Court Opinion

ID: 9652706
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:30:36.688989+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:53.638147
License: Public Domain

GOODRICH, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part).
The issue between the majority and the dissent in this case is a narrow one. It has to do only with that part of the former opinion which conditioned the enforcement of the order upon redetermination by the Board of the bargaining agent. This point we do not believe to be settled by International Association of Machinists, etc., v. National Labor Relations Board, 1940, 311 U.S. 72, 61 S.Ct. 83, 85 L.Ed. -. The opinion in that case devotes considerable space to the evidence that the rival union had been, at least, assisted by the employer. Where this circumstance exists or where the loss in membership of the union once having the majority has been influenced by unfair labor practices on the part of the employer there is, to us, a situation which seems quite different. Accordingly •when the employees sought to intervene at the original hearing in order, inter alia, to show that they had of their own free will withdrawn from the union the Board should have permitted them to do so since the character of the Board’s order against the employer was directly dependent on whether the union was still entitled to represent the employees.
There is no competent evidence that the loss in union membership was influenced by the employer’s unfair labor practice. Even if the Board may make the assumption that there is a causal relationship between unfair labor practices on the part of the employer and loss in union membership *500when the unfair practices are contemporaneously present, certainly there is no irrebuttable legal presumption of cause and effect. We do not see how the testimony of those who perhaps would testify to the contrary may fairly be rejected.
The majority opinion gives to a unit once selected the power to be the exclusive bargaining agency for an indefinite time regardless of whether at the time of the hearing this unit may represent only a very small minority of the employees. If the dissipation has come about by unfair labor practice on the part of the employer it may well be that the policy of the act requires election to be treated as conclusive until those practices aré purged. But where there is no evidence of the sort, and evidence to the contrary is rejected, it seems to us a very important difference exists. The majority opinion points.out that the employees may under § 9 express a new choice. But the very enforcement of an order directing collective bargaining with one agent necessarily gives to that agent that possession which always has been regarded as nine points of the law. Such possession is just as valuable in collective bargaining as it is in the retention of tangible property. It seems to us that to award it to an admitted minority against what is claimed to be an uncoerced majority is a turning away from those realities which the majority opinion purports to consider.
MARIS, Circuit Judge, concurs in this dissent.