Court Opinion

ID: 9639274
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:10:26.704515+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:14.902671
License: Public Domain

STEPHENS, Circuit Judge
(concurring in the result and dissenting).
Stripped of argument and characterization of evidence, I accept the clear and comprehensive statement of facts as they are set out in the majority opinion.
It should be understood that although the Board’s order is directed to other respondents, its enforcement through the order of this court is opposed here by M & M only.
I am in full agreement with my associates in the order agreed upon by them insofar as it relates to the other respondents in the case and concur therein, but I dissent to the application of the order to persons and organizations not parties in the case.
The M & M is not an employer but is in the case by reason of its relation to the other named parties in respect of their labor relations. It was amply proved that M & M was actively promoting its general plan of labor relations as it applied to all Southern California and was cooperating with the named respondents in its interest. See National Labor Relations Board v. J. G. Boswell Co., 9 Cir., 1943, 136 F.2d 585, 594.
The plan is unquestionably inconsistent with the Labor Act, and the practice under it, as related to the respondents, is illegal.
The Board in its Findings of Fact says: “Since the institutional respondents have publicly and persistently invited all employers of Southern California to enlist their services in introducing such plan among their employees, it is reasonable to assume, and we find, that the institutional respondents are fully equipped for, and ready to proceed with, the commission of similar unfair labor practices with respect to the employees of other employers, unless ordered to refrain from so doing. We. therefore, deem it necessary to prevent the commission of such similar unfair labor practices by the institutional respondents, acting in the interest of other employers, and we shall, accordingly, order such respondents to cease and desist from in any *490other manner, severally, jointly, or m concert with other employers, interfering with the rights guaranteed to employees in Section 7 of the Act.”
It is the part of the Board’s order which responds to the quoted language of the Board that I think is beyond the power of the Board. It unreasonably extends the power of injunction and effectively approves the future summary trial of facts by the Circuit Court of Appeals by way of contempt proceedings in cases which never have been and never will be before the National Labor Relations Board. It makes the Circuit of Appeals a labor court of the first instance instead of a reviewing court. I think all of this is far beyond the congressional intent in enacting the National Labor Relations Act.
The only authority suggested by the Board and by the majority in this court is National Labor Relations Board v. Express Publishing Co., 1941, 312 U.S. 426, 61 S.Ct. 693, 85 L.Ed, 930. Nothing remotely like this was before the court in that case, and nothing said in the Supreme Court’s opinion has the slightest application to such a situation. The Board’s cease and desist order in the cited case was directed to the respondent, Express Publishing Co., in relation to its treatment of its own employees. Sentences, general in nature, torn from their context in the Supreme Court’s opinion cannot serve as authority for a proposition not in the case. For this court’s analysis of the Express Publishing Co. case see National Labor Relations Board v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co., 1941, 118 F.2d 780, 789, as set out in the majority’s concurring opinions.