Court Opinion

ID: 9467176
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:40:41.658904+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:12.422392
License: Public Domain

GEE, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in the judgment of the court except insofar as it enforces the Board’s bargaining order. As to that, I would remand for further findings.
In NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co., 395 U.S. 575, 89 S.Ct. 1918, 23 L.Ed.2d 547 (1969), the Supreme Court recognized that bargaining orders could be appropriate remedies in certain limited circumstances. In reaching this conclusion, the Court acknowledged that elections were the preferred method of protecting employee free choice. Attuned to these directives, we have refined and applied the lessons of Gissel in a number of cases, most notably NLRB v. American Cable Systems, Inc., 414 F.2d 661 (5th Cir. 1969) (American Cable I), and NLRB v. American Cable Systems, Inc., 427 F.2d 446 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 400 U.S. 957, 91 S.Ct. 356, 27 L.Ed. 266 (1970) (American Cable II).
In the American Cable cases this court required the Board, in its efforts to impose bargaining orders, to make certain specific findings about the difficulty of holding free elections and the need for such a drastic alternative. The court condemned Board efforts to seek enforcement of these orders based on “a litany, reciting conclusions by rote without factual explication.” American Cable II, 427 F.2d at 449. In NLRB v. Gibson Products Co., 494 F.2d 762, 766-68 *499(5th Cir. 1974), the court explained further the specificity requirement, mandating findings such as the express inability of less drastic remedies to “purify” electoral conditions. The findings of the Board here fail the American Cable specificity test (indeed, the Board’s initial brief to this court does not mention these cases). The Board found the company to have committed serious and pervasive unfair labor practices-the leap from that finding to imposition of the bargaining order is made on no further analysis. This is not much more than the “jejune regurgitation” of the company’s past offenses condemned in American Cable II, 427 F.2d at 448-49.
In a very recent panel opinion, Chromalloy American Corp. v. NLRB, 620 F.2d 1120 (5th Cir. 1980), we dealt with a similar situation. There the Board’s findings were similarly vague and unspecific; and Judge Wisdom wrote that “the Board has ignored the specificity requirement.” Id. at 1129. That deficiency, however, was not fatal. Citing Gibson Products for the proposition, the court held that it “may provide the necessary analysis to avoid further delay.” Id. at 1130 (a somewhat shaky reference, as in Gibson Products the case had already been remanded once to the Board for these American Cable findings). Relying on the findings made by the Board, the court looked to the severity of the unfair labor practices and the past history of antiunion behavior on management’s part to find the likelihood of recurrence to be such as to make the imposition of a bargaining order the necessary remedy. Despite the absence of clear American Cable findings, the court enforced the bargaining order because the situation met, in its opinion, the standards set out by the Supreme Court in Gissel. Id. at 1130-31. The absence of express findings therefore does not, in very extreme cases, call for remand to the Board or preclude enforcement. But considering the overwhelming reliance in Chromalloy on the employer’s egregious past record and the inability of that or any panel to overrule American Cable I and II, one cannot say that American Cable findings are no longer required in this circuit.
In Chromalloy and in this case the companies argue that substantial employee turnover makes the bargaining orders unfair and inappropriate. Perhaps the Board need not be overwhelmed by such evidence: Chromalloy states that the Board need not determine that the actual, present sentiment of the majority of the workers favors unionization before a bargaining order can issue. Id. at 1132. Rather, it asserts, the focus should be on the unlikelihood, at the time of the order’s issuance, of an election’s being an accurate indication of employee sentiment, due to the unfair labor practices of the employer. I think this dubious, but at the least employee turnover between the time of commission of the practices and the hearings before the ALJ remains a relevant factor in evaluating the need for a bargaining order. See Chromalloy, 620 F.2d at 1133; Bandag, Inc. v. NLRB, 583 F.2d 765, 773 (5th Cir. 1978).
In Chromalloy the court found whatever relevance the turnover figures there enjoyed to be outweighed by two other findings: (1) employer recidivism was strongly suggested by the recent past history of union opposition; and (2) the employer was found guilty of a discriminatory refusal to recall an employee, suggesting that the turnover was due at least in part to these antiunion sentiments. 620 F.2d at 1133. Findings of this or of a similar nature are absent from the Board’s opinion in this case. The Board’s response to Dadco’s arguments about employer turnover consists of two sentences, the first a pronouncement of Board power to issue such an order, and the second a reference to a recent Board determination that the impact of grievous misconduct remains long after the particular events. These are not “findings” in this case by the Board but mere assertions: I give them in the margin.1 As such, they are entitled to no special deference from us.
*500The Board’s course of decision comes ever closer to “the cavalier use of bargaining orders” condemned in American Cable II, 427 F.2d at 449. The Gissel remedy is an exceptional one, not the rule: Elections are the preferred method. These are three-party, not two-party, situations; and such actions as the Board has here taken, focussing on penalizing an obstreperous employer, do so at the risk of forcing an unwanted union on employees. Unwilling to bow to the Board’s apparent resolve to broaden the Gissel exception, ignore our American Cable decisions, and impose its view on our circuit, I would remand for proper American Cable findings.

. It is also well settled that the Board is not precluded from issuing a bargaining order where, as here, there has been a considerable length of time and a substantial amount of turnover since the commission of the unfair labor practices. In this connection, the Board *500recently held with respect to the significance of the passage of time that the impact of a respondent’s serious and flagrant misconduct remains long after it occurs.
(footnotes omitted).