Court Opinion

ID: 9638094
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:32:58.436374+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:03.576978
License: Public Domain

SIMONS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Review of the legislative history of the Wagner Labor Act, the labor literature of the period preceding and following its enactment, and the many decisions interpreting and applying it, leads inescapably to the following conclusions: (1) That the dominant purpose in the minds of its proponents was the fashioning of mechanism by which “laborers,” “workers” and “production men” in the great mass industries, until then impotent, might achieve bargaining power on a parity with the economic power which the development of such industries had lodged in the hands of the employing class ;1 (2) that prior to and for a substantial period following the enactment, supervisory employees were not identified with the labor movement, were for the most part without labor consciousness, generally considered themselves allied with the employing class and occupying a status above standards needing unionization;2 and (3) that orders of the Labor Board imposing discipline upon employers for violations of the Act stem almost invariably from discrimination, threats, espionage and domination by such supervisory employees.3
Wherefore, I adhere to the views expressed in the dissent to the decision in the above cause, always keeping in mind that the Labor Act must be construed in the light of the social and economic conditions that brought about its passage, and I would grant the petition for rehearing.

 The Status of Supervisory Employees under the NLRB. Walter L. Daykin, Associate Professor of Labor Economics, University of Iowa, 29 Iowa Law Review 297. In re Maryland Drydock Co., 49 NLRB 733; In re Union Colleries Coal Co., 41 NLRA 165, dissenting opinion of Gerard D. Reilly.

 Almost any Labor Board case decided by a Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court of the United 'States.