Court Opinion

ID: 9460945
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:03:02.00072+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:50.150064
License: Public Domain

FEINBERG, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
This case is a good example of judicial interference with a process which performs best with a minimum of regulation, particularly by judges. The majority has fallen into two errors which courts reviewing administrative decisions concerning the conduct of representation elections should be careful to avoid. The first is to substitute too readily judicial judgment of the likely effect of campaign propaganda for that of the Board and the Regional Director. The second is to forget that a representation election, like any experiment in democracy, is conducted in the hurly-burly of the real world, where puffing, ambiguity and rhetoric occur as part of the election process and are routinely discounted. Because the majority opinion unnecessarily undermines the finality of representation elections and is based upon unrealistic assumptions regarding the effect of a single oral statement by a union organizer, I dissent and would grant the Board’s cross-application for enforcement of its order.
The Acting Regional Director extensively investigated the objections to the election by petitioner Henderson Trumbull Supply Corporation (the Company). Thus, there were interviews with seven of the eight employees present at the meeting where union business agent Rossetti allegedly stated that the Company “made” $1.3 million in 1971. In addition, the Company was afforded an opportunity to submit evidence of its own, but failed to do so. On the basis of this investigation, the Regional Director found:
The evidence [relating to the alleged statement] is somewhat contradictory although the weight thereof would support the assertion that some specific figure was stated. In any event the evidence does not tend to establish that Rossetti was referring to “profits” as distinguished from gross income. It of course is arguable that the use of the word “made” implied a profit but there is enough ambiguity in the term, and so little an exaggeration in the figure, as to preclude a conclusion that a material misrepresentation was made. More importantly, it is clear from the nature of the statement allegedly made by Rossetti, that he was not talking from knowledge, but was expressing an opinion or making a guess and this obviously was clear also to the employees he was addressing who were competent to appraise the statement in the light of their own knowledge — or lack of it— concerning the Employer’s profits from its operations.
The Board adopted the Regional Director’s findings and conclusions, and certified the Union as the bargaining representative of the Company’s employees.
On this appeal, the majority recognizes that “[t]he conduct of representation elections is the very archetype of a purely administrative function with no quasi about it, concerning which courts should not interfere save for the most glaring discrimination or abuse.” Quoting NLRB v. Olson Bodies, Inc., 420 F.2d 1187, 1189 (2d Cir. 1970), cert. denied, 401 U.S. 954, 91 S.Ct. 966, 28 L.Ed.2d 237 (1971). Consequently, a party seeking a court-ordered evidentiary hearing bears the heavy burden of demonstrating by “specific evidence” that a “substantial and material factual issue” exists whether the alleged misconduct “could well have affected the election results.” Unaccountably, the majority proceeds to ignore these sound principles. On the basis chiefly of its own speculations concerning the probable reactions of the employees, the majority sets aside the conclusions of the Board *1232and the Regional Director and remands for a hearing. The justifications offered for this drastic action are, I submit, inadequate.
The majority first reasons that Rossetti's alleged statement that the Company “made” $1.3 million would mean to the average employee that the company had realized a profit of that amount. But the Company offered no evidence that any employee so understood the statement and the Regional Director apparently detected no such understanding during his interviews with the employees. To be sure, the alleged statement is ambiguous in that it could refer either to net profits or gross receipts. However, this ambiguity is itself a strong reason for concluding with the Board and the Regional Director that the alleged statement was not likely to have had an impact upon the election. See Harlan # 4 Coal Co. v. NLRB, 490 F.2d 117, 124 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 416 U.S. 986, 94 S.Ct. 2390, 40 L.Ed.2d 763 (1974). To the extent that employees perceive the ambiguity, an unclear statement conveys its own warning that it is not to be relied upon without further inquiry. And, even accepting arguendo the majority’s improbable view that the employees here had scant knowledge of the Company’s business operations, it seems quite likely that they were aware of the difference between gross income and net profit and realized that the phrase' “made $1.3 million” could describe either.
The majority then determines that the employees may well have believed that Rossetti had special knowledge of the Company’s financial situation and that he had used his position as union business agent to ferret out information concerning the Company’s affairs. Of course, it is conceivable that the employees thought this. But there is no suggestion that Rossetti expressly represented that he had special knowledge. And, if the employees really believed he had such knowledge, it is difficult to see why this belief would not have become apparent in the course of the Regional Director’s interviews. Yet the Regional Director concluded, after questioning the employees as to what had been said and under what circumstances, that it was obvious to all that Rossetti “was expressing an opinion or making a guess.” This being so, I cannot characterize the failure to hold an evidentiary hearing here as a “glaring discrimination or abuse.”
The majority next rejects the Regional Director’s conclusion that the employees were capable of appraising Rossetti’s statement in light of their own knowledge of the Company’s financial situation. This, says the majority, was largely a unit of manual laborers and such workers are not likely to have much exposure to their employer’s receipts, much less its profits. Of course, these employees are probably unaware of the precise figures on the corporate balance sheet. But even such workers must have some familiarity with the order of magnitude of their employer’s operations. And Rossetti allegedly estimated profits at $1.3 million, substantially larger than actual gross receipts and perhaps ten to 20 times greater than the Company’s actual profits. It strains credulity to argue that workers at a small New England lumber company employing just 15 full and part-time production workers and salesmen would ’unquestioningly accept such a surprisingly large estimate of profits. In any event, it seems to me that the level of employee financial sophistication is a matter “peculiarly within the ken of the Board’s local representatives who are close to the scene . . . . ” Cf. NLRB v. Bayliss Trucking Corp., 432 F.2d 1025, 1029-1030 (2d Cir. 1970).
Finally, the majority holds that the alleged misrepresentation of the Company’s profits raises a “substantial and material factual issue” as to the employees’ exercise of free choice. But the employees’ vague recollection of what Rossetti said at the meeting belies this conclusion. See NLRB v. Visual Edu-com, Inc., 486 F.2d 639, 642-643 (7th Cir. 1973) (alleged misrepresentation *1233not basis for requiring evidentiary hearing despite 57-55 vote because recollections of witnesses so vague that Regional Director, even without hearing, could reasonably conclude that statement had little impact on election). Accepting ar-guendo the majority’s scenario that the employees were informed by a source they believed to have special knowledge that their employer was making huge profits in which they were not sharing, we would expect Rossetti’s remarks to be etched indelibly on the employees’ minds. Yet this was not the case. Three of the seven employees interviewed did not recall Rossetti’s making any estimate of corporate income, gross or net. A fourth remembered a $1 million figure but stated that Rossetti referred specifically to gross income. A fifth recollected only that Rossetti had said “something about the Employer making a million dollars last year . . . . ” The other two employees recalled that Rossetti had observed that the Company “made” $1.3 million without identifying the figure as gross, net or profit, but apparently even these employees did not indicate to the Regional Director that they understood Rossetti to be referring to profits. In view of the employees’ own responses, then, I cannot see the pe-cessity for an evidentiary hearing to probe the impact of the alleged misrepresentation upon the election.1
Of course, we would all feel somewhat better if Rossetti had referred specifically to gross receipts, eliminating all possibility of confusion. But he did not do so; union organizers on the stump, under the pressures of time, election fervor and strongly held economic views, characteristically do not choose their words with the care of judges in their chambers. Moreover, recent research studies indicate that campaign propaganda has little effect upon election results ; according to the admittedly tentative conclusions of these studies, a worker’s vote for or against collective representation , is determined largely by his general satisfaction with his job and by his prior experiences with and general attitudes toward unions. See Brotslaw, Attitude of Retail Workers Toward Union Organization, 18 Lab.L.J. 149, 168-71 (1967); Getman & Goldberg, The Myth of Labor Board Expertise, 39 U.Chi.L.Rev. 681, 696 (1972); Getman, Goldberg & Herman, The National Labor Relations Board Voting Study: A Preliminary Report, 1 Journal of Legal Studies 233 (1972). Given the practical difficulties of preventing ambiguous statements such as Rossetti allegedly made and the strong possibility that little is gained by preventing them, it is worth emphasizing that a goal of the election process should be to give speedy practical effect to the choice of employees for or against collective representation. See Samoff, NLRB Elections: Uncertainty and Certainty, 117 U.Pa.L.Rev. 228 (1968). The union or non-union status of a proposed bargaining unit should not be subjected to protracted litigation before the Board and in the courts because of a single oral statement, made in the give-and-take of an organizational meeting, apparently not deliberately false, and misleading only when one postulates a very low level of employee economic sophistication. This decision will only encourage losing *1234parties, employers and unions, to raise objections to election results and further burden the Board, which already has to process over 1,000 such objections annually. Thirty-Seventh Annual Report of the NLRB at 244-45 (1972).
I see no merit in the Company’s other arguments.
I would deny the Company’s petition for review and grant the Board’s cross-application for enforcement of its order.

. The majority puts some emphasis on the fact that the union won this election by a vote of 7-6, arguing that where an election is extremely close, “even minor misconduct cannot be summarily excused on the ground that it could not have influenced the election.” But such a rule would make it difficult to hold a conclusive election in a small unit such as this one (15 eligible voters) where a decision by one, two or three votes is always a good possibility. More importantly, the courts have not found it necessary to order evidentiary hearings even in very close elections where the Regional Director has conducted a thorough administrative investigation and where his decision not to hold a hearing was not a “glaring discrimination or abuse.” See, e. g., NLRB v. Olson Bodies, Inc., supra, 420 F.2d at 1189 (no hearing ordered despite 110-109 vote in election) ; NLRB v. Visual Educom, Inc., supra, 486 F.2d at 643 (no hearing despite 57-55 vote) ; NLRB v. Georgia-Pacific Corp., 473 F.2d 206 (8th Cir. 1973) (no hearing despite 77-75 vote).