Court Opinion

ID: 9650723
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:50:28.712168+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:25.606080
License: Public Domain

KERNER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Section 8(a) (1) of the Act provides that “It shall be an unfair labor practice for an *872employer * * * to interfere witli, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 7 * * Section 7 of the Act provides that employees shall have the right to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing. The question is whether respondents’ conduct toward the union amounted to interference with respondents’ employees in the exercise of. their rights guaranteed in § 7 of the Act.
The National Labor Relations Act guarantees to all employees the right to bargain collectively through their chosen representatives, and makes it the duty of the employer to bargain collectively only with the chosen and duly recognized representative of the employees. This obligation, it has been said, is exclusive, and exacts and requires the negative duty to treat with no other. Bargaining by an employer directly with his employees, whether a minority or majority, who have not revoked their designation of a bargaining agent, would be subversive of the collective bargaining which the statute ordained. And under the decisions of the Supreme Court the law is settled that it is a violation of the essential principle of collective bargaining and an infringement of the Act for an employer to disregard the bargaining representatives by negotiating with individual employees prior to a revocation of their authority. Medo Photo Supply Corp v. National Labor Relations Board, 321 U.S. 678, 64 S. Ct. 830, 88 L.Ed. 1007; May Department Stores Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 326 U.S. 376, 66 S.Ct. 203, 90 L.Ed. 145. See also National Labor Relations Board v. Martin Bros. Box Co., 7 Cir., 130 F.2d 202, 204.
The question of what inference should be drawn from the evidence is a function that belongs to the Board. National Labor Relations Board v. Link-Belt Co., 311 U.S. 584, 597, 61 S.Ct. 358, 85 L.Ed. 368; National Labor Relations Board v. Southern Bell Telephone & Telegraph Co., 319 U. S. 50, 60, 63 S.Ct. 905, 87 L.Ed. 1250. And the possibility of drawing either of two inconsistent inferences from the evidence does not prevent the Board from drawing one of them. National Labor Relations Board v. Nevada Consolidated Copper Corp., 316 U.S. 105, 106, 62 S.Ct. 960, 86 L.Ed. 1305. Certain it is, that by the letter of April 15, 1946 respondents calculated to by-pass and undermine the position taken by the chosen and duly recognized representative of the employees, and by thus negotiating with their employees at a time when the question of wages, hours and working conditions was still pending, they ignored the union as the employees’ exclusive bargaining representative. In this state of the record I think the Board was justified in finding that respondents had violated § 8(1) of the Act. Consequently, I would enforce the order of the Board.