Opinion ID: 186380
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Special remedies

Text: 47 Federated's final challenge is to the Board's choice of remedies. First, Federated challenges the cease and desist order that the Board imposed, requiring Federated to cease and desist from committing the unfair labor practices it was found to have committed, and [i]n any other manner interfering with, restraining, or coercing employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed them by Section 7 of the [NLRA]. ALJ Decision at 5. Federated objects that the Board erred in imposing a broad order without addressing the suitability of traditional remedies, considering what Federated characterizes as its extensive efforts to comply with the law, or adequately establishing that Federated's violations were so egregious as to warrant an extraordinary remedy. 48 A cease and desist order as broad as that ordered by the Board in this case is warranted only when a respondent is shown to have a proclivity to violate the [NLRA], or has engaged in such egregious or widespread misconduct as to demonstrate a general disregard for the employees' fundamental statutory rights. NLRB v. Blake Construction, 663 F.2d 272, 285 (D.C.Cir.1981). 49 In applying that precedent to this record, it bears repeating that, in addition to the three Board findings that Federated unsuccessfully challenges in this appeal-that it unlawfully made threats of the futility of unionization, withheld a wage increase, and disciplined two employees for engaging in union activity-it is uncontested that Federated also committed six other unfair labor practices. As the Board found, when faced with the Union organizing effort among its employees, [Federated] responded with extensive and serious unfair labor practices. ALJ Decision at 3. These included maintaining an over-broad no-solicitation rule, interrogating employees about union activities, creating the impression of surveillance of union activities, asking employees to spy on union activities, soliciting employee grievances with the implied promise to remedy them, and promising employees unspecified benefits for defeating the union. Other courts have held similar patterns of violation to amount to widespread anti-union activity. See, e.g., Coil-A.C.C. Inc. v. NLRB, 712 F.2d 1074, 1076 (6th Cir.1983) (upholding a broad cease and desist order where the Board found the employer to have violated NLRA § 8(a)(1) by threatening, coercing and restraining its employees in the exercise of their [§ 7] rights, threatening to [shut down] the company and discharging an employee involved with the union). As the First Circuit has put it, when a record discloses persistent attempts to interfere with legislatively protected rights by varying methods, the Board may restrain a labor organization from committing similar or related unlawful acts in the future. NLRB v. Union Nacional de Trabajadores, 540 F.2d 1, 11 (1st Cir.1976). Given the scope of Federated's communications offensive against the Union, and the multiple unfair labor practices it committed in attempting to prevent the Union from winning the election, it was reasonable for the Board to conclude that its misconduct was sufficiently persistent and widespread to warrant a broad cease and desist order. 50 Federated next contests the Board's order that it supply the Union with employees' home contact details. See ALJ Decision at 4 (ordering that Federated supply to the Union every 6 months for 2 years, or until a certification after a fair election, the names and addresses of its current unit employees, so that the Union can help to counteract the effects of the [] violations in its communications with employees.). But it is long established that requiring the employer to disclose employee names and contact details to the union furthers NLRA objectives by encouraging an informed employee electorate and by allowing unions the right of access to employees that management already possesses. NLRB v. Wyman-Gordon Co., 394 U.S. 759, 767, 89 S.Ct. 1426, 22 L.Ed.2d 709 (1969). Thus, this challenge fails. 51 Finally, Federated challenges the portion of the Board's Order directing that either a Federated management official, or an agent of the NLRB in the presence of a Federated official, read the notice of Federated's unfair labor practices to its employees. This Circuit has upheld such an order with respect to the president of a corporation who the ALJ had found to have personally and repeatedly communicated to employees [an] ominous threat of plant closure as the centerpiece of [defendant corporation's] intense anti-union campaign. Conair v. NLRB, 721 F.2d 1355, 1385-87 (D.C.Cir.1983). As we clarified in United Food & Commercial Workers v. NLRB, 852 F.2d 1344, 1348 (D.C.Cir.1988), [w]e are not unconcerned about the ignominy of a forced public reading by an employer and its potential for oppression. (internal quotation omitted). We will only enforce such orders when the record ... indicate[s][a] particularized need for one. Id. (internal quotation omitted). In the case at bar, as in Conair, the Board found the fact that many of the[ ] [NLRA] violations were committed by high-level management officials[.] ALJ Decision at 3. The Board explained that part of the purpose of its order that the Notice be read out loud was so that employees will fully perceive that [Federated] and its managers are bound by the requirements of the [NLRA]. Id. at 4 (emphasis added). Federated has not met its burden of rebutting the existence of a particularized need for the public reading requirement. For that reason, we decline to reverse that portion of the order. 52 For the foregoing reasons, the petition for judicial review is denied. 53