Opinion ID: 2994875
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: 2d 714, 718 (7th Cir. 1987); see also Medo

Text: Photo Supply Corp. v. NLRB, 321 U.S. 678, 683-85 (1944). This prohibition forecloses individual negotiations with unit employees, in most cases even if collective bargaining negotiations have reached an impasse. McNealy v. Caterpillar, Inc., 139 F.3d 1113, 1118 (7th Cir. 1997). Furthermore, the duty to refrain from undermining the union’s status as exclusive bargaining agent precludes promises of benefits or threats of sanctions to union members that have the effect of reducing the employees’ support for their union. Beverly California Corp., 227 F.3d at 817, 832-33. The Board concluded that NRM repeatedly engaged in these forms of prohibited activity. We see no need to lengthen this opinion with yet another rehearsal of the facts. Wehrli’s meetings with the drivers while negotiations were still underway and his warnings that those who did not buy a truck would be laid off support the Board’s findings. NRM attempts to cast these meetings as nothing more than occasions during which Wehrli was providing accurate information to employees about a business opportunity. In the context of the ongoing collective bargaining negotiations over the very proposal at issue, however, we find the Board’s characterization more accurate: [T]he meetings were efforts to enlist the employees in the sham transactions by which [NRM] would carry on the ready mix delivery operations without the obligations or costs of a union contract. 329 NLRB No. 19 at 11. These meetings amounted to direct dealing in violation of section 8(a)(5) of the Act. With respect to the section 8(a)(1) violation that the Board found in connection with Wehrli’s statements that the employees would lose their jobs if they did not accept the terms of NRM’s subcontracting plan and that subcontractors would not be members of the collective bargaining unit, the record again supports the Board. We find no merit in NRM’s procedural objection to the effect that the charges complaining of the alleged threats made at the meetings and to individual NRM employees were not timely filed. The threat charges arose from the General Counsel’s investigation into precisely the situation about which the Union had complained in its charge filed June 9, 1992. The threat charges properly related back to the June 9, 1992 complaint, and the Board properly considered them. NRM’s argument on the merits that the employees could not have seen these statements as threats, because Wehrli was simply inviting the employees to negotiate new agreements as owner- operators, is meritless as well. To constitute a prohibited threat under the Act, a statement must only reasonably tend[ ] to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the free exercise of their protected rights. NLRB v. Q-1 Motor Express, Inc., 25 F.3d 473, 477 (7th Cir. 1994). The relevant perspective is that of the employees. Wehrli made it clear to unit workers at the May meetings and on the picket line that their only choice was between becoming subcontract owner-operators outside the current bargaining unit and losing their jobs. NRM concedes that this happened. The Board was entitled to conclude that the employees with whom Wehrli talked would have felt coerced into abandoning the Union in the midst of the Union’s ongoing collective bargaining negotiations with NRM. The Board’s conclusion that NRM violated section 8(a)(1) is well within the bounds that this record would support. F. Wrongful Discharge and Failure to Reinstate The Board found that NRM violated sections 8(a)(5) and 8(a)(3) of the Act by transferring unit work to non-unit personnel in order to eliminate the Union as the unit bargaining representative. The Board also found that NRM violated section 8(a)(3) of the Act by failing to reinstate employees who made an unconditional offer to return. Again, we find the Board’s conclusions to be supported by substantial evidence in the record. The charges were sufficiently related to the initial complaints to be properly before the Board, and our approval of the Board’s section 8(a)(5) analysis with respect to the transfer of unit work to non-unit subcontractors is equally applicable here. Section 8(a)(3) of the Act prohibits 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. The Board reasoned that NRM violated section 8(a)(3) when it forced union employees to choose between abandoning their union to become owner-operator subcontractors and having no job at all. In effect, the Board viewed NRM’s statements as a promise that there would only be work for those who renounced their union membership. The Board properly concluded that imposing this impermissible choice upon the unit workers was a violation of the Act. See Canteen Corp. v. NLRB, 103 F.3d 1355, 1365-66 (7th Cir. 1997). In this case, those NRM drivers who refused to abandon the Union in order to participate in NRM’s unilaterally implemented switch to subcontract hauling were constructively discharged as NRM sold its trucks and replaced bargaining unit workers with owner-operator subcontractors. The fact that the unit employees were on strike at the time is of no consequence. We thus affirm the Board’s conclusion that NRM violated section 8(a)(3) of the Act by offering only those who would abandon the bargaining unit continued employment. Finally, the Board found that NRM violated section 8(a)(3) of the Act by refusing to reinstate striking workers who made an unconditional offer to return to work. It is settled that unfair labor practice strikers are entitled to reinstatement upon making an unconditional offer to return to work. Lapham-Hickey Steel Corp., 904 F.2d at 1188; accord Richmond Recording Corp. v. NLRB, 836 F.2d 289, 292 (7th Cir. 1987). The Board found, and we agree, that this was an unfair labor practices strike,/2 and there is substantial evidence in the record to support the Board’s conclusion that an unconditional offer was made and that NRM did not reinstate the workers. Given the absence of any contrary evidence in the record, this evidence is sufficient to support the Board’s finding that NRM failed to reinstate the striking workers in violation of the Act.