Court Opinion

ID: 9464228
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:28:03.63131+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:31.328262
License: Public Domain

FAY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Although agreeing with the legal test set forth by the majority, the application of such to the evidence in this record leads me to a contrary result. As pointed out by the dissenting Board member,1 the evidence totally negates a finding of an “unequivocal intention to participate in multiemployer bargaining” which is the very cornerstone of a ruling binding Beckham to the contract in issue. Having nothing of import to add and agreeing in toto with the aforementioned dissent, I hereby adopt it and set it forth in full.2
I cannot agree with my colleagues’ conclusion that Respondents Beckham and McDaniel manifested an unequivocal intention to participate in multiemployer bargaining and are therefore required to abide by the contract purportedly negotiated in their behalf. My colleagues have, I am afraid, overstepped the bounds of descriptive lexicography and have wrestled unexpected new meaning from the word “unequivocal.” What they find to be unequivocal I find to be fraught with ambiguity, uncertainty, and disguise.
The record shows that prior to 1975 the members of the Association bargained as a group but with the intention that each employer would sign a separate contract with the Union and be bound individually *196to the terms of that contract. Although the record reveals that some efforts were made before the commencement of the 1975 negotiations to convert this method of bargaining into a multiemployer bargaining arrangement, the record does not indicate that this purpose was effectively communicated either to the Association members themselves or to the Union.
Rather, we are confronted, in a significantly large number of instances, with behavior on both the Union’s and Respondents’ part which suggests that no departure from the old bargaining scheme was envisioned by the bargaining participants. While the record does contain evidence that group bargaining was contemplated, this evidence is not of the convincing unambiguous variety required by the Board to prove consent to a multiemployer bargaining arrangement.
Thus, although Turner testified that the Association bylaws were amended to prepare the way for multiemployer bargaining, there is no reference in the bylaws to such bargaining, nor is it shown that the Respondents were made aware of the change. Similarly, while it is established that at the May meeting a changeover to group bargaining was discussed, there is no evidence that Respondent Beckham specifically participated in this discussion or that Respondent McDaniel, who was absent from the meeting, was notified as to what had been agreed. Additionally, there is no evidence that at the first negotiating session Respondents Beckham and McDaniel heard or understood Pass’ remarks indicating that bargaining would be on a multiemployer basis.
The record is populated with incidents and facts which contradict my colleagues’ conclusion that multiemployer bargaining was clearly intended. As the Administrative Law Judge observed, the Union was not told which specific contractors the Association was bargaining for nor does it appear that the Union deduced the names of these contractors, as my colleagues suggest.20 When, during the ne-
gotiations, Respondents Beckham and McDaniel were solicited to assign their bargaining rights to the Association, both declined, McDaniel stating expressly that he was not going to give his rights to somebody else. Later, after the July 28 final negotiating session, Beckham challenged the right of Turner and Pass to sign a contract without reaching agreement on the retroactive pay and residential rate questions.
Furthermore, Pass and Turner, the instigators of the group bargaining plan, demonstrated that even they were uncertain as to whether the Association members had consented to multiemployer bargaining. Both testified that Appendix A was designed to provide for individual signatures in order to bolster each member’s consent to be bound by the contract, consent which Pass admitted was at that time only implied.
Finally, the Union itself acted in a manner which suggests that it had no firm understanding that multiemployer bargaining was intended, when after the contract was drafted it sought to obtain signatures to the contract individually from the various contractors involved.
My colleagues make much of the fact that Respondents Beckham and McDaniel never communicated to the Union a desire not to be bound by the Association’s bargaining and thus created the appearance of having acquiesced in a multiemployer bargaining arrangement. But upon close examination it appears that Respondents’ only contributions to this creation of apparent authority were their silence at the first negotiating session and their continued appearance at the negotiating sessions.21 I would not base
the manifestation of an unequivocal intention to be bound on so slim a reed, *197especially considering the parties’ past bargaining history.
Bargaining on a multiemployer basis is “rooted in consent.”22 It is for that rea-
son that the Board requires that contracting parties unequivocally manifest an intention to participate in group bargaining, before it finds a multiemployer unit to be appropriate.23 Where there is no
prior history of multiemployer bargaining, as is the case here, the Board must insist on affirmative clear evidence of parties’ consent to engage in joint bargaining in establishing this unequivocal intention. For the reasons given above, I do not find such evidence to be present.
As an additional reason for not requiring Respondents to abide by the agreement negotiated in 1975, I would find that no agreement had in fact been reached. The matter of residential rates was, contrary to what my colleagues suggest, an intrinsic and necessary part of the contract — not something without which the contract could “float on its own.” It was clearly contemplated — and Beckham’s protest to Pass and Turner bears this out — that until a residential rate agreement was reached the contract would not be final. Since negotiations on the residential rates were still going on at the time of the hearing, I would not require Respondents to sign what is at best an interim agreement.
In conclusion, I would adopt the decision of the Administrative Law Judge and would dismiss the complaint in its entirety.

. Peter D. Walther.

. The footnotes cited in Mr. Walther’s dissenting opinion will be set forth here with the same numbers used in his opinion.

 This fact is borne out by Johnson’s testimony that he sought the signature of individual contractors to the agreement because “I didn’t have no names. I didn’t know who was members, who wasn’t members, or anything.

 McDaniel, of course, only participated in two or three bargaining sessions.

 The Evening News Association, Owner and Publisher of "The Detroit News,” 154 NLRB 1494 (1965).

 Council of Bagel and Bialy Bakeries and its Employer Members, 175 NLRB 902 (1969).