Opinion ID: 717542
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Unlawful Discharge of Striking Employees

Text: 17 The law is well settled that an employer may permanently replace an employee who is participating in an economic strike. NLRB v. Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co., 304 U.S. 333, 345-46, 58 S.Ct. 904, 910-11, 82 L.Ed. 1381 (1938); see also NLRB v. Curtin Matheson Scientific, Inc., 494 U.S. 775, 790, 110 S.Ct. 1542, 1551, 108 L.Ed.2d 801 (1990); Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Independent Fed'n of Flight Attendants, 489 U.S. 426, 433-34, 109 S.Ct. 1225, 1230-31, 103 L.Ed.2d 456 (1989) (collecting cases). An employer may not discharge a striking employee, however, until the employer has engaged a replacement worker to fill the employee's position. NLRB v. International Van Lines, 409 U.S. 48, 52, 93 S.Ct. 74, 77, 34 L.Ed.2d 201 (1972). If an employer gives a striker notice that he has been discharged before that time, then the employer has committed an unfair labor practice and may be required to reinstate the worker with back pay. Id.; see also NLRB v. Mars Sales & Equip. Co., 626 F.2d 567, 572-74 (7th Cir.1980). 18 In this case the operations manager of Noel Foods told employees less than two hours before the strike began that those who walked out would be permanently replaced and that the Company had hired replacement workers; the Board concluded that a reasonable employee would have understood those statements to be notice that he would be removed from his position as soon as he walked off the job. If Robbins's statements can reasonably be understood as a notice of discharge effective when the employee joined the strike--which we will assume although we are less than fully confident--then that discharge would be unlawful only if it occurred before the employee had in fact been permanently replaced. In other words, with respect to the four striking night-shift employees, the Company's conduct was unlawful only if at the time the discharge became effective--that is, at midnight when they walked off the job--the positions held by those employees were vacant. Neither the Board nor the ALJ, however, made findings to that effect; indeed, the record contains evidence that far more replacement workers reported for work at midnight than were needed at that time. Similarly, the employees who spoke with Robbins by telephone that night could not have been effectively discharged until they failed to show up for their shifts the next day; there is no evidence, however, that replacement workers were not available to step into those strikers' jobs as soon as the day shift began. Although the Board adopted the ALJ's general observation that at the time Robbins made his statements the task of marshalling a measurably complete replacement program was not yet even under way, neither the ALJ nor the Board points to evidence that any one of the ten employees who were effectively discharged as of the time they went on strike was not immediately and permanently replaced. Without the support of substantial evidence on this point, the Board's holding that the statements effected unlawful discharges cannot be sustained. 19 Rather than analyze this case in terms of whether the employees were replaced by the time they were discharged--that is, when they went on strike--the Board focused upon whether Robbins's statements that the Company had hired permanent replacements were false when he made them. The Board derived this approach from its decision in American Linen, upon which it relied for the proposition that a false statement that permanent replacements had been obtained effectively resulted in withholding from strikers the right to return to their unoccupied jobs solely because they went on strike. 315 N.L.R.B. at 907. Accordingly, the Board held that the employer in this case effectively discharged the striking employees because its statements that replacement workers had been hired were made at a time when the Respondent had not in fact hired permanent replacements for all the potential strikers. Id. at 908. 20 The Board's reliance upon American Linen is misplaced. In American Linen the employees had voted for an economic strike to begin a few days after the vote. The general manager of the employer discovered the plan when he arrived for work at 6:15 a.m. on the appointed day only to find that the strike had already begun. He quickly drafted a handwritten notice and distributed it to the picketers between 6:30 and 6:45 a.m. The notice read, You have until 7 a.m. [today] to return to work. If you have not, you are permanently replaced. 945 F.2d at 1430. The Board found that although the employer had prepared for a strike by accepting job applications and by preparing a list of supervisory personnel from other plants who could come to [the plant] to assist, there was not sufficient time in the early morning hours of October 2 for these plans to go into effect. Id. at 1432. 21 The Board construed the notice as an unlawful discharge effective at 7:00 a.m. According to the Board, an employer's right under Mackay Radio permanently to replace economic strikers does not extend to withholding from them the right to return to their unoccupied jobs simply because they have gone out on strike. A false statement that permanent replacements have been obtained accomplishes this unlawful end. 297 N.L.R.B. at 137 (citing Mars Sales & Equip., 626 F.2d at 573). Because the employer had not and could not have actually hired permanent replacements by the time indicated in the notice, the employer in fact made a false statement when it indicated that striking employees would actually be permanently replaced by 7 a.m.... When the time specified in the ultimatum arrived without the [employer's] having corrected its erroneous replacement claim and without the employees' having yielded to the threat by abandoning their strike at the outset, the unlawful terminations occurred. 297 N.L.R.B. at 137. 22 In enforcing the order, the Eighth Circuit took an approach significantly different from that of the Board: the court did not rely at all upon the falsity of the employer's statement about replacements at the time the statement was made. Because the Board had concluded that the employer could not have hired and did not in fact hire permanent replacements by 7:00 a.m.--a finding supported by substantial evidence--the court simply treated the notice as a discharge of economic strikers whose jobs had not been promised to replacement workers at the time of their discharge. 945 F.2d at 1432-33 (citing, inter alia, Mars Sales & Equip., 626 F.2d at 574). 23 In this context discharge is a term of art. When an economic striker is permanently replaced, he is discharged only in the sense that he is separated from his prior position. The replaced striker remains an employee within the meaning of the Act and, if he offers unconditionally to return to work, is entitled to reinstatement should his former (or a substantially equivalent) position become vacant. NLRB v. Fleetwood Trailer Co., 389 U.S. 375, 378, 88 S.Ct. 543, 545-46, 19 L.Ed.2d 614 (1967); Gibson Greetings, Inc. v. NLRB, 53 F.3d 385, 389 (D.C.Cir.1995); Corson & Gruman Co. v. NLRB, 899 F.2d 47, 50 (D.C.Cir.1990); cf. L.A. Water Treatment, Div. of Chromalloy Amer. Corp. v. NLRB, 873 F.2d 1150 (8th Cir.1989) (addressing whether employer's statement you are no longer employed effectively severed employment relationship altogether by implying that striker was no longer an employee with a continuing right to reinstatement). Without much discussion, however, and without concluding that a request for reinstatement would have been futile, both the Board and the Eighth Circuit held that an employer unlawfully discharges even a striker who has not sought reinstatement when the employer falsely tells him that he has been permanently replaced. See 297 N.L.R.B. at 137; 945 F.2d at 1433. In this case the Company suggests that the Board's decision in American Linen may be wrong because the strikers never sought and therefore were never denied reinstatement, but the Company explicitly stops short of making that argument. We therefore confine our decision to whether Robbins's statements effectively discharged the employees before their positions were filled by replacement workers; we do not address whether the employees' failure to seek reinstatement undermines the Board's holding that they were unlawfully discharged. 24 Assuming that the Eighth Circuit was correct in its analysis, we think that the Board erred in concluding that this case falls within the rule of American Linen on the ground that the statement by Robbins was false when made. The relevant questions are instead whether the statement conveyed the impression that the employees would be replaced as soon as they went on strike and whether they were in fact replaced at that time. Indeed, even under the Board's characterization of American Linen in this case, a false statement is unlawful only if it effectively result[s] in withholding from strikers the right to return to their unoccupied jobs, 315 N.L.R.B. at 907; yet the Board failed to answer the question whether the strikers' jobs at Noel Foods were ever unoccupied. Accordingly, American Linen provides no support for the Board's focus upon whether the statements about permanent replacements were false when made rather than upon whether the employer actually carried out its stated intention by the appointed time. 25 Even if we approved of the Board's emphasis upon the question whether the statements were false when made, however, we are not persuaded, based upon the Board's factual findings, that the statements were actually false. When Robbins told the employees that the Company had hired permanent replacements, the Company had indeed arranged for permanent replacements. Noel Foods had previously contracted with an employment agency to prepare a roster of people ready to serve as replacement workers in the event of a strike, and the agency had in fact identified 20 workers who were ready, willing, and able. Shortly after the employees voted to strike, the Company's human resources manager contacted the agency and told them to provide as many of these replacement workers as possible by midnight. Fifteen replacements reported for work, and those who were not placed in positions that evening were asked to return in the morning. (In addition, some of the Company's employees from outside the bargaining unit were available to replace the strikers, and their permanent transfer into unit jobs would have been consistent with their normal career paths.) 26 Supposing that a replacement worker cannot actually be hired until a worker goes on strike, the evidence indicates that the Company did everything it could do short of actual hiring to ensure that a significant number of replacement workers would be available to report to work when the strike began. Accordingly, even upon the Board's analysis, we are not persuaded that any Noel employee was unlawfully discharged by reason of Robbins's statements. 27 Nor are we persuaded by the Board's argument on appeal that Robbins's statements were unlawful because the Company could not possibly have had enough workers lined up to replace all the potential strikers--that is, the entire bargaining unit--as soon as the strike began. Again, the relevant question is whether any employee was actually discharged before he was replaced. By making a broad statement about permanent replacements in advance of their being formally hired, an employer takes a risk that the number of strikers it effectively discharges will exceed the number of replacements available; the employer's gamble is not unlawful, but it may be unsuccessful--if the number of replacement workers turns out to be too low. 28 In this case, as the Board recognized, the only employees who were effectively discharged by Robbins's statements were those who both heard the statements and went out on strike. See 315 N.L.R.B. at 907 (those night crew employees who did not yield to the unlawful threat and engaged in the strike were effectively terminated). Because only four night-shift employees struck at midnight and fifteen permanent replacements (along with several non-unit employees) were available to begin work at that time, it appears that the Company's gamble paid off; none of the night-shift employees was discharged unlawfully for want of an immediate replacement. Likewise, there is no evidence, let alone substantial evidence, that the striking day-shift employees who spoke with Robbins by telephone were not replaced immediately when their shift began. 29