Court Opinion

ID: 9454175
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:38:28.652835+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:00.128278
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON REHEARING OF THE COURT EN BANC
SEITZ, Circuit Judge.
This is the decision on the Company’s petition to review and set aside a supplemental backpay order of the National Labor Relations Board and the Board’s request for its enforcement.
The present dispute arises out of a finding, approved by this court, that the Company had dismissed certain of its employees in violation of the Act. N. L. R. B. v. Buncher, d/b/a The Buncher Company, 316 F.2d 928 (3rd Cir. 1963). The Regional Director thereafter issued a backpay specification and Notice of Hearing formulated in accordance with § 102.52 of the Board’s Rules and Regulations. It contained a statement of the dollar amounts allegedly due each discriminatee as well as the following statement of the method employed by him in determining whether the discriminatees would have been discharged in any event for purely economic reasons after May 12, 1960:
“2. The first reduction in force at the Respondent Company’s Nine Mile Run facility subsequent to March 4, 1960, occurred on May 12, 1960.
“3. Each of the discriminatees was entitled to backpay in accordance with the weekly average hours worked by the employees of Respondent at the Nine Mile Run facility until May 12, 1960.
“4. When there was not sufficient work available at the Nine Mile Run facility after May 12, 1960 for all of the discriminatees and all of the other employees who were employed at the Nine Mile Run facility at the time of the discrimination, an appropriate method of determining each discriminatee’s entitlement to backpay during the period after May 12, 1960 is:
“(a) By allocating the available jobs at the Nine Mile Run facility among the discriminatees and the aforesaid other employees in accordance with their seniority; and
“(b) Only when sufficient work was not available at the Nine Mile Run facility for a discriminatee, then by allocating the available jobs at all of Respondent’s locations, namely, Nine Mile Run, Leetsdale and Yard, among the discriminatees and the other employees who were employed at all of said Respondent’s locations at the time of the discrimination in accordance with their seniority.
“5. The seniority referred to in paragraph 4 above is based on an employee’s most recent hiring date with Respondent.1”
The Company filed a response to the specifications in which it challenged the position that seniority was a permissible basis for calculating the backpay. It listed some ten criteria which it indicated were utilized by it to determine whether to retain or re-employ employees. It attached a chart purporting to apply the criteria to the discriminatees, retained employees, and employees first hired during the backpay period. It was admitted, however, that the chart was prepared after the fact on the basis of personal recollections by the Company’s su*789pervisors concerning 225 employees over a four and one-half year period.
Thereafter the matter came on for hearing. The Company sought to establish the validity of the chart attached to its response by the testimony of its supervisors. The trial examiner found that no employee was entitled to backpay for the period after May 12, 1960. He so concluded because the backpay claims were based on “seniority”, whereas the Company did not use seniority in effectuating reductions in force. The Board reversed and remanded holding that “an absence of the use of seniority by the Respondent does not render the General Counsel's utilization of seniority in this proceeding unreasonable, per se.”
Upon remand the trial examiner first considered the Company’s evidence in support of its claim that none of the discriminatees would have been rehired after May 12, 1960, because the employees retained or newly hired during that period met the Company’s employment criteria, and the discriminatees did not. The examiner, after noting that the evaluations were not based on any written records, concluded from his analysis that the Company’s testimony was “fraught with inconsistencies, internal contradictions, exaggerations and implausibilities”. He noted that the Company’s sole proprietor, Jack Buncher, had testified that there was nothing seriously wrong with the discriminatees’ work, and that he would rehire them if needed. He also found that the Company trained employees to perform tasks which the discriminatees could have been trained to perform. In the light of these and other findings, the trial examiner decided that “the charted information was contrived for the purpose of denying backpay to the discriminatees”. He therefore rejected the Company’s evidence and recommended that the Board adopt the specifications of the General Counsel.
The Board affirmed the examiner’s decision. It pointed out that since the Company’s “system” had been discredited it was impossible to determine precisely the amount of backpay in any particular case. It held further that to prevent the General Counsel from estimating the pay each discriminatee would have earned because he was unable to establish with certainty that the employees would have been retained would permit the Company to profit from its own wrong. In consequence the Board found that the premises underlying the General Counsel’s prima facie case were reasonable and directed the petitioner to comply with the examiner’s recommended order. The proceedings before this court followed.
Where it has been established, as here, that an employer has discharged employees discriminatorily, but it asserts in mitigation of backpay claims that such employees would have been laid off even absent such discrimination, it has the burden of proving that fact. N. L. R. B. v. Mastro Plastics Corp., 354 F.2d 170, 175-176 (2nd Cir. 1965), cert. den. 384 U.S. 972, 86 S.Ct. 1862, 16 L.Ed.2d 682 (1965). The examiner offered and the Company took full advantage of the opportunity to meet its burden of producing credible evidence from which a remedial formula might be adopted by the Examiner to approximate the result in the absence of discrimination.
A chart, prepared after the fact, was introduced into evidence by the Company. It listed numerous non-discriminatory factors and evaluations concerning the employees during the pertinent period, which tended to support the Company’s contention that none of the discharged employees would have been rehired. It also offered elaborate supporting testimony. The examiner found, and his findings have substantial record support when the record is considered as a whole, that the Company’s evidence contained so many pervasive infirmities that it was not a reliable basis for deciding the backpay issue. The matter being in this posture, was it arbitrary or unreasonable for the examiner to apply the seniority rule suggested by General Counsel? Admittedly, this Company did not have a formal seniority system. But the record in this case does indicate that *790length of service was a factor in its employment “policy.” Furthermore, the seniority standard represents “normal industrial practice generally.” NLRB v. Kartarik, Inc., 227 F.2d 190 (8th Cir. 1955). Thus, in our view, considering the credible evidence in this record, the seniority standard was a rationally permissible device for the examiner to employ in fashioning the remedy.
But the Company argues that there is no substantial evidence to support the use of the seniority formula and, further, that its use was in contradiction to other and previous findings of the Board which are said to have substantial evidentiary support. In our view, these contentions fail to give appropriate recognition to the manner in which these proceedings unfolded. Certainly the previous findings of the Board showed that the Company did not have a formal seniority system. But it does not follow that the use of such a factor in molding relief is automatically unreasonable where the Company, though having the burden and given the opportunity, failed to supply ' credible evidence in support of some other method of approximating the situation absent discrimination. Having in mind that the examiner was seeking an approximation, the remedy is not objectionable merely because it may not be consistent with the work histories, etc., of some of the employees involved. The Company had a full and fair opportunity to make its record in this already protracted proceeding. Since the burden here was on the Company, and since it failed to carry that burden, we think the examiner and the Board properly adopted the seniority device as a rational remedy on this record.
The Company attacks the examiner’s admittedly rough rule that seven consecutive days or less of interruption in employment was not deemed to constitute a break in seniority. The record showed that employees were often discharged for “cause” and rehired without any economic sanctions. The evidentiary history of this rather “personalized” operation justified some rule to cover this problem. We cannot say on this record that the period adopted was unreasonable.
Finally, we consider the Company’s contention that the Board erred in concluding that the Company was liable for backpay as to all discriminatees up to May 12, 1960, which was the date of the first economic reduction in force subsequent to the last discriminatory layoff.
The Company urges that the first layoff for economic reasons subsequent to the discriminatory one would have occurred during the week of March 10, 1960, because it was clear by that date that the Company was operating the Nine Mile Run facility efficiently with the reduced work force. From this premise, the Company reasons that, had it then carried thirty-five men rather than the twenty-two actually employed (there being thirteen discriminatees), it would have reduced its work force to twenty-two. This contention contains so many doubtful propositions that we cannot say the Board was unreasonable in rejecting it. First, of course, it suggests the Company would have been aware of the economic feasibility of operating the facility with twenty-two men on March 10, 1960. Considering the nature of the Company’s operation we do not think that there would have necessarily been such a precise correlation between economic efficiency and the number of employees retained. Another infirmity in the Company’s contention is its assumption that had there been a reduction in the work force for purely economic reasons the discriminatees would have been among those discharged. In any event, there is no basis for assuming that the discriminatees would not have been transferred to other operations of the Company. When these factors are considered in conjunction with the admittedly objective evidence of an economic reduction in force on May 12, 1960, we think the Board was justified in using that date as the commencement date for inquiry into possible economic justification for the discharge of the discriminatees. We say *791this without passing upon the correctness of the Board’s reasoning that the Company’s contention here constitutes an attempted relitigation of the unfair labor practice proceeding.
We think that, in these circumstances, the Board did not exceed its power in concluding that the Company did not make a showing entitling it to the relief requested with respect to the period prior to May 12, 1960.
We therefore deny the Company’s petition to review and to set aside the Board’s order and grant the Board’s cross-petition to enforce its order.

“1. An interruption of an employee’s employment for a period of seven consecutive days or less is not deemed to constitutes a break in seniority.”
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