Court Opinion

ID: 9729490
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:37:57.423088+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:58.637568
License: Public Domain

HOPPER, J.
I concur with regard to the holding on the unfair labor practice and wish to state my position with respect to the remedies being stricken. I agree that those remedies are so disproportionate to the unfair labor practice under the peculiar circumstances of this case (there being no evidence in the record that any employees other than Maxwell became aware of the unfair labor practice) as to be an abuse of discretion. I reach this conclusion on remedies reluctantly because I personally believe the issue of appropriate remedies is best left to the administrative agency using its expertise developed over large numbers of cases, and I recognize that generally a court “must not enter the allowable area of the Board’s discretion and must guard against the danger of sliding unconsciously from the narrow confines of law into the more spacious domain of policy” (Phelps Dodge Corp. v. Labor Board (1941) 313 U.S. 177, 194 [85 L.Ed. 1271, 1283, 61 S.Ct. 845, 852, 133 A.L.R. 1217]). We also must keep in mind that the Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA) allows broader remedial relief than does the National Labor Relations Act (compare § 10(c) of the National Labor Relations Act and the corresponding ALRA provision found in Lab. Code, § 1160.3).
In the absence of an abuse of discretion this court is required to give considerable weight to an administrative determination. Such determination should stand unless there is an abuse of discretion. I agree that there is a showing of abuse of discretion in this case. The mailing, reading and educational remedies ordered by the board under these *692particular facts are oppressive and punitive in nature. Generally, education of, and information to, employees is well within the purposes of the ALRA. Employees are interested parties who are entitled to know the results of hearings on alleged unfair labor charges. Their experience may influence their future participation in the benefits of and the exercise of rights under the ALRA. In the vast majority of cases the mailing, reading and educational remedies will be appropriate upon the finding of an act of unfair labor practice. Not so under the particular circumstances present in this case. To swat a fly one uses a fly swatter or similar weapon, not a bazooka.
Finally, I offer a suggestion. Without wishing to appear pompous, presumptuous or officious, and at the risk of slipping into the spacious domain of policy which belongs to the board, and fully aware that there are even more onerous remedies available, I suggest that in the use of remedies for their possible deterrent effect, the board might well consider the question: If every unfair labor practice, no matter how picayune it might be, and no matter which party (employer or labor organization) commits it, warrants the remedies ordered stricken here, what does one do for an encore in the way of a remedy when the unfair labor practice is in fact egregious?
A petition for a rehearing was denied February 10, 1981, and petitioner’s application for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied March 11, 1981. Bird, C. J., did not participate therein.