Court Opinion

ID: 9461392
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:13:40.635152+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:02.650322
License: Public Domain

LAY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
The majority opinion adopts the Administrative Law Judge’s reasoning that there was no acceptance of the offers of reemployment and therefore there was no restoration of employee status to the discharged strikers. This reasoning is fallaciously premised on the supposition that the offer of reemployment sought a bilateral contract, i. e., a promise for a promise. On the contrary, the employment relationship between the employees and the company is formed by a unilateral contract, i. e., the promise to pay for the performance of services. The offers of reemployment sought acceptance by the resumption of employee services and did not depend on any formal bilateral agreement. Yet under the Administrative Law Judge’s rationale, as adopted by the majority, the dischargees were required first to vocally accept employment with the illegal condition of denouncing the union before they could legally assume the status of an employee.1 *858Under the facts presented this requirement is highly technical and unrealistic. It ignores the reality of the factual situation in which the offers were tendered.
As the Board so effectively stated in its opinion:
[T]he rationale offered by Respondent and adopted by the Administrative Law Judge would require persons such as those involved here either to forsake their legitimate protests evidenced by their picketing activity and to become strikebreakers, or else would require them to be so counseled by those trained in the law as to carefully recite that they were willing to resume employee status but that they were continuing to engage in concerted activity in support of the protests of the work force against the employer’s unfair labor practices. To force such persons to become strikebreakers would subvert the very purposes underlying the protection afforded to unfair labor practice strikers. To require an incantation of carefully constructed legal phrases seems to us to introduce wholly unnecessary and undesirable formalities and to make artificial our approach to problems of reality and substance.
Appendix at 29-30.
Assuming some form of acceptance of the offer of reemployment was necessary, that acceptance can be found in the resumption of the performance of employee functions. An unfair labor practice strike is a valid employee function. Continued participation in such a strike, after the offer of reemployment is made, can signify acceptance if it is accompanied by the mutual understanding that the employee desires to re-establish his employee status. Here, that understanding is readily apparent. There can be little doubt that the employees desired to return to their work unshackled by any illegal condition that they denounce the union and their protected rights under the Act. When the offers to reemploy them were made, the men continued as strikers along with the other unfair practice strikers. When the settlement was reached and all strikers offered to return to work the company was well aware that those previously dis*859charged desired to return to their old jobs. The men were all seasoned workers and possessed good jobs; that their continued activity as strikers could be viewed by the employer as only detached and disinterested picketing is highly unreasonable.
The acceptance required by the majority could only be manifested by the dischargees’ returning to their jobs and thus becoming strikebreakers. This would deny them their right to protected activity as employees under the Act. They would be denied the right to lawfully protest an unfair labor practice, as the other employees were doing, by lawfully striking. Thus, when the offers of reemployment were made, the action required of the dischargees to demonstrate their assent to resume the status of employees was the assumption of the role of an unfair labor practice striker rather than that of a working employee. This they did.
To require the discharged employee to do more, to accept the illegal condition and return to work, is to require the employees to forgo their right to strike, guaranteed by § 7 of the Act. This is a clear violation of the Act. See Standard Aggregate Corp., 87 L.R.R.M. 1273 (September 3, 1974).
I find the Board’s analysis sound. I would enforce in full the Board’s order.

. Contrary to the majority’s view the condo-nation, that is, the forgiveness of the dischargees’ prior misconduct, is clearly supported by substantial evidence on the record as a whole. Even the Administrative Law Judge credited the statements made as clear manifestation that the dischargees were still acceptable as employees and that their jobs were open to them provided they renounced the union. The statements made were not, as suggested by the majority, simply a casual suggestion that the “door was always open” for negotiations. The Brief of the Intervenor, Local 203, Graphic Arts International, well summarizes the substantiality of this evidence:
—Bernard Nice, a striking employee and Union steward, testified that he was asked by Don Nice, about a month after the strike began on one of some fifteen similar occasions, to “come back in and bring your guys with you”; Don Nice admitted both *858the specific statement and the fact' of his frequent discussions with Bernard.
—Bernard Nice testified that, in January, 1973, Don Nice told him in an Omaha bar, following a reference by Bernard to the fact that eight individuals were on strike, that he (Bernard) could tell the other strikers that “there was jobs open, come on in, the door was open”; that testimony is unchallenged.
—Russell Sass testified that, in late September or early October, Don Nice told him that “the door was always open”; Nice admitted that he “possibly could have” made the statement.
—David Birdsong testified that, the day following his discharge, Richard Henderson called his home and left a message that Birdsong’s job was there and all he had to do was tell the Company what he wanted within reason in terms of wages; this evidence is unrebutted.
—Even adopting Jay Swoboda’s version of the conversation between he [sic] and Birdsong in the Marleybones Bar a week after the strike began, Swoboda told Birdsong that he could make up his own mind whether he wanted to stay out with the strikers or come back into the plant, asked Birdsong to call him when he made up his mind and offered to pay for any damage which might be done to his car if he decided to return to work. [Swoboda emphatically stated that at the time of his conversation with Birdsong he definitely had the right to come back to work if he wanted to.]
—Birdsong testified that Swoboda talked to him on the picket line about a week after the beginning of the strike and told him his job was there and all he had to do was go in and talk to him (Swoboda) about it; this conversation is not denied by Swoboda.
—Birdsong testified without contradiction that two or three weeks after the strike began, Richard Henderson spoke to Birdsong and Jeff Louden, and said they could have their jobs back and possibly a raise in pay.
—Birdsong testified without contradiction that, in January, 1973, Keith Kile said to him that he wished Birdsong would come in and talk to him.
—Jeff Louden testified that a few days after the picketing began, Richard Henderson, in one of at least ten such conversations, told him that he could have his job back, and possibly a raise in pay. This testimony was unrebutted.
Brief of Intervenor at 19-20. (Emphasis deleted.)