Opinion ID: 358967
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Parties' Arguments: the Per Se Approach

Text: 39 Underlying Brockway's position is the conception that when a decision by an employer affects in a major way the structure of a firm, as does a partial closing, and when the closing is not colored by the presence of anti-union sentiment, as to which there is no issue here, the employer should be able to make such a determination without previously advising its employees or bargaining with them about it. 73 To buttress its contention, Brockway points to remarks in Royal Plating that the employer's decision in that case gave rise to a major change in the affected company. That language, Brockway urges, supports its position that whenever such a change is contemplated by the employer, as it is when a partial closing is considered, no duty to bargain exists. 74 40 The major premise of the Board's view, in sharp contrast to Brockway's, is that an employer has a duty to bargain about a decision to close one of its facilities, for such an action intimately affects the interests of the employees and is the sort of subject that the NLRA was designed to reach. However, at oral argument, the Board appeared to allow for at least one class of situations arising in a partial closing context where there is no duty to bargain, namely, when an employer elects to terminate completely a discrete line of its business. 75 41 Thus, Brockway commences by assuming that the private interest of an employer is so inviolable that when a partial closing is predicated on economic considerations, whatever they may be, there can be no duty to bargain about it. And the NLRB starts by postulating that whatever the specific circumstances, there normally is a public-law imposed duty to bargain about a partial closing, although that obligation may disappear when, for example, an employer decides to shut down entirely a distinct line of business. 42 The striking characteristic of these two positions is that they are quite extreme. Both tend to posit a Per se rule each being the mirror image of the other relating to the duty to bargain about partial closings. As such, they ignore the guidance of the Supreme Court in Fibreboard, which by its example counselled a practical, balancing approach to the problem of articulating the scope of the employer's duty to bargain under the NLRA. 76 43 As for Brockway's argument, it rests principally upon an attempt to read Royal Plating as expounding the proposition indeed, the Per se rule that an employer need never bargain about an economically-based decision to close one of its facilities. Yet Royal Plating does not stand, explicitly or implicitly, for such a rule or for any principle other than that directly stated in it, namely, that an employer faced with the Economic necessity of either moving or consolidating the operations of a Failing business has no duty to bargain with the union respecting its decision to shut down. (emphasis added) 77 Saying that there is no duty to bargain about a partial closing when the employer is faced with the economic necessity of moving or of otherwise restructuring the operations of a failing business is a far cry from indicating that an employer has no duty to bargain about a partial closing when its action is founded on economic considerations, whatever they may be. 44 The language in Royal Plating on which Brockway seeks in particular to rely 78 is misinterpreted when read as encompassing the notion that simply because an operational change like a partial closing is contemplated by an employer for undefined economic reasons, no duty to bargain obtains. Rather than saying that, the panel in Royal Plating took pains to distinguish its factual situation where there was an economic necessity of closing and the employer's business was failing from that in Fibreboard. 79 45 Moreover, Royal Plating explicitly concentrated on the need, in deciding what is a mandatory subject of bargaining, to weigh the competing interests of the employer against those of the employees. 80 In so doing, the opinion noted that the employer's decision to cease operations at one of its plants resulted only after a prolonged period of severe financial loss. Further, it was emphasized that the action of a municipal housing authority, which had designated for redevelopment the land on which the plant was located, rendered the prospect of bargaining a pointless one. 81 There would have been no value, the Court in effect was indicating, for the employer to have bargained about a decision utterly beyond its control. In light of these circumstances and there is no suggestion in the record here of anything comparable this Court held that there was no duty to bargain about the partial closing. 82 46 Since Royal Plating does not lend support to the Per se rule advanced by Brockway, as well as by the dissent, the core of such an argument cannot stand. 83 However, at the same time, we decline to adopt the opposing Per se rule. 47 Although it is surely the case, as the NLRB suggests, that the employees' keen interest in the possibility of a partial closing must not be ignored, it is equally true that that consideration should not be so highlighted as to blur the countervailing interests of the employer. One of the major norms governing the operation of the federal labor laws is that both sides of the controversy, the employer's and the employees', should be seen as crucial, and one should not be exalted to the exclusion of the other. As the Supreme Court stated in John Wiley & Sons v. Livingston: 84 48 The objectives of national labor policy, reflected in established principles of federal law, require that the rightful prerogative of owners independently to rearrange their businesses and even eliminate themselves as employers be balanced by some protection to the employees from a sudden change in the employment relationship. 49 In view of the principles of Fibreboard, Royal Plating and Wiley, then, a Per se rule covering this appeal cannot be accepted. 50