Court Opinion

ID: 9452574
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:45:06.48441+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:16.472652
License: Public Domain

WINTER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part).
I agree that Firestone’s benefit plans for its employees were not discriminatory within the meaning of § 8(a) (1) of the Act, and, in view of the concessum of •counsel for the Board about Firestone’s letter of February 9, 1965, that the record as a whole does not support a finding ■of a violation of § 8(a) (1) by the oral statements of the supervisory employees. I disagree, however, with the conclusions of the majority that the record as a whole does not support the finding that Firestone interfered with, restrained or coerced employees in the exercise of their § 7 rights by threatening the discharge of Evelee Juhasz. Admittedly, this aspect of the case is of little moment, because Mrs. Juhasz was not discharged. She voluntarily resigned about four months later, and the Board’s order requires no specific affirmative relief as to her.1 But, lest the bar and my fellow-judges treat silent acquiescence on my part as an indication that I believe the decision of the majority binding on me as a correctly decided precedent, I state my views in dissent on this aspect of the case.
The findings of the trial examiner with respect to the threatened discharge of Mrs. Juhasz are set forth in a footnote in the majority opinion. Their correctness is to be determined by an examination of the record as a whole. Nothing could be less significant than the number of lines of an eleven-page decision they constitute.
When the record as a whole is examined it shows that Mrs. Juhasz, who had been active in union meetings and who had just been chosen to be a union observer at the forthcoming election, was told, practically on the eve of the election, by Hanley, her immediate supervisor, that Sprouse, the next in the pyramid of authority had made the statement that “the company is blaming you for bringing this situation into the plant,” and that “he [Sprouse] was going to get you whether the Union came in or whether it didn’t come in” and that “they’re going to have to pin it on somebody and it’.s going to be you they’re going to hang.” Conveniently buried by the majority is the fact that, in addition to this conversation’s having taken place in the presence of other employees about to vote in the election, Mrs. Juhasz testified that she discussed its substance with her fel*218low-employees on her shift who were eligible to vote in the election.
The only denial that the conversation took place came from Hanley, whom the trial examiner found not to be a credible witness; there was no denial that the conversation was reported to fellow-employees.
While the majority admit that credibility is for the trial examiner and the Board and not this Court, they avoid the impact of Mrs. Juhasz’s testimony on a basis which is to me not supportable, either as a matter of fact or as a matter of law. True, the record shows that Mrs. Juhasz was reassured by the shop steward to whom she reported the conversation. On the record, the extent to which she was personally shaken by the incident may have been questionable to the trier of the facts, even though she did testify that she cried immediately after it occurred and found it necessary to get other employees to do her work. But even if we usurp the functions of the trial examiner and substitute our view of the weight of the testimony for his, there was nothing in the record to establish that fellow-employees to whom the incident was reported received any assurances from any source that the manifestly coercive statements were in fact repudiated. Recently, we held in Intertype Company v. N.L.R.B., 371 F.2d 787 (4 Cir. 1966), that communication to “at least” one employee that there was surveillance of a union meeting by supervisory employees, absent a showing that employer disavowal of invidious motive was known to that employee, was sufficient to support a finding of a violation of § 8(a) (1) of the Act.2 Today, I think we depart from that view.
To my mind, the majority mount, an unsuccessful attack on the credibility of Mrs. Juhasz. I know of no rule of law which requires that she be corroborated if the trier of the fact otherwise found her credible. The law makes no such demand even in a criminal prosecution. I would enforce the part of the Board’s order which rests upon the testimony of Mrs. Juhasz.

. The Board's order requires a new election, but Mrs. Juhasz would be ineligible to vote. 374 6.26—141/2

. The authorities cited by the majority are inapposite — the Quaker State case because the statements made were not coercive and not made by those having direct supervision of the employees to whom they were made, and the Sehwol) case because the employees knew the supervisors had no authority to speak for the employer on the subjects discussed.