable, however. 28 In 40-41 Realty Assocs., the picketers, like the picketers in this case, included employees of the target employer who were engaged in an economic strike. The Board found that the section 7 interests of the picketers were compelling. The Board also found, however, that the property interests of the employer were also compelling. The employer was a dental facility and its office was located on the second floor of a twenty-story office building. The corridor where the picketing took place, while not barred to the general public, was commonly used only by patients, employees, and suppliers of the dental facility. The Board found that the employer's strong property interest in the small corridor was equivalent in weight to the union's section 7 interests. The Board thus went on to consider the availability of alternative means of communication and found that the union had other, reasonable means of conveying its message. The employer in the present case did not retain such a strong property interest in its premises, which were open to the public in general. The employees' rights outweigh the employer's property rights. 29 Similarly, in Browning's Foodland, the Board weighed the union's section 7 rights against the employer's property rights and found the union's and employer's rights to be relatively equal. Although the employer's rights were not particularly compelling, neither were the union's: none of the picketers or handbillers worked for the employer. The Board then considered the adequacy of the alternative means of communication, finding that the picketing and handbilling conducted by nonemployees of the target employer for the purpose of conveying information to potential customers was lawfully banned from a shopping mall. The Board found that the union could reach all potential customers with reasonable effectiveness from nearby public property. In this case, by contrast, the Board found that the rights of the picketers, many of whom were employees of the company, outweighed those of the employer. The Board therefore did not have to reach the question of the availability of alternative means of communication. 3 30 In Fairmont, the Board found that the Fairmont Hotel was not required to permit picketing in its lobby to publicize an area-standards dispute with a bakery that supplied the hotel's restaurant with bread. The pickets did not represent employees of either the hotel or the bakery and, therefore, the union had no particular link to the employees on the hotel property. The hotel's property rights thus outweighed the union's section 7 rights. In this case, as we have noted, many of the pickets were striking employees of the company, whose rights are more compelling than those of nonemployee pickets. 31 The Greyhound Lines case is similar to the Browning's Foodland case. As it did in Browning's Foodland, the Board found that the union's rights and the employer's rights were relatively equal. In picketing at the entrance to the restaurant, the union was conducting its activities entirely on the neutral bus company's property, on a particularly busy holiday weekend. The union's interest was diminished by the fact that it was not asserting its own section 7 rights and the fact that it was asserting those rights on the property of someone other than the target employer. The bus terminal's interest in excluding the union was strengthened by the increased congestion of a holiday weekend. Accordingly the Board went on to consider the availability of alternative means of communication and found that the pickets could have reached their intended audience, the restaurant's customers, rather than its employees, by picketing at the entrances to the bus terminal. It was not necessary that the union picket within the terminal at the entrance to the restaurant itself. In this case, many of the pickets were employees of the company, the picketing took place, for the most part, on the company's property, and there was no evidence of any particular congestion. 32 We see no inconsistency with the Board's application of the Fairmont test in this case as compared to the cases the company has cited to us. We find the Board's decision on this point to be well-reasoned. We will not deny the Board's petition for enforcement on this ground.