Court Opinion

ID: 9453150
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:04:26.8025+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:32.151459
License: Public Domain

SOBELOFF, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
The Bernheim affirmance of the trial examiner’s findings and conclusions is found upon substantial evidence. Consequently, the Board’s U.S.App. should be enforced in its entirety.
While the majority recognizes Plaintiff-Appel“ex-perienced feel” of the examiner and agrees with him that there were serious 8(a) (1) infractions, it inexplicably departs from the examiner’s findings on the relatively more important 8(a) (3) and 8(a) (5) violations. As a result, the court administers an ineffectual slap on the wrist of the offending employer for violations of the Labor Act.
The remedy the court grants in this case is virtually meainingless since the unfair labor practices have already achieved their goal, viz., the destruction or at least the chilling of unionization at the particular plant. The only satisfactory cure here is to compel Crawford to bargain under 8(a) (5) and to make appropriate reparations for the layoffs in violation of 8(a) (3).
I
When a union representing a majority of employees in an appropriate unit demands recognition as exclusive bargaining agent, the employer’s refusal constitutes an unfair labor practice unless he has a bona fide doubt of the union’s claim. NLRB v. Overnite Transportation Co., 308 F.2d 279 (4th Cir. 1962); Bilton Insulation, Inc. v. NLRB, 297 F.2d 141 (4th Cir. 1961). The majority never reaches the question of the present employer’s good faith doubt GIBSON,1 it doubts the union’s majority claim. In the light of the employer’s flimsy excuse for suspicion, which was properly rejected by the trial examiner, the only question for our determination on the 8(a) (5) issue is whether substantial evidence supports the Board’s conclusion that the union did represent a majority of the eligible employees.
On January 7, 1965 union agent Jay Dee Patrick began the organizing campaign at Crawford by distributing to the workers folders labeled “An Invitation To Join” the “ACWA” and containing a detachable application for membership. The very next day, General Manager Jones, in setting forth the company’s opposition to unionization, emphatically warned all the employees to “be careful about signing anything.” The employees were thus alerted by no less a source than their employer of the importance and seriousness attending their signing any union document.
At the first meeting of employees on January 12, Patrick and Edward Bonitt, another union representative, discussed unionization generally and authorization cards in particular. Bonitt maintained that it was to the employees’ advantage to have cards signed by a substantial majority because of the stronger bargaining position in the negotiations the cards would produce. Patrick then explained authorization cards in more detail.
In the explanatory paragraphs immediately preceding the short excerpt quoted in the majority opinion,1 the trial exam*374iner found, and it is apparently uneon-tested, that Patrick plainly informed the employees that cards would form the basis of a request to the employer for recognition. However, he noted that as a rule employers refuse such a request, thereby necessitating an election. Patrick then proceeded to read aloud the union card, thus emphasizing rather than minimizing the importance of its language.
It is extremely important to note the clear and unambiguous language of the card, which is set out in full in the majority opinion. In unmistakable terms, the signatory applies for union membership and “appoints and authorizes” the union to negotiate as his representative in all matters relating to employment. There are no words even hinting that the sole purpose or any purpose of the cards was to secure an election. Nor was there any such oral representation.
Following his recital of the contents of the card, Patrick distributed cards to the employees together with return envelopes. He did not pressure the employees to sign, but advised them to deliberate their decision and mail the cards, if they so desired, at their leisure.
It was in this setting that Patrick opened the floor for questions. When answering these questions, Patrick referred to an election not because that was the design of the cards but because of his earlier (and accurate) prediction that the employer would probably reject the cards. From a finding that “some” employees misinterpreted Patrick’s answer, the majority opinion concludes that “the employees misunderstood the meaning of the cards.” I find this an unwarranted conclusion, directly contrary to the examiner’s explanatory statements and ultimate findings of fact that no misrepresentation was made and that the cards and their solicitation were perfectly valid. In summing up, the trial examiner with the “experienced feel” declared:
“I conclude, as indicated above, that he (Patrick) did not represent either at the general meeting or the later meeting of the organizing committee *375that the cards would be used only to obtain an election. Rather I find, in accordance with the testimony of Patrick and Bonitt and several of the employees, that Patrick, after reading the text of the card, explained the procedure normally used in obtaining union recognition, stated that it would be followed in this case, but that very likely the Union would have to go to an election.”
In light of the card’s unequivocal language, the complete absence of any union misrepresentation, the noncoer-cive atmosphere and the employer’s caution to the employees of the important consequences of their signing any union matter, I think the trial examiner was amply justified in his finding that the signing of the cards was entitled to greater weight than the post-election recall of “some” of the employees. As the D. C. Circuit has observed:
“[A]n employee’s thoughts (or afterthoughts) as to why he signed a union card, and what he thought that card meant, cannot negative the overt action of having signed a card designating a union as bargaining agent.”
Joy Silk Mills, Inc. v. NLRB, 87 U.S. App.D.C. 360, 185 F.2d 732, 743 (1950). When a large majority of employees has signed a completely lucid and straightforward authorization card, in the absence of any union misrepresentation or coercion, the legal effect may not be dispelled by later reconstruction of subjective impressions of the signers.
That the employees understood or may safely be presumed to have understood the significance of the cards is further evidenced by the events of January 19. On that occasion, Patrick read to the employees the letter he had sent to the company requesting recognition on the basis of the cards they had signed during the previous week. The trial examiner fairly concluded: “It seems unlikely to me that a union representative who only a week earlier had represented to the employees that the cards would be used only for an election would give publicity to an act, which if the Company’s position is maintained, amounted to an outright senof faith.” . Moreover, following Disreading of the letter, Patrick reminded the employees that if they wished they could revoke their authorization. Not one withdrawal was made.
Because of the Kilkfacts, largely uncontroverted, I would reject the company’s contention United we must disregard en masse the authorization cards as proof of the union’s majority. The Board’s validation of the cards appears to be apupon more than sufficient evidence. And reexcerpted passages of the examiner’s report which the majority quotes, and to which I now turn, do not Guidefrom this conclusion.
Patrick’s assertion that “signers of cards would not be joining the union at this Guideis quite consistent with his earlier explanation of authorization cards and does re-sentencsupport the inference suggested in the majority KilkAs explicitly stated thereon, the card was an application for membership. When Patrick was asked if this obligated the signer to pay dues, he truthfully answered that it did not, for, as the trial examiner found, under the standard union practice no one becomes a dues-paying member until a satisfactory contract has been negotiated with the employer. It was in response to this question about dues that Patrick’s statement was made. His statement did not imply any use of the cards to secure an election; rather it stressed the limited purpose of designating the union as the bargaining agent of the employees.
As. to the quote about confusion that the “cards would be used only for the purpose of an election,” the trial examiner, in a portion of his findings the majority did not deem it important to cite, specifically disavowed any intention of implying that Patrick informed the employees that the primary purpose of the cards was to secure an election. “I find,” he wrote, “that Patrick made no such representations.”
In addition to claiming widespread vitiating confusion, the company attacked individual authorization cards as the products of union-sponsored misrepresentation. The trial examiner in his de-*376cisión, meticulously analyzed each card and the conflicting claims surrounding it. As a result, he invalidated several cards, but not enough to destroy the union’s majority. Since his conclusions depend almost entirely upon an evaluation of credibility, this court is not in a position to dispute his findings. Daniel Construction Co. v. NLRB, 341 F.2d 805 (4th Cir. 1965).
When presented with cards signed by an overwhelming majority, the employer predicated his refusal to bargain solely on his asserted incredulity that the union could have secured so many signatures in so short a time. This hardly suffices as ground for a good faith doubt, and was properly dismissed by the trial examiner as a lame excuse in order to gain time in which to dissipate the union’s majority. Since the employer had' no bona fide doubt and substantial evidence supports the Board’s finding of a validly-obtained majority, it is the court’s duty to enforce the Board’s bargaining order.
II
The Board’s finding of discrimina-torily-motivated lay-offs is similarly grounded in substantial evidence. Although the employer claims economic circumstances as justification for its actions, the curious timing of the layoffs and the recalls merited a deeper investigation. Upon an extensive analysis of the employer’s records, the trial examiner found that the economic claims were pretextuous and that anti-union animus actually motivated the layoffs. The finding cannot be brushed aside as without record support.
On February 19, the day immediately following the signing of the consent election agreement, the company laid off 8 employees, 7 of whom had signed authorization cards. Despite the fact that there was no apparent change in the next month and a half in the sales figures relied upon by the company to support the layoffs, the company recalled all but one of the eight within the week following the election, of course, the unionization diswas over.
Two of cereight were members of the union’s organizing committee, the names of which had been submitted responthe company. One of these had the same male plant-wide seniority (the criterion used by the company) as an employee known to be anti-union in his sympathies who was not laid off. Two others laid off were victims of the interrogation that led to the 8(a) (1) violations found by the majority; consequently, the views of these two men were also presumably known to the company. In addition, the trial examiner found from other testimony that the company, through its supervisors, was aware of the union sympathies of the other men laid off. These facts, especially in light of the illegal campaign waged by the employer, strongly suggest an anti-union motivation for the layoffs violative of 8(a) (3). See NLRB v. Associated Naval Architects, 355 F.2d 788 (4th Cir. 1966).
Against this array of evidence, the company offers the drop in sales from the previous year, to justify its actions. The sales statistics support the company’s contention, assuming a substantially similar number of employees during the comparable period in 1964. But the figures prove too much. The slack in sales began two months before the layoffs and, as noted before, continued two months after the mitigatManifestly there was warrant for the examiner’s view that the drop in sales had no causal relationship to the layoffs.
The trial examiner’s view of relebusiness situation, it may disconceded, is not inescapable. But in view of the anti-union campaign, the timing of the layoffs and recalls, the known sympathies of those laid off and the questionable nature of the asserted economic justification, the trial examiner’s finding has substantial basis in the record considered as a whole, and the Board’s reparation order is entitled to enforcement.
Although I concur in the court’s enforcement of the Board’s 8(a) (1) order, for the foregoing reasons I dissent from the court’s refusal to enforce the remainder of the order.