Court Opinion

ID: 9465341
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:43:43.13575+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:07.796114
License: Public Domain

DUMBAULD, District Judge
(dissenting).
In my view the Administrative Law Judge’s decision was correct, and preferable to the contrary determination of the Board. Hence I respectfully dissent from enforcement of the Board’s order.
*49Whether meter-reading routes were established (as in the past) by a pavement-pounding supervisor on the company payroll, or whether they were established upon the recommendation of an ivory-tower management theorist higher up in the holding company hierarchy, seems wholly immaterial to the fairness or practicability of the routes established.
Use by management of the study developed by Northeast Utilities Company, the electric company’s parent corporation, was a “one shot” transitional measure, occasioned by the company’s decision to read all meters every month, which has now probably been put fully into effect.1 Those recommendations are now functus officio, and of no relevance to the union’s ongoing functions in connection with collective bargaining or processing grievances.
The union and its members well know what routes were established by use of the “think-tank” report. They do not need to know precisely why those routes were found desirable by management. Routes so established are subject to change if unsatisfactory. If the routes so set up prove to be too long or burdensome in any way to the union members, they have first-hand knowledge of such facts and are entirely free to complain in the normal way. They do not need to read a report couched in management gobbledygook to know if their feet hurt after an excessive day’s work.
The situation would be precisely identical in result with respect to the union’s concerns, if the routes had been calculated by computer, or by simply looking at a map, or by applying maxims and techniques remembered from textbooks used in the Harvard Business School, or by consulting a palm-reader or soothsayer. Whatever the method employed, it is the actual, objectively observable results of the managerial proposal which affect the union and its members for weal or woe. The historical genesis of such results is immaterial. They are to be evaluated by the union on their merits. In Biblical language “by their fruits (routes) ye shall know them,” not by the stages of development experienced by the tree.
The mental processes of management in preliminarily determining what routes were suitable is now merely a matter of past history. It is of only academic concern to the union or its members.
As stated in the Court’s opinion, there is no statutory rule of disclosure per se (as in an SEC prospectus, for example). The law imposes only the duty to bargain in good faith. An employer fulfills that obligation when it deals fairly with whatever proposals the union may make with respect to work loads or layoffs. “Discovery” procedure is not warranted for its own sake but is appropriate only when reasonably incidental to the process of good faith bargaining. The company here should not be required to furnish the document desired by the union.

. Before October 1974 only commercial users and residential customers using electric heat had monthly meter readings. The decision to read all meters monthly led to a temporary increase in the number of meter readers employed, since the company delayed the rerouting of its entire system to eliminate duplication until after it had installed a new billing procedure. The parent company’s study was prepared in January 1976. In November the new routes in the Easthampton area were initiated. The record does not show when, if ever, the entire pattern of new routes was completed.