Opinion ID: 566342
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Racial Prejudice

Text: 16 Three of the Company's allegations assert that the Union improperly appealed to the racial prejudice of the Company's 96% black work force for the purpose of inflaming racial feelings of the employees. The Company alleges that it was not aware of the significance of the Union's proposed election date and was thereby maneuvered into holding the election during the week of the Martin Luther King holiday, even though it voluntarily agreed to the date in the Stipulated Election Agreement without first consulting a calendar. Because the Company did not exercise either of its options to propose an alternate date or to decline to enter into the stipulation, the Board's ruling that the Company was precluded from objecting to the stipulated date was proper. 17 In further support of its allegation that the Union's campaign was racially oriented, the Company presented a two-sided fold-out poster depicting events in the life of Martin Luther King and an unsigned letter supporting the Union bearing the typed name of Coretta Scott King, both used as campaign literature by the Union. The Regional Director noted that the Board will set aside an election when a party launches a campaign to exacerbate racial feelings by making irrelevant, inflammatory appeals to racial prejudice. Sewell Mfg. Co., 138 NLRB 66 (1962); see also NLRB v. Sumter Plywood Corp., 535 F.2d 917, 926 (5th Cir.1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1092, 97 S.Ct. 1105, 51 L.Ed.2d 538 (1977). After examining the campaign material in question, the Regional Director found the materials to be proper campaign propaganda not rising to the level of deliberate and sustained appeals to racial prejudice of the type condemned by the Board. 18 The Company also complains that the six or seven whites working for the Company were intentionally excluded from the campaign. The Regional Director found the evidence did not establish that this was due to the Union's conduct. According to affidavit testimony of white employees, the lack of white involvement in the campaign appeared to be due to the fact that a majority of the white employees chose not to align themselves with the Union and declined to accept campaign literature. The isolated remark made by an unidentified black handbiller to a white employee who declined to accept campaign literature likewise was found insufficient to void the election for racial reasons. In our opinion, the Board's decision to overrule all of the Company's objections predicated on racial grounds is supported by substantial evidence in the record. The Company failed to make a prima facie showing that needlessly inflammatory racial considerations formed the core of the Union's campaign and that the existing pre-election conditions rendered a free election impossible. See Sumter Plywood, 535 F.2d at 925.