Court Opinion

ID: 9418995
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:44:31.278469+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:11:46.618868
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Reed
concurring in part, dissenting in part.
While concurring in general with the conclusions of the Court in this case, I find myself in disagreement with the conclusion that the National Labor Relations Board was “without authority to require the petitioning companies *245to desist from giving effect to the Brotherhood contracts, as provided in subdivision (f) of paragraph one of the Board's order.” In that paragraph the petitioner companies are ordered to:
“I. Cease and desist from:
(f) Giving effect to their contracts with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.”
It is agreed that the “fundamental purpose of the Act is to protect interstate and foreign commerce from interruptions and obstructions caused by industrial strife.” This is to be accomplished by contracts with labor organizations, reached through collective bargaining. The labor organizations in turn are to be created through the self-organization of workers, free from interference, restraint or coercion of the employer.1 The forbidden interference is an unfair labor practice, which the Board, exclusively, is empowered to prevent by such negative and affirmative action as will effectuate the policies of the act.2 To interpret the Act to mean that the Board is without power to nullify advantages obtained by the Edison companies through contracts with unions, partly developed by the unlawful interference of the Edison companies with self-organization, is to withdraw from the Board the specific authority granted by the Act to take affirmative action to protect the workers’ right of self-organization, the basic privilege guaranteed by the Act. Ereedom from employer domination flows from freedom in self-organization.
It is assumed that the terms of these contracts in all respects are consistent with the requirements of the National Labor Relations Act and are in themselves, considered apart from the actions of the Edison companies in securing their execution, advantageous in preserving industrial harmony.
*246The Board found that the Consolidated Edison Company and its affiliates, the respondents before the Board, “deliberately embarked upon an unlawful course of conduct, as described above, which enabled them to impose the I. B. E. W. upon their employees as their bargaining representative and at the same time discourage and weaken the United which they opposed. From the outset the respondents contemplated the execution of contracts with the I. B. E. W. locals which would consummate and perpetuate their plainly illegal course of conduct in interfering with, restraining, and coercing their employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed to them under section 7 of the Act. It is clear that the granting of the contracts to the I. B. E. W. by the respondents was a part of the respondents’ unlawful course of conduct and as such constituted an interference with the rights of their employees to self-organization. The contracts were executed under such circumstances that they are invalid, notwithstanding that they are in express terms applicable only to members of the I. B. E. W. locals. If the contracts are susceptible of the construction placed upon them by the respondents, namely, that they were exclusive collective bargaining agreements, then, a fortiori, they are invalid.”3
The evidence upon which this finding is based is summarized in detail in 4 N. L. R. B., pages 83 to 94. It shows a consistent effort on the part of the officers and foremen of the Edison Company and its affiliates, as well as other employees of the Edison companies — formerly officers in the recently disestablished “Employees’ Representation Plans,” actually company unions — to further the development of the I. B. E. W. unions by recognition, contracts for bargaining, openly expressed approval, *247establishment of locals, and by permitting solicitation of employees on the time and premises of the Edison companies. By the Wagner Act employees have “the right to self-organization.” It is an “unfair labor practice for an employer” to “interfere with, restrain or coerce employees” in the exercise of that right.4 The Board concluded that the contracts with the I. B. E. W. unions were a part of a systematic violation by the Edison companies of the workers’ right to self-organization.
This determination set in motion the authority of the Board to issue an order to cease and desist from the unfair labor practice and to take “such affirmative action ... as will effectuate the policies of this Act.” The evidence was clearly sufficient to support the conclusion of the Board that the Edison companies entered into the contracts as an integral part of a plan for coercion of and interference with the self-organization of their employees. This justified the Board’s prohibition against giving effect to the contracts. The “affirmative action” must be connected with the unfair practices but there could be no question as to the materiality of the contracts. As this Court, only recently, said, as to the purpose of the Congress in enacting this Act:
“It had before it the Railway Clerks case which had emphasized the importance of union recognition in securing collective bargaining, Report of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, S. Rep. 573, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 17, and there were then available data showing that once an employer has conferred recognition on a particular organization it has a marked advantage over any other in securing the adherence of employees, and hence in preventing the recognition of any other.” 5
To this, it is answered that the extent of the coercion is left to “mere conjecture”; that it would be an “extrava*248gant” assumption to say that none of the 30,000 members “joined voluntarily”; and that the “employers’ practices, which were complained of, could be stopped without imperiling the interests of those who for all that appears had exercised freely their right of choice.” 6 On the question whether or not the Edison companies’ activities as to these contracts were a part of a definite plan to interfere with the right of self-organization, these answers are immaterial. It is suggested that the problem of the contracts should be approached with three cardinal considerations in mind: (1) that one contracting party is an “independently established” labor organization, free of domination by the employer; (2) that the contracts grant valuable collective bargaining rights; and (3) that they contain provisions for desirable working privileges. Such considerations should affect discretion in shaping the proper remedy. They are negligible in determining the power of the Board. They would, if given weight, permit paternalism to be substituted for self-organization. The findings of the Board, based on substantial evidence, are conclusive.7 There was evidence of coercion and interference, and the Board did determine that the policies of the Act would be effectuated by requiring the companies to cease giving effect to these contracts.
The petitioners, however, aside from the merits, raise procedural objections. It is contended that before the Board could have authority to order the Edison companies to cease and desist from giving effect to their contracts with the unions, it was necessary that the unions as well as the Edison companies should have legal notice or should appear; that the unions were indispensable parties. This Court has held to the contrary in Labor Board v. Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines, 303 U. S. 261. *249This case determined that where an employer has created and fostered a labor organization of employees, thus interfering with their right to self-organization, the employer can be required without notice to the organization, to withdraw all recognition of such organization as the representative of its employees. It is said that this case “is not apposite, as there no question of contract between employer and employee was involved. The Board had found upon evidence that the employer had created and fostered the labor organization in question and dominated its administration in violation of § 8 (2).”8 In the instant case it was found that no such domination existed. In the Greyhound case, the Board found not only domination under § 8 (2) but also> as in this case, an unfair labor practice under § 8 (1). The company’s violation of § 8 (1) was predicated on its interference with self-organization.9 In the Greyhound case it was said that the organization was not entitled to notice and hearing because “the order did not run against the Association.”10 Here the unions are affected by the action on the contracts, exactly as the labor organization in the Greyhound case was affected by the order to withdraw recognition. It would seem immaterial whether those contracts were violative of one or both or all the prohibited unfair labor practices.
A further procedural objection is found in the failure of the complaint, or any of its amendments, to seek specifically a cease and desist order against continued operation under the contracts. The companies were charged with allowing organization meetings on the company time and on company property, permitting solici*250tation of membership during company time, and paying overtime allowances to those engaged in soliciting or coercing workers to join the contracting unions. The complaint said that similar aid was not extended to a competing union and that office assistance was given to the effort to get members for the contracting unions. These charges made it obvious that the contracts were obtained from the unions which were improperly aided by the Edison companies in violation of the prohibitions against interference with self-organization. Contracts so obtained were necessarily at issue in an examination of the acts in question.
Certainly the Edison companies and the contracting unions could have been allowed on a proper showing a further hearing on the question of the companies’ continuing recognition of the contracts. By § 10(f) the Edison companies and the unions could obtain a review of the Board’s order. In that hearing either or both could show to the court, § 10(e), that additional evidence as to the contracts was material and that it had not been presented because the aggrieved parties had not understood that the contracts were subject to a cease and desist order, or had not known of the proceeding. The court could order the Board to take the additional evidence. This simple practice was not followed. Although all parties were before the lower court on the review, the petitioners chose to rely on the impotency of the Board to enter an order affecting the contracts.
In these circumstances the provision of the order requiring the Edison companies to cease from giving effect to their contracts with the contracting unions is proper. This order prevents the Edison companies from reaping an advantage from those acts of interference found illegal by the Board.
Me. Justi "u Black concurs in this opinion.

 Labor Board Cases, 301 U. S. 1.

 §§ 7, 8,10, Act of July 5, 1935, 49 Stat. 452-55.

 4 N. L. R. B. 71, 94.

 §§ 7 and 8, Act of July 5, 1935, 49 Stat. 452.

 Labor Board v. Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines, 303 U. S. 261, 267.

 Ante, p. 238.

 Washington, V. & M. Coach Co. v. Labor Board, 301 U. S. 142, 146.

 Ante, p. 233.

 Labor Board v. Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines, 303 U. S. 261, 263.

 Id., 271.