Court Opinion

ID: 9470433
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:06:01.197372+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:53.856659
License: Public Domain

JAMES DICKSON PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent from that part of the majority opinion that rejects the Board’s determination that VEPCO violated § 8(a)(1) by urging employee Van Burin not to wear union insignia while on duty in the lobby of VEP-CO’s Alexandria, Virginia, office.
Faced with a finding of violation that involved nothing more drastic than an employer’s unheeded request that one employee not wear a pro-union button in a limited area, the temptation is undoubtedly great to reject it as involving, in any event, a matter de minimis. With all respect I believe that this must be the actual basis of the majority decision on this issue. However appealing to one’s sense of proportion such an assessment might be, this is not the standard by which we are bound to review Board determinations. Under the proper standard, I do not believe that we can properly reject the Board’s determination of violation.
Though the button episode here in issue may indeed seem trivial in the overall sweep of labor-management relations, the controlling legal principle that it invokes is not. Indeed it is one of the most basic. Under § 8(a)(1) employees have an enforceable right to display union insignia unless there are “special considerations” that justify an employer’s restriction of the right. Republic Aviation Corp. v. NLRB, 324 U.S. 793, 65 S.Ct. 982, 89 L.Ed. 1372 (1945); Pay’N Save Corp. v. NLRB, 641 F.2d 697, 700 (9th Cir.1981); NLRB v. Montgomery Ward & Co., 554 F.2d 996, 1000 (10th Cir. 1977).
This principle — which the majority recognizes as controlling — embodies an evaluative standard whose application to particular facts lies quintessentially within the Board’s special competence, based upon its recognized “cumulative experience in dealing with labor-management relations,” NLRB v. Weingarten, Inc., 420 U.S. 251, 266, 95 S.Ct. 959, 968, 43 L.Ed.2d 171 (1975), to assess the true nature and implications of particular labor disputes. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine an evaluative task more difficult and subtle in this special realm than that of balancing in particular fact situations the conflicting interests of employee rights to self-organization and employer rights to maintain proper discipline. See Republic Aviation, 324 U.S. at 797-98, 65 S.Ct. at 985. It is for this reason that in such matters we have been reminded that the Board’s determination is subject only to “limited judicial review.” NLRB v. Truck Drivers Local Union No. 449, 353 U.S. 87, 96-97, 77 S.Ct. 643, 648, 1 L.Ed.2d 676 (1957).
Here the Board’s evaluative judgment was that the employer’s attempted restriction on the basic employee right was not justified by any special considerations giv*86ing primacy to the employer’s conflicting interest. Certainly that determination is not for any reason erroneous as a matter of law. And the basic facts are simply not in dispute.
The fact that VEPCO had not promulgated any company-wide restriction of the type in issue — a point upon which the majority relies — does not preclude a finding of violation. An individual restriction on insignia display may constitute an unfair labor practice. See, e.g., NLRB v. Intertherm, Inc., 596 F.2d 267, 272-73 (8th Cir.1979). Neither does the fact that the employee refused to comply with the employer’s request preclude a finding of violation. Id. at 271; Sturgis Newport Business Forms, Inc. v. NLRB, 563 F.2d 1252, 1256 (5th Cir.1977).
Neither can the Board’s determination be attacked as legally erroneous on precedential grounds. To the extent any general rule of “special considerations” can be synthesized from relevant judicial decisions, it is not a rule that precludes the Board’s determination of violation on the facts of this case. The decisions relied upon by the majority — presumably as establishing such a rule — are to me clearly distinguishable in critical respects.
One involved a ban on buttons that tended to distract employees who needed extraordinary concentration to manufacture computer memory units. Fabri-Tek, Inc. v. NLRB, 352 F.2d 577 (8th Cir.1965). Another dealt with a ban on “inherent[ly] disruptive” buttons reading “Don’t be a Scab.” Caterpillar Tractor Co. v. NLRB, 230 F.2d 357 (7th Cir.1956). Still another was concerned with a restriction on union insignia that simply carried out an employer’s longstanding, strict dress code. NLRB v. Harrah’s Club, 337 F.2d 177 (9th Cir.1964).
Perhaps most critically, because its facts probably are closest in point, Davison-Paxon Co. v. NLRB, 462 F.2d 364 (5th Cir.1972), is distinguishable in critical respects. There a department store’s asserted concern that its employees would engage in public confrontations damaging to the employer’s interests was held to constitute “special considerations” justifying an insignia restriction. But the Davison-Paxon court emphasized two aspects of that case not present here. The buttons in question violated a long-standing dress code. Even more importantly, the court could emphasize that though, as here, no actual employee disputes had occurred, the unchallenged evidence of employee animosity and tension substantiated the “reasonableness of the management’s fear that union conflict might erupt on the sales floor.” Id. at 369 (emphasis added). See also Caterpillar Tractor, 230 F.2d at 359; Adams v. Federal Express Corp., 470 F.Supp. 1356, 1363 (W.D. Tenn.1979) (interpreting analogous provision of the Railway Labor Act, 45 U.S.C. § 181).1
In the instant case, there is of course no dress code, no highly technical job requiring freedom from distraction, and no inherently disruptive message. Nor, most critically, is there any evidence to substantiate the reasonableness of the employer’s asserted apprehension that the rather innocuous button “might provoke” a public confrontation between rival union supporters.
The majority makes the point that an employer should not be required to await an actual disturbance before imposing restrictions on particularly disruptive union activities. I fully agree with this. But I also believe that, as Davison-Paxon emphasized, an employer should not be entitled to invoke mere apprehension of disruption as a “special consideration” justifying restric*87tions without some objective proof of a reasonable basis for the apprehension. See Beth Israel Hospital v. NLRB, 437 U.S. 483, 502-03, 98 S.Ct. 2463, 2474-75, 57 L.Ed.2d 370 (1978); Pay’N Save, 641 F.2d at 701 (no special considerations where employer merely concerned with public image); La-rand Leisurelies, Inc. v. NLRB, 523 F.2d 814, 816-17 (6th Cir.1975) (no special considerations where employer feared disruption of production and efficiency). Vague apprehensions are too easily asserted in almost any of the situations giving rise to this particular issue.
In short, I simply see no basis upon which, if we are faithfully to apply the appropriate standard of review, we can reject this determination. I would enforce the Board’s order directed at this violation.

. The majority’s reliance on Beth Israel Hospital v. NLRB, 437 U.S. 483, 98 S.Ct. 2463, 57 L.Ed.2d 370 (1978), appears to me to be wholly misplaced. Beth Israel simply approved the Board’s qualified extension to a hospital setting of the principles enunciated in Republic Aviation. Significantly, the Beth Israel Court indeed deferred to the Board’s judgment in that case that hospital employees might engage in protected union activities in the hospital cafeteria, notwithstanding the hospital employer’s assertion that such activities would disturb its patients. To the extent that Beth Israel is apposite here, its greatest significance lies in its emphasis upon the limited role of the courts in reviewing this sort of Board determination. See id at 500-01, 504-05, 98 S.Ct. at 2473, 2475-76.