Court Opinion

ID: 9459485
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:21:49.977776+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:10.940555
License: Public Domain

KILEY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
I agree that the “key sub-issue” is whether the Board erred in overruling the Company’s challenge to Viles’ ballot.
In my opinion “the matter of voter eligibility rests primarily with the Board and ... in its expertise and experience in handling labor-management relations, it should decide this issue, subject, of course, to right of review.” Macy’s Missouri-Kansas Division v. NLRB, 389 F.2d 835, 846 (8th Cir. 1968). I think in reviewing the Board’s decision on Viles’ eligibility to vote we are limited to deciding whether the Board abused its discretion.1
The majority opinion rests upon rules distilled from several cases: Viles was no longer sufficiently concerned with the unit’s employment conditions under Shoreline Enterprises of America, Inc. v. NLRB, 262 F.2d 933, 944 (5th Cir. 1959); had no community of interest under NLRB v. Belcher Towing Co., 284 F.2d 118, 121 (5th Cir. 1960); and no longer had any reasonable expectation of reemployment under Whiting Corp. v. NLRB, 200 F.2d 43, 45 (7th Cir. 1952), and Lake City Foundry Co. v. NLRB, 432 F.2d 1162, 1168-1169 (7th Cir. 1970).
None of those cases concerned an employee who was discharged for cause after he finished his work the day of the election. In Shoreline the question of eligibility depended on whether the challenged votes were in the unit involved. In Belcher the question was whether a parttime employee had sufficient continuity to gain a community of interest.
In Whiting the challenged voter quit two weeks before the election because he was unable physically to do the work, and said he would not return. This court set aside the Board’s finding of eligibility as not supported by adequate proof. In Lake City this court decided that the record did not support the Board’s finding that Kent was an employee when demand for recognition by a union was made because he had — a half hour prior to the demand — been told of the company decision to discharge him, and his final check had been prepared. This court, on authority of Whiting, said Kent could not have had any reasonable expectation of further employment.
Viles was discharged election day after completing his work and, presumably, being paid, and only three minutes before the voting began. The day before the election the Company had “strong suspicion” that Viles stole Company tires *466and sold them for his own profit. Instead of firing Viles on the day he received that information, the president, Normington, left a note on Viles’ truck to report after he had “completed his scheduled route” the next day, the day of the election. This court’s opinion states no good reason why Viles could not have been fired before election day. The Company must have known where he lived and could have communicated with him. The Company seeks to excuse its failure to discharge him the morning of election day on the ground that drivers left the premises several hours before management personnel arrived. This is unpersuasive. It is true that Viles did not report after he completed his work election day, as the note directed him to do. But he was on the premises after 3:31 p. m. and was not discharged until 3:57 p. m. He was requested to report twice after 3:31 p. m. but did not do so until 3:50 p. m.
In Macy’s the Eighth Circuit considered the question of voting rights of strikers and their permanent replacements employed after the strike began. The court thought both were entitled to vote since both had a legitimate interest in their jobs, even though the strikers were not employed on the day of election nor the replacements employed on the initial eligibility date. And in NLRB v. General Tube Co., 331 F.2d 751, 752 (6th Cir. 1964), the Sixth Circuit found “no standard . . . which as a matter of law deprives the . . . Board of power to declare an employee eligible to vote where she was on the eligible list and worked the full day of the election,” even though she had announced the morning of the election her intention to quit and had been paid for the day ending at 4:01 p. m., at which time she stood in line to vote. The court discussed this court’s Whiting decision denying employee status by reference to the Board’s then (1964) standard of “reasonable expectation of reemployment within a reasonable time in the future.” The Sixth Circuit observed that the rationale for the standard seemed to be “simply that no more objective standard was available.” General Tube 331 F.2d at 753. The court stated that its research disclosed no instance where the Whiting standard was applied where the employee worked for the full day of election.
The general rule is that to be eligible to vote in an election one must be employed during the current payroll period and on the day of election. Macy’s, 389 F.2d at 842. In Macy’s the question was whether three new employees not employed during the payroll period were eligible to vote. The court noted the “difficult and perplexing chore” of determining voting rights in connection with an economic strike. The court said that both the strikers and their replacements had an interest in their jobs and in the outcome of the election.
There is of course no question of eligibility of economic strikers or their replacements here. The Macy’s decision, however, discusses, in considerable detail, the tortuous path Board decisions and Congressional policy have taken in resolving voter eligibility, pp. 843-846. The Macy’s decision shows the lack of rigidity in applicable standards of eligibility to the stage where, despite the general rule, economic strikers with no expectation of reemployment are eligible to vote and the permanent replacements for them are also eligible. Thus the general rule does not always hold with respect to the eligible payroll period or to the day of election. Viles, however, satisfied both parts of the general rule.
It seems therefore that neither employment on the day of election nor on the eligibility date has been rigidly required for employee eligibility to vote. Presumably the Board in deciding Viles’ eligibility was well acquainted with the variation in applicable standards and with the history of voter eligibility showing a lack of rigidity in applying the rules relied upon by the majority. The Board’s expertise has been historically relied upon in adjusting application of the eligibility rules to the needs of varied factual situations. In the case before us I see no abuse of discretion in the *467Board’s finding that Viles was eligible to vote even though he could not expect to be reemployed by the Company, since he cannot be said to have no concern with employment conditions at the Company or to have no interest in the outcome of the election, and he had worked and was paid for a full day on election day.
I would enforce the Board’s order.

. There is no argument made that Viles’ misconduct forfeited his voting right, if he was otherwise eligible.