Court Opinion

ID: 9449392
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:11:15.256729+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:49.331187
License: Public Domain

SWYGERT, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I find that I must dissent.
The National Labor Relations Board’s trial examiner found that more than half •of the employees in the bargaining unit of 120 walked out of Sunbeam’s plant in Gary, Indiana, on the morning of May 3, 1960. This action followed the Company’s “final offer” of a collective bargaining contract on May 2 and the Union representative’s (Lee) statement to the 'Company that it would be presented to the Union membership for consideration.
After approximately 75 to 80 employees walked out at 10:00 a. m., Company supervisors circulated among the employees outside the plant. The men were told to “come back to work, or their cards would be punched and they would be considered as voluntarily quitting” for violating a plant rule requiring permission before leaving their work. As a result, approximately 30 employees returned to the ■plant and normal operations were resumed at 11:00 a., m. Approximately 51 employees remained outside the plant, however, or went home. That afternoon Sunbeam mailed discharge notices to -these employees.
Late in the afternoon of May 3, bargaining committee chairman Reynolds received a telegram from Lee who was in Chicago. The telegram read:
“In discussing the current sitiation [sic] at Sunbeam with our Sixth District International Office it was decided to inform the members of the negotiating committee that until further notice, there will be no further union or negotiating meetings while the unauthorized work stoppage continues.”
A Union meeting was held that evening. Most of the 51 strikers attended. Reynolds read Lee’s telegram. The members attending the meeting then voted unanimously to return to work the next morning.
On the morning of May 4, those of the. 51 employees who had not yet received the discharge letters reported at the plant at the regular time for work. The plant superintendent met them and told them that they would not be permitted to work; that they had “terminated [them] selves” by walking out the day before; and that their checks would be mailed to them.1
I agree with the Board that this was not a “wildcat” strike. The trial examiner and the Board were justified, I think, in holding that a majority of the plant’s employees went on strike to express their feelings about Sunbeam’s “final offer”. This was not action by a dissident minority of the bargaining unit attempting to subvert the majority’s objectives or to undermine the Union leadership. Rather, as the Board pointed out, it was a “spontaneous reaction of [a majority of] the employees to the Respondent’s offer” which was actually in support of the aims of the Union.
That some thirty employees acceded to the threats of the supervisors following the work stoppage does not militate against the fact that the walkout was actually engaged in by a majority of the Union members or that it constituted a practical rejection of the Company’s proffered contract terms.
*666I do not think that either the rubrics of a formal strike vote or formal authorization by a union representative is prerequisite to gaining Section 7 protection for concerted activity. N. L. R. B. v. Washington Aluminum Co., 370 U.S. 9, 82 S.Ct. 1099, 8 L.Ed.2d 293 (1962). The employees here should not be deemed to have lost their Section 7 rights merely because they failed to follow a formal pattern in rejecting the Company’s proposed contract terms. The fact of rejection by a majority was made clear; the Company was not entitled to insist on more.
Both the majority and the concurring opinions seem to assume that a finding that a majority of the members of the bargaining unit went on strike is prerequisite to a holding that this was not a “wildcat” strike. No authority is cited for such a proposition and, indeed, I do not think it can logically be maintained in the present factual situation.
Once the requirements of good faith bargaining have been met and a stalemate has come about, as here, even a minority, in my opinion, which in good faith believes it is acting in support of and consonant with the union’s aims in rejecting an employer’s “final offer” may take collective strike action to force the union’s demands on the employer. Such action is not in derogation of or in conflict with the bargaining unit’s aims. Certainly, it is not that kind of minority action constituting internecine factionalism condemned by the “wildcat” strike exception to employees’ Section 7 rights.
In the instant case immediately upon learning from the Union’s business representative that the Union considered the strike to be unauthorized, the strikers sought to return to work. Obviously union discipline is not an issue.
In my opinion the record considered as a whole shows that the discharged employees were engaged in protected, concerted activities within the meaning of Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act. I would enforce the Board's order.

. The mailing of the discharge notices within hours of the walkout and the refusal to reinstate the strikers the following morning when they reported for wox-k at the usxxal time evinces a precipitate seizure of an opportunity on the part of Sunbeam to weaken the Union Its anti-union animus is highlighted by the fact that when one of the returning strikers asked permission to get Ms coat, he was told that he could not enter the plant for anything and his coat would be brought to him.