Court Opinion

ID: 9464132
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:25:50.788029+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:28.470287
License: Public Domain

ROSENN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I agree that the Board abused its discretion in excluding Franciscans from the St. Francis faculty bargaining unit. I write separately for two purposes: first, to express my perception of the inadequacy of the Board’s proffered explanations for the exclusion, and, second, to emphasize the limitations of the court’s decision.
I.
The Board has stated that community of interest in wages, hours, and working conditions is the “prime determinant of whether a given group of employees constitutes an appropriate [bargaining] unit.” Continental Baking Co., 99 N.L.R.B. 777, 782 (1952). Accord, NLRB v. Caravelle Wood Prods., Inc., 504 F.2d 1181, 1183 (7th Cir. 1974); *256Wheeler-Van Label Co. v. NLRB, 408 F.2d 613, 617 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 396 U.S. 834, 90 S.Ct. 90, 24 L.Ed.2d 84 (1969); see NLRB v. Quality Markets, Inc., 387 F.2d 20, 22-23 (3d Cir. 1967). In this case, the Board concluded that, for two reasons, the Franciscan faculty members lacked the requisite community of interest with the college’s lay faculty. The Board determined that (1) differences in salary and fringe benefit arrangements between religious and lay faculty and (2) the “special and complex relationship” between Franciscan faculty and the college supported the exclusion of religious faculty members from the bargaining unit. I believe that the first basis for the exclusion was arbitrary and unreasonable and that the second was unsupported by the evidence of record.
A.
The Board asserts that because the Franciscans “assign” their salaries to their monastery, which in turn donates approximately half of the assigned amount to the college, the religious in effect receive only half the salary paid to lay faculty members. For this reason, the Board maintains, and because the Franciscans’ poverty vow generally circumscribes their control over the money they receive, the religious do not share the lay faculty’s interest in remuneration. The same premise, of course, underlies both reasons — that interest in receiving wages can be deduced from the use to which the wages are put.
I do not believe that an employee’s subjective interest in the compensation he or she receives should be considered by the Board in determining whether that individual shares a community of interest with his or her fellow employees. When the Board ventures into the mysteries of individual motivation, it renounces the reasoned decision-making that is its statutory charge and pursues instead a course of unavoidable speculation. See generally Indianapolis Glove Co. v. NLRB, 400 F.2d 363, 368 (6th Cir. 1968). The Board itself has acknowledged that it has no special expertise in appraising an employee’s desire for income, Niagara University, 227 N.L.R.B. No. 33, 94 L.R.R.M. 1001, 1003 n. 6 (1973), and has generally avoided attempting such assessments outside the religious faculty cases. I believe that the traditional objective tests used by the Board to determine community of interest, see majority opinion at p. 249, are more than adequate to guide the selection of appropriate bargaining units, and should not be adulterated with subjective inquiries. The factors that the Board has historically considered are, unlike subjective individual concerns, easily ascertainable and subject to intelligent judicial review.
In this case, the Board’s analysis of the employees’ community of interest in wages should have terminated once the Board concluded that the scale and manner of determining earnings were identical for lay and Franciscan faculty members. Instead, the Board went further and inquired into the Franciscans’ subjective interest in their income. The method of executing that inquiry — inferring an employee’s interest in receiving wages from the use to which the wages are put — underscores the speculation inherent in the inquiry itself. It is unreasonable to assume, as the Board did, that because the religious do not spend their income on themselves they have less interest in their earnings than lay employees: a self-denying employee may well have a great interest in the measure of his beneficence. It is equally unreasonable to assume, as the Board did, that because a portion of the Franciscans’ earnings is indirectly returned to the college as a contribution that they have less interest in their salary than lay employees. The salary concerns of an employee who knows that a part of his earnings will be returned to the eleemosynary institution by which he is employed can be complicated; furthermore, such an employee may retain more interest in the fraction of his earnings that he does not contribute than a typical employee retains in his entire salary.
Even if the employees’ philosophical or pragmatic interest in wages could be ascertained without speculation, which I doubt, the use of such a criterion entails a *257line-drawing among individuals that can only be described as arbitrary. In my view, any exclusion of employees from a bargaining unit which rests on the Board’s estimate of the employees’ subjective interest in salary is per se unreasonable.
The evidence in this case establishes that the lay and Franciscan faculty members are paid according to the same scale, and that the manner of determining earnings for both groups is the same. That evidence was sufficient to make out a community of interest in wages. Differences in fringe benefit arrangements were too insignificant to suggest any difference in interests between the two groups. The Board’s first reason for excluding the Franciscans from the bargaining unit is, I conclude, without any rational basis.
B.
The Board’s second reason for barring the Franciscans from the unit was the “special and complex” relationship between Franciscan faculty members and the college. Had any objective evidence been adduced to establish the nature of that relationship, this reason might have constituted a valid basis for the exclusion. To be sure, there was evidence that the Franciscans take a vow of obedience, but that pertains to religious matters only. And there was testimony regarding the historical relationship between the college and the Order, but no meaningful description of the present connection between Franciscan employees and the college. The record simply does not support the inference that, for purposes of collective bargaining, the relationship between the religious faculty members and the employer is any different from the relationship between lay faculty members and the employer.
The Board blindly attributed an all-pervasive homogeneity of views to the Franciscan faculty members and the Franciscan administrators, assuming that the Franciscans’ religious identity eclipsed the usual employer-employee relationship. The nature of a religious commitment, however, is too complex to be explained by such factually unsupported assumptions. The record in this case suggests that these Franciscans are anything but automatons who have surrendered their facility for intelligent and voluntary decisionmaking. On the contrary, the record tends to show that, as far as their employment is concerned, the religious faculty members are independent-thinking individuals who are not under the domination of the college’s Franciscan administrators.
An employee’s relationship to the administrative organization of his employer has been a ,factor in determining whether that employee has a community of interest with his fellow employees. But when the Board invokes that relationship to exclude an employee from a bargaining unit, it should be certain that its action is supported by record evidence. The requisite support is lacking in this case.
II.
The Board’s determination of an appropriate bargaining unit necessarily depends on the facts of a particular case. Similarly, a reviewing court’s approval or disapproval of that determination depends on the Board’s proffered explanations for its decision and on the record support for those explanations. Accordingly, I would emphasize the limited effect of our holding here. We decide only the case before us. We most certainly do not suggest that religious faculty members can never be excluded from a faculty bargaining unit. A future case which presents different bases for the exclusion supported by evidence of record will be decided on its own merits.