Court Opinion

ID: 9459222
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:13:47.764397+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:04.266014
License: Public Domain

EDWARDS, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
In this case respondent company and the union entered into a labor agreement to run for three years, beginning September 16, 1967. Three months before the date for expiration of the agreement, the union requested negotiations for renewal, and the company informed it that it would no longer recognize the union as bargaining representative for its employees, since it felt the union did not represent a majority. Coincidentally there were numerous efforts by two supervisory employees to persuade the employees to sign statements indicating that they repudiated the union.
At the expiration of the agreement, the union called a strike and filed unfair labor practice charges, claiming 8(a)(1) (coercion) and 8(a>(5) (refusal to bargain) violations. 29 U.S.C. § 158(a)(1), (5) (1970). The Hearing Examiner who heard the testimony found 8(a)(1) violations in the interference and coercion by the supervisory employees, and the Board seeks enforcement of same. The opinion of the court finds substantial evidence to support these findings and grants enforcement of the 8(a)(1) order, and I concur.
The real dispute in the case, however, concerns respondent’s contention that it was entitled to show at the hearing before the Hearing Examiner that the original agreement of September 16, 1967, was procured as a result of the influence of a supervisory employee who it is claimed organized the employees into the union concerned. The Hearing Examiner refused to admit this evidence on the basis of Section 10(b), 29 U.S.C. § 160(b) (1970). This section provides that “no complaint shall issue based upon any unfair labor practice occurring more than six months prior to the filing of the charge with the Board . . . .”
On its face this section simply bars complaints pertaining to unfair labor practices over six months old. But the United States Supreme Court has interpreted it also as a rule of evidence concerning the admissibility of past events which would constitute unfair labor practices.
In the Bryan Manufacturing Co. case Justice Harlan spelled out the applicable Supreme Court rule:
It is doubtless true that § 10(b) does not prevent all use of evidence relating to events transpiring more than six months before the filing and *336service of an unfair labor practice charge. However, in applying rules of evidence as to the admissibility of past events, due regard for the purposes of § 10(b) requires that two different kinds of situations be distinguished. The first is one where occurrences within the six-month limitations period in and of themselves may constitute, as a substantive matter, unfair labor practices. There, earlier events may be utilized to shed light on the true character of matters occurring within the limitations period; and for that purpose § 10(b) ordinarily does not bar such evidentiary use of anterior events. The second situation is that where conduct occurring within the limitations period can be charged to be an unfair labor practice only through reliance on an earlier unfair labor practice. There the use of the earlier unfair labor practice is not merely “evidentiary,” since it does not simply lay bare a putative current unfair labor practice. Rather, it serves to cloak with illegality that which was otherwise lawful. And where a complaint based upon that earlier event is time-barred, to permit the event itself to be so used in effect results in reviving a legally defunct unfair labor practice. Local 1424, IAM v. NLRB (Bryan Mfg. Co.), 362 U.S. 411, 416-417, 80 S.Ct. 822, 826-827, 4 L.Ed.2d 832 (1960). (Footnote omitted.)
The rule of the Bryan Mfg. Co. case has been extended by this court and others to apply to bar evidence sought to be introduced to defend alleged unfair labor practices. NLRB v. District 30, UMW, 422 F.2d 115 (6th Cir. 1969), cert. denied, 398 U.S. 959, 90 S.Ct. 2173, 26 L.Ed.2d 543 (1970); NLRB v. Tragniew, Inc., 470 F.2d 669 (9th Cir. 1972); Lane-Coos-Curry-Douglas Counties Bldg, v. NLRB, 415 F.2d 656, 659, n. 7 (9th Cir. 1969).
The crucial point in our present case is that the evidence as to which the court remands this case is clearly evidence of “a legally defunct unfair labor practice” and hence barred by the language employed above by Mr. Justice Harlan to describe “the second situation.”
A labor agreement, once negotiated, is entitled to a presumption of validity and there is a presumption that once a union majority has been recognized, it continues until there is proof that the majority has been dissipated or that the employer has “a reasonably grounded good faith doubt of [the union’s] majority support.” Terrell Machine Co. v. NLRB, 427 F.2d 1088, 1090 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 398 U.S. 929, 90 S.Ct. 1821, 26 L.Ed.2d 91 (1970); Bally Case & Cooler, Inc. v. NLRB, 416 F.2d 902 (6th Cir. 1969), cert. denied, 399 U.S. 910, 90 S.Ct. 2201, 26 L.Ed.2d 562 (1970). Without the admission of the evidence of the claimed invalidity of the original agreement, the Board’s finding of an unfair labor practice in respondent’s refusal to negotiate is clearly supported by substantial evidence — a conclusion which I do not believe my colleagues dispute.
I would grant enforcement of the 8(a)(5) order also.