Opinion ID: 770652
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The removal of union literature from the union bulletin board

Text: 41 In the third incident, Dunning placed a copy of a Teamsters UPS contract update in a glass-enclosed bulletin board reserved for the Union's use. Under the union contract, UPS could police the union bulletin board and take down any literature that did not have union letterhead. The ALJ, though, found that UPS removed the contract update because it believed remarks in the document about UPS's safety record were deleterious to the company. 42 A dispute existed over which contract update was removed, because one update contained union letterhead and one had only a small Teamster's logo. The ALJ found no reason to decide which contract update was removed because, according to her findings of fact and weighing of witness credibility, the presence or absence of the letterhead had nothing to do with removal of the literature; the ALJ expressly found that the only reason the literature was removed is because UPS believed it was critical of the company and that the letterhead debate was a post-hoc attempt by UPS to justify its actions. The NLRB affirmed. 43 UPS contends that substantial evidence does not support the ALJ's conclusion that the lack of union letterhead was, in the ALJ's words, an ex post facto justification added sometime after the posting was removed. See JA 79. The ALJ based her decision on the testimony of supervisor, Terry Dubay, who actually removed the union publication. Dubay testified that he did not know of the union letterhead requirement when he removed the publication, but took it down because he felt it was anti-company in nature and discriminatory towards the company. JA at 401. Dubay called Manager Bill Soumis to ask whether he should remove the document, but Dubay did not remember discussing whether the union letterhead was on the document, and did not know at the time that a lack of union letterhead could be a reason for removing documents from the union bulletin board. See JA at 411-412. The ALJ, thus, did not find credible Manager Soumis's testimony that he asked Dubay to remove the document because it lacked letterhead, since Soumis made the request over the phone without seeing the document. The ALJ also did not find credible Soumis's testimony that he told the labor manager, Daniel Parks, still without seeing the document, that it lacked letterhead. 44 UPS argues that the ALJ ignored Daniel Parks's testimony that Parks directed Dubay to take down the union publication because it lacked letterhead. UPS misconstrues Parks's testimony; Parks asked Bill Soumis, or another manager, Brian Hack, to remove the document and send it to him, see JA 415, but, by this time, Dubay had already removed the document at Soumis's direction. Thus, even if Parks's testimony was credible, it is irrelevant to why the document was removed in the first instance. Thus, substantial evidence supports the ALJ's determination that the lack of union letterhead was not the basis for the removal of the literature and that the removal constituted an unfair labor practice 3 .