Court Opinion

ID: 9463908
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:19:57.039262+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:21.403381
License: Public Domain

HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge,
dissenting:
I cannot agree with the conclusion that the employer violated its commitment to the union when it ceased its deduction and transmission of dues from employees who had notified it of their withdrawal from the union.
In Article II, Section 1 of the contract, quoted in the majority opinion, the employer agreed “to check off from the pay of its employees, who are members of the Union, the regular monthly dues and initiation fees * * In Section 2, the union agreed to furnish “individual dues deduction authorization slips voluntarily signed by the employees * * There was no reference anywhere in the contract to any union representation cards which included initiation fees and dues deduction authorizations with a limited right of revocation.
Nothing in the authorization cards collected by the union in its organizational campaign had any direct legal impact upon the employer, though collectively there may have been a collateral consequence if they established an employer duty to recognize and bargain with the union.
After recognition, when union and employer met at the bargaining table, the employer could have taken any position it wished with respect to the check off of union dues. It could have insistently declined to make any such deductions. If it took that position it would not have invalidated the authorization cards, for the employer had the right to decline to agree to do what the cards purportedly authorized it to do. It could, of course, have obligated itself to deduct union dues until the authorization was revoked in the manner provided in the union authorization cards, but no language to that effect is to be found in the contract. Since the employer was under no legal obligation to make such a commitment, since it had a right to refuse to make any deductions or to take any intermediate position, we must look to the language actually employed by the contracting parties to determine the extent of the employer’s commitment.
In Section 1 of Article II, the company’s agreement was to check off “from the pay of its employees, who are members of the Union, the regular monthly dues * * It had a perfect right to say, if it wished, that it would deduct the dues of authorizing union members so long as they remained union members, but no longer. And this seems to me clearly the meaning of the clause “who are members of the Union.” The clause is not logically descriptive of all employees, and there is no logical explanation for the presence of those words except as a limitation upon the employer’s commitment to deduct and remit dues.
This seems to me to be emphasized by Section 2, for the union agreed to furnish “individual dues deduction authorization slips voluntarily signed by the employees * * The union authorization cards, actually filed with the company by the union, are commonly referred to as “cards” and not as “slips,” and the requirement of Section 2 could have been met by the filing of new slips simply authorizing the employer to deduct the dues of union members so long as they remained union members.
It is incomprehensible to me that, if the contracting parties had existing union authorization cards in mind as the measure of the employer’s contractually assumed obligation, they would not have said so and that they would not have included a reference to the limitations upon the rights of revocation as contained in the cards. That they did not strongly suggests to me that they contracted without reference to the *401cards. I cannot strain the language actually employed by the parties to be an incorporation by reference of cards so easily described, if that was what the parties had in mind.
Since the employer had the right to limit its check off obligation to the accruing dues of union members, so long as they remained union members and had filed dues deduction authorization slips with it, since the contract language is wholly consistent with that intention, and seems to me not readily susceptible to any other construction, I would deny enforcement of the Board’s order.