Court Opinion

ID: 9465815
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:56:26.95126+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:22.986091
License: Public Domain

HARLINGTON WOOD, Jr., Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I concur with Board Member Walter’s dissent to the Board’s Decision and Order in which he supports the views of the Administrative Law Judge.
The substantial record evidence as found by the Administrative Law Judge refutes, not supports, the Board’s decision. The AU found that the company’s action, was not unlawfully motivated or otherwise improper under the Act, but was nondiscriminatory and occasioned by perceived bona fide operational needs. When company employee Van Aman, a key “trouble-shooter” on call around the cloek for emergencies, requested 11 days off to attend the meetings, the company was compelled to reexamine its policy. The company represents that there were five employees on the traveling committee who attended bargaining sessions on 18 different days resulting in about 90 man-days lost to the company. This, I view, as unwarranted and unauthorized business disruption. The company had no objection to time off for employees to bargain for their own unit.
There was no collective bargaining agreement negotiated between the union and the company permitting employees to take time off to bargain outside their units at other locations. With this case as precedent there will no longer be any need for a union to bargain on that issue. The company has lost any right to bargain for some reasonable control or limitation on the practice. The union has gained a new bargaining tactic subject to obvious abuse. No limitation is placed on the number of employees nor the amount of time off that the union can now impose on an employer against its business judgment.
This is not a case of an employer merely refusing to bargain with a committee containing “outsiders” as in General Electric Co. v. NLRB, 412 F.2d 512 (2d Cir. 1969), cited by the majority. That and similar cases stand only for the general proposition that either party may freely choose its own bargaining representatives, including members from a different union. The issue, however, was not whether or not an employer should be required against its will and in the absence of a contractual agreement to permit employee uncontrolled time off for bargaining elsewhere in another separate unit. I find no statutory basis or precedential support for the majority view.
To give the company a way out of the imposed burden by bargaining at the end of the work day or on weekends or holidays is not a reasonable fair choice. Both management and employees should be entitled to some time off from their regular labors for rest and relaxation. Tired employees after late bargaining sessions could not be expected to be up to their normal efficiency on the subsequent work day. The union has not suggested that employees devote their vacation time to “travelling” for union bargaining purposes.
Another consideration in this case is that the union since 1971 has been consistently endeavoring one way or the other to cause the four separate bargaining units to be consolidated into one. In 1971 the Regional Director denied the union petitions seeking consolidation. Even at the beginning of these particular negotiations the union was requesting joint bargaining for all four units. To use the terminology quoted by the majority,1 the union camel has been constantly circling the company tent probing for a way to stick its nose under. Now the Board itself had indirectly lifted the edge of the tent to make it easy.

. Minnesota Mining and Mfg. Co. v. NLRB, 415 F.2d 174 (8th Cir. 1969).