Opinion ID: 2996711
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: John Iaci

Text: We turn first to John Iaci. Iaci was involved in union activities in April or May 1997 when he distributed authorization cards and promoted the Union to his fellow employees. NLRB v. Q-1 Motor Exp., Inc., 25 F.3d 473, 478 (7th Cir. 1994). It is less clear that substantial evidence supports the second element of the prima facie case, knowledge of Iaci’s protected activities. To satisfy this element, the General Counsel had to show that the decisionmaker(s) responsible for the firing of Iaci knew that he was involved in union activities. Vulcan Basement Waterproofing v. NLRB, 219 F.3d. 677, 685 (7th Cir. 2000) (reasoning that “the decision-makers at Vulcan had to know of” the protected activities); Jim Walter Resources, Inc. v. NLRB, 177 F.3d 961, 963 (11th Cir. 1999) (reasoning that “[n]one of the persons who gave ‘bad attitude’ statements was ‘an agent responsible for hiring’ ”); Nos. 02-2504 & 02-2651 13 NLRB v. McEver Eng’g , Inc., 784 F.2d 634, 640 (5th Cir. 1986) (holding that “[b]efore an employer can be said to have discriminated against its employees for their protected activity, the Board must show that the supervisor responsible for the alleged discriminatory action knew about the” union activity); Air Surrey Corp. v. NLRB, 601 F.2d 256, 25758 (6th Cir. 1979) (vacating the Board’s order because substantial evidence did not show that the employee’s supervisor knew of his protected activity); see also Richdel, Inc., 265 NLRB 467, 475-75 (1982) (focusing on the decisionmaker’s knowledge of protected activities). In holding that the General Counsel had met his burden, the Board reasoned thus: [W]e find, contrary to [Sears’s] argument, that the record contains ample evidence of employer knowledge of Iaci’s union activity. The judge credited Iaci’s testi- mony concerning conversations with District Service Managers Medford and Graettinger in June and August, respectively. In the June conversation, Iaci was asked whether the “third party” “would go away” if Supervisor Smith were transferred. The term “third party” clearly referred to the Union. Thus, it is evident that [Sears] was aware that at the time that Iaci was involved with the Union. Graettinger’s reference in the August conversation to [Sears’s] decision not to transfer Smith indicates that Graettinger was aware of the content of Iaci’s June conversation with Medford. In addition, Iaci specifically mentioned the Union in the August conversation. The judge discredited Graettinger’s denial that he knew about Iaci’s union activities. We find the record sufficient to support a finding that [Sears] had knowledge of Iaci’s union support and activities. We agree that the record demonstrates that Medford and Iaci had a conversation about the Union. Medford, however 14 Nos. 02-2504 & 02-2651 was not the decisionmaker who fired Iaci; Graettinger made 6 that decision. Therefore, Medford’s knowledge of Iaci’s involvement with the Union is relevant only insofar as it may be imputed to Graettinger. Essentially, the Board imputed that knowledge to Graettinger because it reasoned that Medford had discussed with Iaci the possibility of transferring Smith in order to foil the drive toward unionization, Medford told Graettinger that Iaci might be interested in Smith’s transfer and, therefore, it was probable that Graettinger was aware of the antiunion context within which Smith’s possible transfer was broached. Considering that Iaci testified that Graettinger had told him that “Chris Smith’s name had come up with Mr. Medford, and he told me that she was not going to be moved,” a reasonable person could conclude that Medford and Graettinger had spoken, and that Iaci’s involvement with the Union was a topic of conversation. Although this statement was a thin reed to support the element of knowledge, we nevertheless hold that substantial evidence supports the Board’s finding that Graettinger knew of Iaci’s protected activities. We now turn to prong three of the prima facie case and must decide whether substantial evidence supports the Board’s finding that Graettinger acted because of antiunion animus. The Board identified three reasons upon which it based its finding of animus. The Board stated that, “[in] finding that the record supports an inference of animus, we rely on the timing of Iaci’s discharge and the ‘blatant disparity’ between the treatment of Iaci and that of other employees who engaged in similar work infractions.” In a 6 During oral argument, the attorney for the General Counsel conceded that “Graettinger is the decisionmaker . . . Graettinger is the one who fired Iaci. . . . The question needs to be whether or not he had bias.” Nos. 02-2504 & 02-2651 15 footnote, the Board added its third reason, stating that “[i]n addition, we agree with the judge that Medford’s question- ing of Iaci as to what steps [Sears] might take in order to make the Union ‘go away’ shows antiunion animus.” We begin with the timing of Iaci’s discharge. Coincidence between union activity and an employee’s discharge may, when added to other evidence of an employer’s antiunion motivation, form part of the substantial evidence underlying a finding of antiunion animus. Chicago Tribune Co. v. NLRB, 7 962 F.2d 712, 717-18 (7th Cir. 1992). The coincidence relied upon by the Board, however, is exceedingly weak. Iaci’s union activities consisted of distributing about 14 union authorization cards to, and discussing the Union with, coworkers in April or May 1997. Sears did not fire Iaci, however, until October 2, 1997, more than four months after his protected activities had ended. There is thus a significant lapse in time between Iaci’s protected activities and his discharge. Cf. NLRB v. Stor-Rite Metal Products, Inc., 856 F.2d 7 Although we need not resolve the matter in this case, we note that it is less clear whether the timing of an employee’s discharge, by itself, may constitute substantial evidence of antiunion animus. Some authorities hold that it may not. See Chicago Tribune Co., 962 F.2d at 717-18 (reasoning that “mere coincidence is not sufficient evidence of antiunion animus”); NLRB v. Loy Food Stores, Inc., 697 F.2d 798, 800-01 (7th Cir. 1983) (reasoning that evidence that the employer fired a worker while he was involved with an organizing campaign was not substantial evidence of the prohibited animus). At least one opinion holds that “[t]iming alone may suggest antiunion animus.” NLRB v. Rain-Ware, Inc., 732 F.2d 1349, 1354 (7th Cir. 1984). Still another authority takes a middle view, reasoning that “mere coincidence alone, without other circumstantial evidence, may not always support an inference of animus.” Martech Med. Products, Inc., 331 NLRB 487, 501 (2000). 16 Nos. 02-2504 & 02-2651 957, 965 (7th Cir. 1988) (asking rhetorically, “[i]f Stor-Rite acted with retaliatory intent, then why did it delay the full impact of its retaliation until months” after the protected conduct?). Further undermining the Board’s reliance on the timing of Iaci’s discharge is that the string of misconduct for which Sears first disciplined, and later purported to fire, Iaci began well before the union election and well before Iaci’s protected activities. See Chicago Tribune Co., 962 F.2d at 718 (noting that “Kaczmarek’s poor work record dated to well before the union election”); Peavey Co. v. NLRB, 648 F.2d 460, 462 (7th Cir. 1981) (noting that “it is undisputed that Snider had been disciplined, for cause, prior to her contact with the union”). It is undisputed that Iaci was disciplined and nearly fired in February 1997 for filing reports, in which he falsely claimed to have fixed appliances, months before he distributed authorization cards. The testimony of Christine Smith, testimony that the ALJ and the Board never acknowledged, was that Iaci continued to file reports, on various occasions from March through mid-August 1997, in which he falsely claimed to have repaired appliances. Smith testified that she had orally counseled Iaci about these infractions repeatedly. Iaci himself admitted in his written statement of October 2, 1997 that “[s]ometimes I did not do any check.” (Although the ALJ found that the last two sentences of Iaci’s statement were dictated by Gonzalez, she made no such finding as to the preceding statement, in which Iaci confessed to the same conduct for which he had been disciplined in February 1997.) Where, as here, an employee’s discharge purportedly stems from a series of disciplinary incidents or warnings that predate the employee’s union activities, the timing of that discharge rarely if ever constitutes substantial evidence of the employer’s antiunion animus. See id.; see also NLRB v. Nos. 02-2504 & 02-2651 17 Newman Green, Inc., 401 F.2d 1, 3-4 (7th Cir. 1968) (holding that no substantial evidence supported the Board’s finding of anti-union animus where the employee, who had been repeatedly disciplined for coming to work under the influence of alcohol, was fired for drunkenness); 1 The Developing Labor Law 297 (Hardin et al. eds., 4th ed. 2001) (reasoning that “the giving of warnings for specific conduct may suggest that a subsequent discharge based upon similar conduct is not discriminatorily motivated”). This case is no exception to the rule. Iaci had begun the series of infractions for which Sears ostensibly fired him well before he began his protected activities. And he had been counseled, if not warned, continually as these infractions occurred. In light of that consideration, no reasonable person could conclude that, simply because Sears fired Iaci more than four months after his union activities had ceased, it had therefore fired him because of his union activities. The temporal link between Iaci’s protected activities and his firing is, as we said in Chicago Tribune Co. v. NLRB, “too remote, indeterminate and ethereal” to amount to substantial evidence of antiunion animus. 962 F.2d at 718; cf. Medeco Sec. Locks, Inc. v. NLRB, 142 F.3d 733, 743-44 (4th Cir. 1998) (holding that no substantial evidence of knowledge could be inferred from the company’s decision to fire a worker within a year after he had ceased to be a visible supporter of the union and had disavowed further interest in the union). To reach the contrary conclusion, and hold that substantial evidence of antiunion animus exists merely when an employer knows of a worker’s union activities and later fires that employee, would be tantamount to making union activism a shield against discharge, which is a result that would be incompatible with the statute. Loy Food Stores, Inc., 697 F.2d at 801. Next, we look to the second reason that the Board found antiunion animus: “the ‘blatant disparity’ between the treatment of Iaci and that of other employees who engaged 18 Nos. 02-2504 & 02-2651 in similar work infractions.” The Board is correct in observing that the disparate disciplinary treatment of employees who engaged in union activities can constitute substantial evidence of antiunion animus. Great Lakes Warehouse Corp. v. NLRB, 239 F.3d 886, 891 (7th Cir. 2001). Despite opining that the discrepancy in treatment in this case was “blatant,” however, the Board did not identify a single employee who, like Iaci, falsified reports of service calls, but was treated differently than Iaci was treated. We would expect that, if the disparate treatment were really “blatant,” or even if there were just substantial evidence of disparate treatment, the Board would be able to point to at least one specific employee who was disciplined more lightly for infractions similar to Iaci’s misconduct. In Great Lakes Warehouse Corp. v. NLRB, for example, the Board’s decision as to disparate treatment rested on evidence that the employer “had been more lenient in the application of its disciplinary policy” toward specifically named employees who were less identified with the union. Id. at 889-91. Here, however, the Board identifies no such employee. Moreover, what is most perplexing about the Board’s silence on this point is that Sears does point to one other employee who committed basically the same conduct for which Iaci was fired. According to the uncontradicted testimony of Christine Smith, Bruce Edwards, whom Sears had employed since 1974, was another senior repairman under her supervision who, in March 1997, falsely reported that he was conducting a service call during a time in which he was actually at his own home. As she had done in Iaci’s case, Smith reported the problem to Medford, who asked Edwards to respond. Edwards admitted his misconduct and wrote a confession. Medford then suspended and demoted Edwards, and warned him that further misconduct of a similar nature would result in immediate discharge. When Nos. 02-2504 & 02-2651 19 Edwards returned to work, Smith scrutinized his routes more carefully. In mid-September 1997, when Smith learned that Edwards had changed the warranty date on an appliance that he owned, and then installed Sears’s parts for free, she reported the problem to Graettinger. After Gonzalez interviewed Edwards on October 2, 1997, and Edwards admitted his misconduct, Graettinger fired him. Edwards’s situation was almost a mirror image of Iaci’s situation. In early 1997 Medford suspended both, and gave both a last chance warning, for falsifying reports of their service calls. After confessing his misdeeds, each was allowed to return to work under Smith’s increased scrutiny. Both then falsified warranty dates, Iaci on a customer’s appliance, Edwards on his own. Had Sears not detected both falsifications, the effect of each would have been that Sears would have unwittingly given away parts and repairs for which a customer should have paid. After Graettinger became aware of Iaci’s and Edwards’s misconduct, he fired both in October 1997 after brief investigations by Gonzalez. There is only one glaring difference between Iaci and Edwards: in the case of Edwards, there is no evidence that he had any involvement with the Union. To refute the General Counsel’s allegation of disparate treatment, Sears cited the example of Edwards before the Board. There are strong parallels between Sears’s investigation and firing of Edwards and its investigation and firing of Iaci. Yet the Board (and the ALJ, for that matter) did not even mention Edwards’s name before concluding that there was a “blatant disparity” between Sears’s treatment of Iaci and other employees who had committed similar misconduct, but were not involved with the Union. It would have been error merely for the Board to select and discuss only the evidence that favored its conclusion (that Sears fired Iaci because of the prohibited animus), while failing to articulate 20 Nos. 02-2504 & 02-2651 its reasons for rejecting a line of countervailing evidence. Herron v. Shalala, 19 F.3d 329, 333 (7th Cir. 1994). What the Board did in this case, however, was worse. The Board not only ignored Sears’s Edwards-related evidence; it also failed to select and discuss the evidence that would have shown that Sears treated at least one similarly-situated employee differently than it treated Iaci. We therefore hold that substantial evidence did not underlie the Board’s disparatetreatment theory. We next address the final reason that the Board found animus regarding Iaci: Medford’s questioning of Iaci about how to make the “third party” “go away.” We agree with the Board that this conversation could be construed as substantial evidence of Medford’s antiunion animus. But Medford was not involved in the decision to fire Iaci and his antiunion animus, therefore, is irrelevant. What matters is the antiunion animus of Graettinger, the decision-making 8 supervisor who fired Iaci. See Vulcan, 219 F.3d at 686. Or, as the attorney for the General Counsel aptly put it during oral argument, “the question needs to be whether or not he [Graettinger] had bias.” Medford’s conversation with Iaci 8 In general, a decision to discharge an employee cannot be caused by an antiunion animus that the decisionmaker does not possess. We nonetheless note that there may be limited circumstances in which it is proper to impute the animus of a nondecisionmaker to the employer. In Grand Rapids Die Casting Corp. v. NLRB, 831 F.2d 112 (6th Cir. 1987), the Sixth Circuit held that the antiunion animus of a supervisor could be attributed to the company because, even though that supervisor was not the decisionmaker, he knew of the employee’s protected activities and was involved in the decision to fire the employee. Vulcan, 219 F.3d at 686 (citing Grand Rapids, 831 F.2d at 117). In this case, however, Medford was not involved in the decision to discharge Iaci, and his animus is totally irrelevant. Nos. 02-2504 & 02-2651 21 sheds no light on the issue of whether Graettinger acted out of ill will toward the Union, and therefore does not constitute substantial, or even relevant, evidence that antiunion animus caused Iaci’s discharge. The Board provided three reasons for its conclusion that Sears terminated Iaci’s employment because of antiunion animus: (1) the timing of the discharge; (2) the “blatant disparity” between Sears’s treatment of Iaci and its treatment of employees who committed similar offenses, but were not involved in protected activity; and (3) Medford’s conversation with Iaci about union activities. Because the evidence underlying these three reasons, taken individually or as a whole, does not constitute substantial evidence of Graettinger’s animus, we refuse to enforce the Board’s order insofar as it pertains to Iaci. We also refuse to enforce the Board’s order as to Iaci on an alternate ground: Sears had shown that it would have fired Iaci regardless of his protected activity, and the ALJ relied upon no substantial evidence when she reached the contrary conclusion. In its brief before the Board, Sears contended that it was entitled to the affirmative defense provided by Wright Line because it had fired Iaci for falsifying his production records by recording service calls he did not actually make and also because Iaci had changed the warranty date on a product to sell the customer a maintenance agreement. The Board rejected this argument without conducting its own analysis, stating that “[f]or the reasons set forth by the [ALJ], we agree” that Sears had not proven that it would have fired Iaci even without his union activities. On this point, we therefore review the ALJ’s decision for substantial evidence. NLRB v. Federal Sec., Inc., 154 F.3d 751, 755 (7th Cir. 1998). The ALJ’s first reason for rejecting Sears’s position was, essentially, that Sears had not fired a similar employee for 22 Nos. 02-2504 & 02-2651 committing the same offenses that Iaci had perpetrated, and that its claim of having discharged Iaci for filing false reports was therefore pretextual. The ALJ explained that Sears had introduced no evidence of any other employee of comparable seniority, 31 years, who was fired for doing service checks on a second appliance, or for changing warranty dates, or selling a maintenance agreement. The evidence of allegedly consistent discharges upon which [Sears] relied, those employees interviewed by investigator Gonzalez in the same time period, were dis- charged for garden variety theft, either of appliance parts or of money. Respondent introduced no evidence of any kind or of even minor discipline, much less discharge, for the same type of alleged infractions on the basis of which [Iaci] was allegedly discharged. Except for cases of ordinary theft, and in the cases of Hepburn and Richardson, [Sears] can point to no other employees who were interviewed by Gonzalez only, without any investigation by a service supervisor. The ALJ attacked two straw men. Sears never argued that Iaci’s dismissal was for “doing service checks on a second appliance . . . or selling a maintenance agreement.” It actually contended that it had fired Iaci for falsifying his production records by recording service calls he did not really make and also because Iaci had changed the warranty date on a product to sell the customer a maintenance agreement. Furthermore, the ALJ’s conclusion that Sears “had introduced no evidence of any other employee of comparable seniority, 31 years, who was fired for doing” the same thing that Iaci did was simply incorrect. As discussed above, Sears submitted evidence that it had fired Edwards, whose seniority was comparable to Iaci’s (23 years versus 31 years), for the same misconduct for which it discharged Iaci: Nos. 02-2504 & 02-2651 23 falsifying reports of service calls and a warranty date. As was true of Iaci, Edwards was interviewed by Gonzalez before he was fired. The ALJ, however, never mentioned Edwards’s name, much less explained why she was rejecting that line of evidence. We now turn to the second and final reason that the ALJ gave for rejecting Sears’s affirmative defense: that Iaci did not repeat the actions for which Sears had given him a “last chance warning” in February 1997. The ALJ reasoned thus: The evidence likewise shows that [Iaci] did not repeat his transgression of February 1997, which consisted of recording as “complete” [a] service call that had been cancelled before he had visited the location. The alleged transgressions upon which [Sears] relied in September and October 1997 were different, and were shown by testimony of neutral and reliable witnesses to be common practices, rather than egregious sins against [Sears’s] policy. [Sears] could point to no rules specifically prohibiting these practices. Even assuming that these practices technically violated a policy of [Sears], they were not shown to be cause for discipline of any kind among other service technicians. The essence of the ALJ’s reasoning was that, because Iaci’s transgressions of September and October were different from the conduct to which Iaci had admitted in February 1997 (falsely reporting that he had repaired items that he had not repaired), and because Iaci’s misconduct of September and October was not serious, the evidence proved that Iaci “did not repeat his transgression of February 1997.” In reaching this conclusion, however, the ALJ ignored Smith’s extensive testimony that, from March through August 1997, Iaci repeatedly filed false reports, claiming to have fixed 24 Nos. 02-2504 & 02-2651 9 appliances that he had not actually repaired. In other words, the ALJ ignored evidence that Iaci actually had repeated the very conduct that had caused Sears to issue its “last chance warning” in February 1997. This was error, because the ALJ was obligated to consider all relevant evidence, not just the evidence that favored her ultimate conclusion. Clifford v. Apfel, 227 F.3d 863, 871 (7th Cir. 2000). We therefore hold that the ALJ’s second reason for rejecting Sears’s affirmative defense, that Iaci “did not repeat his transgression of February 1997,” was not supported by substantial evidence. On the contrary, Sears had submitted ample evidence that Iaci had repeated his transgressions of February 1997 on several occasions during the summer. Accordingly, we refuse to enforce the Board’s order as to John Iaci on the alternate ground that Sears is entitled to the affirmative defense provided by Wright Line.