Court Opinion

ID: 9445456
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:29:23.14167+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:25:11.644022
License: Public Domain

MAGRUDER, Chief Judge
(concurring).
The record contains no history of anti-union bias by this company. At an election conducted by the Board on October 7, 1952 (stated at the oral argument to have been a “consent election”), the United Steelworkers Union failed to win a certification by the Board as the bargaining representative of the employees in Coppus Engineering Corporation. This is the union which filed the charges in the instant proceeding.
It must not be forgotten that the employer, too, has a legitimate interest in having an established channel of communication between his employees and management, the only limitation being that the employer is forbidden to use his economic power in any way to fetter the free choice by his employees of their representative.
Therefore, after the employees had rejected the outside union at the election in October, 1952, it does not seem to me that the company was open to criticism when its president, later in that year, suggested to the men that they form a permanent committee with which the management might deal. This is quite apart from the fact that this suggestion was an event which occurred more than six months prior to the filing of the charges of unfair labor practices in the present case (see the proviso in § 10(b) of the Act).
No doubt, strong argument could be made that the resulting Shop Committee was an inherently weak bargaining representative, and a feeble instrument for conducting bitter economic warfare, as contrasted with a union affiliated with a strong national labor organization. But it may be that the employees at this particular plant did not feel the need of any different type of bargaining representative. The choice was theirs, and the Act guarantees to them freedom to exercise that choice, unimpeded by employer interference or coercion. If the employees should freely choose a different bargaining representative, there is no basis in the record for an inference *574that the company would drag its feet in resistance to recognition of such a new bargaining representative, as the law requires. However, the statute does not make it the duty of the employer, nor a function of the Board, to “baby” along the employees in the direction of choosing an outside union as their bargaining representative.
In view of the inherent weakness of this Shop Committee as a bargaining representative of the men, perhaps it can truly be said that the management representatives hold the trump cards in any collective bargaining negotiations. But I do not think that the evidence as a whole warrants the inference that the company dominated or interfered with the formation or administration of the Shop Committee, within the meaning of § 8(a) (2) of the Act. Therefore, that part of the Board’s order requiring the company to “disestablish” the Shop Committee, “or any successor thereto,” as the recognized representative of its employees, certainly should not be enforced by this court.
But § 8(a) (2) also forbids an employer to throw his strength on to the scales by contributing “financial or other support” to any labor organization; and sometimes such a contribution of support, not amounting to “domination,” may justify a Board remedial order in negative terms directing the company to cease and desist from the forbidden practice of furnishing such support. See, generally, The Carpenter Steel Co., 76 N.L.R.B. 670, 671-74 (1948).
However, in the present case the instances of “support” relied on border on the trivial; and I doubt whether the Board would have issued any order against the company had it realized that it could not go the whole way and order the disestablishment of the Shop Committee. On the principle of “de minimis” I am content that on the employer’s petition we set aside the Board’s order in its entirety, and that the Board’s cross-petition for enforcement of its order be denied.