Court Opinion

ID: 9469839
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:50:13.934931+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:35.474884
License: Public Domain

*297COHN, District Judge.
I concur in the result reached in Part II of the panel opinion; I respectfully dissent from Part I. I believe my colleagues give too little weight to the National Labor Relations Board’s determination that the In-Plant Representation Committee was a “labor organization” as defined in Section 2(5) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 152(5). See N.L.R.B. v. Production Molded Plastics, Inc., 604 F.2d 451, 453-54 (6th Cir. 1979). My reading of the record supports the Board’s conclusion that the committee was a labor organization as defined in Section 2(5) as interpreted by the Supreme Court in N.L.R.B. v. Cabot Carbon Co., 360 U.S. 203 (1959). See 249 N.L.R.B. No. 54 (1980).
However much there may be a need for “bona fide, socially desirable employee committee[s] or joint employer-employee committee[s] that [are] something less than a labor organization and something more than a Great Books Study Group”, N.L.R.B. v. Walton Manufacturing Co., 289 F.2d 177, 182. (5th Cir. 1961) (Wisdom, J., dissenting in part), that objective should not be achieved by overly restricting the definition of a labor organization. Rather, I believe, the test to be emphasized is employer domination, Section 8(a)(1), (2) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 158(a)(1), (2). See Modern Plastics Corp. v. N.L.R.B., 379 F.2d 201 (6th Cir. 1967).