Opinion ID: 271751
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Coughlin's Taxicab Earnings

Text: 16 If an unlawfully discharged employee finds interim work, his earnings are deducted from gross backpay due. But the rule requiring deduction of interim earnings applies only to earnings during the hours when the employee would have been employed by the employer in question. Phelps Dodge Corp. v. NLRB, 1941, 313 U.S. 177, 198 & n. 7, 61 S.Ct. 845, 85 L.Ed. 1271, citing Pusey Maynes & Breish Co., 1 NLRB 482, 486 (1936). Thus, the Board has held that if, during the backpay period, a discriminatee maintains a full-time job and supplements his income by casual, part-time employment, his supplemental earnings are not deductible from gross backpay. Belle Steel Company, Inc., 135 NLRB 1378, 1380 (1962); Acme Mattress Co., 98 NLRB 1439; Link Belt Co., 12 NLRB 845, 872. 17 Coughlin was discharged March 1, 1961. The Miami Teamsters hired him as an organizer in July 1961 at $75 per week. The trial examiner credited Coughlin's testimony that he was putting in an average of 40 hours a week with the Teamsters during the two quarters of the backpay period in question (1961-4 and 1962-1). During the same period Coughlin worked at various hours between 5 p. m. and 4 a. m. as a taxicab driver. He admits to having earned from this moonlighting $142.16 over a six-week period, or about $22 a week. The examiner found these were indeed supplemental earnings for employment held outside Coughlin's full working hours for the Teamsters [and] were properly    not deducted from gross backpay.    18 The employer makes two attacks on the Board's affirmance of the trial examiner. First, it asserts that the taxicab earnings are not supplemental, because Coughlin's job with the Teamsters was not full-time. Coughlin did testify that he sometimes reported to work as late as 10 a. m., sometimes worked in the evening on organization campaigns, and did not work under strict supervision. Nevertheless, this testimony does not contradict Coughlin's earlier testimony that his work was full-time. Maintaining a rigid 8 a. m. to 5 p. m. schedule is not necessary to a full-time job if the employee works an average of 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. 19 Coca-Cola also argues that Coughlin's taxicab earnings are not supplemental, because he did not work part-time as a taxicab driver before the discharge. The reported cases permitting non-deduction of supplemental earnings involve situations where an employee who had spare-time earnings prior to discharge from his regular job continued in the same spare-time job during his period of discharge. E. g., Belle Steel Company, Inc., supra; Acme Mattress Co., supra; Melrose Processing Co., 151 NLRB 134 (1965). Coughlin had never driven a cab while working for Coca-Cola, but he had been moonlighting. Before his discharge, he had worked during the football season at the Orange Bowl for Union News Co., a company operating concessions dispensing Coca-Cola. In 1958 he supplemented his earnings by working nights and weekends in the mailroom of the Miami Daily News. 20 Since Coughlin worked full-time with the Teamsters while he drove a taxicab at night, and since he had been moonlighting before his unlawful discharge, we think that the fact that he changed his spare-time employment is not enough to prohibit characterization of his taxicab earnings as supplemental. 21 We enforce that part of the Board's order refusing to deduct the cab earnings from gross backpay.