Court Opinion

ID: 9643470
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:30:21.495758+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:59.994656
License: Public Domain

LINDLEY, District Judge
(concurring).
The difference between my associates apparently grows out of the question of whether the employer for good cause terminated the relationship of employer and employee as to the trespassers who seized its property and otherwise violated the state law. That such seizure did occur is undisputed; that the act was “illegal” and “foolish” the respondent admitted; indeed, such characterization of the act is that of counsel for respondent. In fact, it has been finally adjudicated by the state courts upon appeal, after full hearing, that certain employees seized the plant, locked and bar'ricaded it from the inside, employed fire extinguishing chemicals belonging to the employer to repel attempts of law enforcement officers to enforce judicial orders, bombarded the officers with sulphuric acid and pipes, bolts, nuts, and similar steel and iron articles. Many other acts of violence by the trespassers ensued, resulting in damage to and loss of property seized of the value of many thousands of dollars. “Illegal and foolish” are mild descriptive terms for the uncontradicted events.
Thereupon, directly and clearly, the petitioner discharged the wrongdoers solely because of their illegal acts. The evidence justifies no equivocation as to that conclusion. The discharge was justified and the employer was not thereafter under any obligation and sustained no relationship to the discharged men. They were no longer employees; consequently the Board’s order being based erroneously (in part) upon a contrary premise, must be vacated. I do not think the law intends that an employer who has discharged acknowledged law violators can be compelled to reinstate them and in case of refusal be said to be, because of such action, a violator, himself of the national law. I find nothing leading me to believe that Congress so intended.
In National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 45, 46, 57 S.Ct. 615, 628, 81 L.Ed. 893, 108 A.L.R. 1352, the court pointed out that the act does not interfere with normal exercise of the right of the employer to select its employees or discharge'them, and then continued:
“The employer may not, under cover of that right, intimidate or coerce its employees with respect to their self-organization and representation, and, on the other hand, the Board is not entitled to make its authority a pretext for interference with the right of discharge when that right is *383exercised for other reasons than- such intimidation and coercion.”
When we remember that the discharge in the instant case was grounded solely upon the wilful illegal acts of certain employees, and not upon membership in the union, a fact that is fortified by the re-employment of certain of the trespassers who were members of the union, it is apparent that under the decision of the Supreme Court the Board may not treat it as unjustified. This conclusion is supported also by the language of the Supreme Court in Associated Press v. National Labor Relations Board, 301 U.S. 103, 132, 57 S.Ct. 650, 654, 81 L.Ed. 953, as follows:
“The act does not compel the petitioner to employ any one; it does not require that the petitioner retain in its employ an incompetent editor or one who fails faithfully to edif the news to reflect the facts without bias or prejudice. The act permits a discharge for any reason other than union activity or agitation for collective bargaining with employees. The restoration of Watson to his former position in no sense guarantees his continuance in petitioner’s employ. The petitioner is at liberty, whenever occasion may arise, to exercise its undoubted right to sever his relationship for any cause that seems to it proper save only as a punishment for, or discouragement of, such activities as the act declares permissible.”
See also Standard Lime & Stone Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 4 Cir., 97 F.2d 531, June 13, 1938; Appalachian Elec. P. Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 4 Cir., 93 F.2d 985.