Opinion ID: 3052717
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Union’s Challenges to Employer Conduct as

Text: Violations of the NLRA [1] Sections 8(a)(1) and (3) of the NLRA make it an unfair labor practice for an employer “by discrimination in regard to hire or tenure of employment or any term or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization.” 29 U.S.C. § 158(a)(1) & (3). In determining whether or not a company has violated the NLRA, the relevant inquiry is whether or not the employer’s action likely discouraged union membership and was motivated by antiunion animus. See Metro. Edison Co. v. NLRB, 460 U.S. 693, 700 (1983). [2] The Supreme Court has established a framework for determining whether employer conduct is unlawfully discriminatory. Some employer conduct is so “inherently discriminatory or destructive” of employee rights that anti-union motivation is inferred. NLRB v. Erie Resistor Corp., 373 U.S. 221, 227-28 (1963). If employer conduct is “inherently destructive,” the Board may find an improper motive regardless of evidence of a legitimate business justification. See NLRB v. Great Dane Trailers, Inc., 388 U.S. 26, 33 (1967). [3] If, on the other hand, “the adverse effect of the discriminatory conduct on employee rights is ‘comparatively slight,’ ” and the employer establishes a legitimate and substantial business justification for its actions, there is no violation of the Act without a finding of an actual anti-union motivation. Id. at 34; NLRB v. Bingham-Willamette Co., 857 F.2d 661, 664 11266 FRESH FRUIT AND VEGETABLE WORKERS v. NLRB (9th Cir. 1988). Applying this framework we address in turn each of the Union’s challenges to the Board’s decision.3
We first address the initial one-month delay in reinstatement from December 15 until January 22, the day by which all responses from returning employees were due to the employer. The Union argues that the company’s failure to immediately reinstate the locked out employees was “inherently destructive” of the employee’s statutory rights because only the unionized locked out employees, and not the replacement employees, suffered “the adversities of being kept out of work.” Such conduct, the Union argues, discourages protected activity by punishing an employee’s lawful right to strike. We reject this argument because it does not take into account the length of the lockout or the length of the delay itself. [4] The Supreme Court has defined “inherently destructive” conduct as conduct that “carries with it an inference of unlawful intention so compelling that it is justifiable to disbelieve the employer’s protestations of innocent purpose.” Am. Ship Bldg. Co. v. NLRB, 380 U.S. 300, 311-12 (1965); see Portland Willamette Co. v. NLRB, 534 F.2d 1331, 1334 (9th Cir. 1976) (defining “inherently destructive conduct” as conduct that has “far reaching effects which would hinder future bargaining” and “create[s] visible and continuing obstacles to the future exercise of employee rights”). If the natural tendency of the employer’s actions is to severely “discourage union membership while serving no significant employer interest,” then the conduct is “inherently destructive” and discriminatory. Am. Ship Building, 380 U.S. at 312; see also Erie Resistor, 373 U.S. at 228. 3 The Union also argues that the ALJ and the Board erred in parsing the company’s behavior and analyzing each alleged violation individually, as opposed to in the aggregate. This argument is without merit as we have analyzed each allegation of a violation of the NLRA individually in the past. See L’Eggs Prods., Inc. v. NLRB, 619 F.2d 1337 (9th Cir. 1980). FRESH FRUIT AND VEGETABLE WORKERS v. NLRB 11267 [5] The Supreme Court’s application of this standard is illustrative of employer conduct that necessarily implies discrimination and anti-union animus. In Erie Resistor, the Court concluded that an employer granting twenty years of superseniority to replacement workers and workers who broke the strike was inherently destructive. See generally Erie Resistor, 373 U.S. 221. In Metropolitan Edison, the Court concluded that an employer’s discipline of union leaders more severely than non-union leaders was “inherently destructive” of their statutory rights. 460 U.S. 702-03. “In each of these cases, the employer treated employees within a bargaining unit differently depending upon the degree of their union activity.” Int’l Paper Co. v. NLRB, 115 F.3d 1045, 1050 (D.C. Cir. 1997) (emphasis omitted). Thus, from the employee’s perspective there could be no question that the employees were being punished for their union activities because those employees who chose to engage in union activities were given fewer benefits or were punished as compared to those that did not engage in union activities. [6] Here, the employer’s one month delay stands in stark contrast to the above examples of conduct found to be “inherently destructive.” This case does not present a reinstatement delay that is relatively long compared to the lockout itself. See Westpac Electric Inc., 321 N.L.R.B. 1322, 1364 (1996) (concluding a reinstatement delay of two to three hours after a three hour strike was “inherently destructive”). In such a case the Board may be justified in concluding that a delay is “inherently destructive” of employee rights because the employees could infer that the delay was instituted to punish their union activities. In contrast, when a reinstatement delay is short relative to the lockout period, it is less likely that employees will view the delay as punishment for a protected activity. [7] After a fourteen-year lockout, a delay of a few more weeks prior to reinstatement does not necessarily express antiunion animus beyond that expressed by the lockout itself. 11268 FRESH FRUIT AND VEGETABLE WORKERS v. NLRB Indeed, since the workers had just voted against union representation by a substantial margin, it is not clear that the company had much to gain at the time by taking further action to discourage union activity. Given the length of the lockout it is most likely that employees would understand that some period of time was necessary and normal to accomplish the reinstatement, and therefore not view the delay as an action by the company to obstruct or discourage employees from exercising their statutory rights. Moreover, it was reasonable to anticipate that many or most of the locked out employees would likely need some time themselves to prepare for the possible transition: some employees would need time to make their decision, leave their current employers, and prepare to resume working for Bud Antle. Under the circumstances, the Board’s conclusion that the delay did not “imply hostile motivation any more than the lockout itself,” and thus was not inherently destructive of employee’s rights such that antiunion animus can be inferred, is supported by substantial evidence. See NLRB v. Brown, 380 U.S. 278, 284 (1965). The Union challenges the Board’s determination that the delay from December 15 to January 22 was supported by a substantial and legitimate business justification.4 Generally, an employer is obligated to reinstate employees after a lockout without unreasonable delay. “[W]hat is reasonable or unreasonable depends on all the facts and circumstances of a particular case and the existence of legitimate and substantial business reasons for the delay.” Mercy-Memorial Hosp. Corp., 231 N.L.R.B. 1108, 1113-14 (1977). We give deference to the Board’s expertise in determining whether employer conduct is reasonable and supported by legitimate and substantial business justifications. See NLRB v. Fleetwood Trailer Co., 389 U.S. 375, 378 (1967) (citing Great Dane Trailers, 388 U.S. at 33-34) (“It is the primary responsi- 4 The employer has not challenged the Board’s conclusion that the delay from January 23-February 23 violated the NLRA and therefore we do not review the Board’s findings on this issue. FRESH FRUIT AND VEGETABLE WORKERS v. NLRB 11269 bility of the Board and not of the courts ‘to strike the proper balance between the asserted business justifications and the invasion of employee rights in light of the Act and its policy.’ ”). The Board found that both of the business justifications offered by the employer in this case, in the circumstances of an unusually lengthy lockout, supported the delay through January 22. First, the Board concluded that the union election agreement justified a one-month delay for the employer to organize the reinstatement of the returning employees. This conclusion was reasonable and supported by substantial evidence. The notice had to be prepared and sent to the locked out employees after the election results were certified, and at least a little time was needed to accomplish that. The agreement with the Union provided that workers would have at least thirty days to respond to the notice. The replacement employees and the locked out employees would have equal seniority rights, so the company would not know which employees would be bumped based on seniority until it had a complete list of employees seeking to return at the end of the notification period on January 22. At the end of the lockout, the facility was operating with 90 replacement employees. There were 133 previously locked out employees to whom notices were sent. Thus, there were potentially more than 220 employees who would seek to fill between 90-100 jobs. Bud Antle could not know, prior to the January 22 deadline, how many employees would be seeking jobs, and what their respective seniority levels would be.5 Thus, it could not know which employees would be bumped and which would not. Even if, as the Union argues, at least one of the returning 5 Though the company might have assumed that there would not be many employees returning after fourteen years, over 250 individuals voted in the union election, far more than the number of current workers. It was not unreasonable for the company to anticipate at least a possibility that more workers would be returning than turned out to be the case and thus to proceed cautiously with determining who would wind up with the jobs. 11270 FRESH FRUIT AND VEGETABLE WORKERS v. NLRB employees had sufficient seniority to guarantee that he would be at the front of the line, that could not have been clear for all of the potentially returning employees. [8] The Board also concluded that the company’s desire to train all the returning employees together was an independent reason to support the delay. This conclusion was reasonable. Fourteen years had passed. Some level of retraining would seem justified under any circumstances after that long an interval off the job. The changes in the company’s operations and products gave further support for the Board’s conclusion in this case that it was not unreasonable for the company to retrain the returning employees after fourteen years. It was likewise not unreasonable for the company to wish to train all of the returning employees together. Although the company representative testified that the company had trained new employees individually in the past, he noted that they had never had to train a large number of employees one-on-one before. The Union argues that National Football League Management Council, 309 N.L.R.B. 78 (1992), contradicts the Board’s decision and establishes that the delay here was unreasonable and unsupported by a substantial and legitimate business justification. In that case, NFL players agreed to return to work on Thursday, October 15, after a twenty-fiveday strike. The NFL Clubs responded by refusing to allow players that were ineligible to play on Wednesday from playing in the upcoming weekend’s games. Id. at 79. Thus because the striking players agreed to return to work on Thursday, instead of Wednesday, they were unable to play in the games scheduled that week on October 18 and 19. The Board rejected the employer’s argument that the delay in reinstatement from October 15 (when the unconditional offer to return to work was tendered) to October 25 or 26 was reasonable and supported by a substantial business justification. The Board concluded that, under the circumstances, the Club’s claims that the striking players may not have been in suffiFRESH FRUIT AND VEGETABLE WORKERS v. NLRB 11271 cient physical condition to play, and that they had to deal with the administrative inconvenience of juggling both the roster of replacement players and striking players were not substantial and legitimate business justifications for the Wednesday eligibility rule. See id. at 82-83. The Union’s citation to National Football League and similar decisions fails to deal with the unique circumstances of this lockout, notably its extraordinary duration. A strike lasting twenty-five days is not the same as a lockout lasting fourteen years. Because of the extraordinary time gap, the employer’s concerns here were magnified. For example, Bud Antle had to determine where the striking employees were, whether they would return, whether they could continue to perform the job, and how to integrate them back into the company. Although the owners faced similar questions in National Football League, it is difficult to ignore the effect a fourteen-year time period can have on the employer’s decision making. In National Football League, there was other evidence, including contradictory explanations for the delay, and the fact that the Clubs had failed to enforce the Wednesday eligibility rule in a past strike that was twice as long, that made the Board question the credibility of the asserted business justifications. Id. at 82. Such concerns are not presented here: the company has not asserted contradictory business justifications. Additionally, the circumstances of the election agreement materially differed from those in National Football League. The agreement here required the company to rehire both striking and replacement employees based upon the seniority of all workers. The company, therefore, needed to wait until the end of the reinstatement period to dovetail the list of employees so that it could determine which employees would be hired and retained. The NLRB has noted the importance of evaluating an employer’s conduct based upon the unique circumstances in the record, and properly so. In Mercy-Memorial Hospital, the NLRB recognized that reasonable delays in reinstatement can 11272 FRESH FRUIT AND VEGETABLE WORKERS v. NLRB arise at the conclusion of a lengthy strike. At the close of a three-year strike, state law required that the returning employees be subjected to medical examinations in order to be eligible to work in the employer’s hospital. 231 N.L.R.B. at 1114. The Board concluded that the nearly one-month delay in which the company updated employee files, waited to determine which employees would be returning to work, and conducted physical examinations for returning employees was reasonable given “the problems necessarily occasioned by the sudden termination of a 3-year-old strike.” Id. [9] Given the length of the lockout here, the uncertainties surrounding who would request reinstatement, and the letter of agreement that held the reinstatement period open for thirty days, there was substantial evidence supporting the Board’s conclusion that substantial and legitimate business justifications supported the employer’s conduct and thus the employer did not violate the NLRA.
The Union also challenges the Board’s conclusion that the limitation on the returning employees’ overtime opportunities during the four-week retraining period did not violate the NLRA. We first consider whether substantial evidence supported the Board’s conclusion that the retraining period and overtime policy was not inherently destructive of the employees’ rights. We conclude that there was substantial evidence to support the conclusion that the overtime policy had only a minimal effect on the rights of the employees. [10] The four-week period was temporary, and after the period ended the returning workers were given the same overtime opportunities as all employees. The restrictions on overtime were the only limitations placed on the returning employees. Thus the four-week retraining period was unlikely FRESH FRUIT AND VEGETABLE WORKERS v. NLRB 11273 to have any “far reaching effects” or “creat[e] visible and continuing obstacles to the future exercise of employee rights” because the limitations were minimal and of short duration. See Portland Willamette, 534 F.2d at 1334. Furthermore, it was reasonable for the Board to conclude that it was unlikely, in light of the length of the lockout, that the returning employees would perceive the retraining period and the limitations on overtime as punishment for exercising their labor rights. After fourteen years of being locked out of Bud Antle, the employees could logically view the retraining and overtime limitations as an ordinary part of their reinstatement and not as an attempt to severely discourage or punish union membership or striking. See id. The Union also challenges the Board’s determination that the company had a substantial and legitimate business justification for curtailing the employees’ overtime during this period. The Board concluded that the changes in operations that occurred during the fourteen-year period justified the retraining period for two reasons. First, the training period was necessary to update the employees on the procedures used in the coolers and to assess the returning employees’ abilities to perform the new tasks. Second, new employees are generally not as adept as existing employees and because overtime is paid at a premium, the company had a significant business interest in determining that the returning employees could perform that work quickly and efficiently. We uphold the Board’s conclusions because they are supported by substantial evidence. As discussed above, although much of the job was similar in 2004 to what it was in 1989, significant changes had occurred that required a new system of handling the vegetables. Many of these changes appear to be specific to the company, not necessarily to the industry generally. It was not unreasonable, then, for the returning employees to be treated like new employees and given a retraining period after four11274 FRESH FRUIT AND VEGETABLE WORKERS v. NLRB teen years out of service with the company. Furthermore, given the premium at which overtime is paid, the employer would reasonably wish to ensure that the work was performed as efficiently as possible. This interest could plausibly be protected by instituting limits on overtime while the employer determined the ability levels of its returning employees. [11] The Union makes two main arguments challenging the Board majority. First, the Union argues that the company generally may not assume that a returning employee is unskilled at performing his or her duties. Although a company may not normally presume that a returning striker cannot perform the job upon return, in this case such a presumption is entirely logical. Cf. Lehigh Metal Fabricators, Inc., 267 N.L.R.B. 568 (1983) (refusing to allow a company to presume that a returning employee could not perform relevant job duties after a sixty-seven-day strike). It was not unreasonable for the Board to conclude that after fourteen years the returning employees would need retraining to bring them up to speed on the new technology and organization. The Union also argues that the fact that the returning employees were permitted to perform some overtime during their training establishes that the company’s business justification was pretextual. The Board rejected the Union’s argument because the employer treated all new employees the same, regardless of union affiliation. Additionally, the employees were given full overtime rights as soon as they showed their true abilities. Thus, the Board concluded that the business justification was unlikely to be a pretext for a prejudicial motive. In light of our deferential standard of review, we cannot say that the Board was wrong in its conclusion that the company established a legitimate business justification. We leave it to the Board to strike a balance between the asserted business justifications and the invasion of employee rights and in this case we will not disturb the Board’s decision. See Fleetwood Trailer Co., 389 U.S. at 378. FRESH FRUIT AND VEGETABLE WORKERS v. NLRB 11275