Opinion ID: 420985
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Compliance-Stage Determination of Entitlement to Award

Text: 12 The Union contends that it was error for the ALJ to order that the entitlement to back-pay awards of all 26 travelers displaced by the Union be determined at the compliance stage of the proceedings. According to the Union, a Board order should mandate remedies only for proven wrongs. Thus, the Union reasons, the ALJ acted incorrectly at the first-stage hearing in failing to consider the Union's evidence that at least five of the 26 travelers were not available for work on the Diablo Canyon site after the lockout, making them ineligible for back-pay awards. 13 The Union relies on NLRB v. Fort Vancouver Plywood Co., 604 F.2d 596 (9th Cir.1979), cert. denied, 445 U.S. 915, 100 S.Ct. 1275, 63 L.Ed.2d 599 (1980), where this court remanded the portion of an NLRB order requiring reinstatement of 72 workers who were victims of the employer's unfair practices, but enforced the part of the order requiring awards of back pay to those workers. That decision does not support the Union's argument. In Fort Vancouver, we noted that the Board's order required the reinstatement of exactly 72 discharged workers, leaving no possibility for the employer to litigate whether or not the workers would have been laid off in spite of the violations. In contrast, the Fort Vancouver court found that the order for back pay is indefinite, properly leaving for compliance proceedings the exact determination of amounts owing. 604 F.2d at 603. In the present case, the order is similarly indefinite; it requires the Union to make the 26 individuals whole for any loss of earnings and other benefits they may have suffered by reason of the discrimination against them. As in the part of the order we enforced in Fort Vancouver, the order in the present case leaves open the possibility that the amount of the award to some of the named individuals will be zero. Thus, the present order is more closely analogous to the portion of the Fort Vancouver order that was enforced than to the portion that was remanded. 14 In NLRB v. International Association of Bridge, Structural, and Ornamental Iron Workers, Local 433, 600 F.2d 770 (9th Cir.1979), cert. denied, 445 U.S. 915, 100 S.Ct. 1275, 63 L.Ed.2d 599 (1980), this court enforced a Board order calling for back-pay awards even when the identity of all the discriminatees was not known. In noting that the Courts of Appeals have often granted enforcement of orders that reserve the determination of complex factual issues to the compliance stage, we cited with approval several cases, including NLRB v. Globe Manufacturing Co., 580 F.2d 18 (1st Cir.1978), where the issue left for compliance proceedings was whether an employee would have been recalled for work had he been properly considered and whether he was physically able to return to work. 600 F.2d at 778. 15 We find that the Board acted in a proper manner in delaying until the compliance proceedings determination of the entitlement to, and the amount of, back-pay awards for all the possible victims of the unfair labor practices engaged in by the Union. 16