Court Opinion

ID: 9456563
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:56:54.299792+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:01.884949
License: Public Domain

BROWNING, Circuit Judge (dissenting) :
The majority has undertaken to perform a function of the Board: namely, the accommodation of the employees’ right of association and the employer’s right of communication, and, as part of that task, the evaluation of the impact upon employees of particular employer statements in a particular management-labor context. In discharging the Board’s function, moreover, the majority has failed to afford employees the protection from coercive employer-statements mandated by Gissel Packing Co. v. N. L. R. B., 395 U.S. 575, 616-620, 89 S.Ct. 1918, 23 L.Ed.2d 547 (1969).
*1109Labor Board findings within the Board’s specialized field “carry the authority of an expertness which courts do not possess and therefore must respect.” Universal Camera Corp. v. N. L. R. B., 340 U.S. 474, 488, 71 S.Ct. 456, 465, 95 L.Ed. 456 (1951). The determination challenged here falls in this category. “ [A] reviewing court must recognize the Board’s competence in the first instance to judge the impact of utterances made in the context of the employer-employee relationship.” Gissel, supra, 395 U.S. at 620, 89 S.Ct. at 1943.1 “[T]he expertise of the Board is particularly relevant to the determination of whether a latent threat lies hidden in the words of an employer.” Mon River Towing, Inc. v. N. L. R. B., 421 F.2d 1, 9 (3d Cir. 1969). See also N. L. R. B. v. General Industries Electronics Co., 401 F.2d 297, 300 (8th Cir. 1968); Dubin-Haskell Lining Corp. v. N. L. R. B., 375 F.2d 568, 571 (4th Cir. 1967); Daniel Construction Co. v. N. L. R. B., 341 F.2d 805, 811 (4th Cir. 1965); cf. Conolon Corp. v. N. L. R. B., 431 F.2d 324, 327-28 (9th Cir. 1970) .
But if it were not within the Board’s special competence to determine whether Linka’s statements conveyed an implied threat to employees, it would still be improper for a reviewing court to displace the Board’s “choice between two fairly conflicting views, even though the court would justifiably have made a different choice had the matter been before it de novo.” Universal Camera Corp., supra, 340 U.S. at 488, 71 S.Ct. at 465; Su-prenant Manufacturing Co. v. N. L. R. B., 341 F.2d 756, 760 (6th Cir. 1965). See also N. L. R. B. v. Miller Redwood Co., 407 F.2d 1366, 1369 (9th Cir. 1969). A brief consideration of the law and the facts will demonstrate that, at a minimum, the Board made such a choice in this instance, albeit not the choice the majority prefers.
I
Accommodating the employer’s right to speak with the employees’ right to associate presents troublesome problems. The balance has shifted often as Congress, the Board, and the courts have adjusted to changing values and conditions in industrial-labor relationships.
Initially, the Board required employers to maintain strict neutrality. “This approach was based on the belief that an employer’s statements could not be divorced from his position of economic power over his employees, so no matter how innocent the speech itself, the employees would be under pressure to follow the express desire of their employer.” Restrictions on the Employer’s Right of Free Speech During Organizing Campaigns and Collective Bargaining, 63 Nw.U.L.Rev. 40, 43-44 (1968). “The Board reasoned that the choice of a bargaining representative was the workers’ exclusive concern, in which the employer had no more interest than the employees would have in participating in the choice of the company’s board of directors.” Cox & Bok, Labor Law Cases and Materials 170 (7th ed. 1969).
In 1941, the decision in N. L. R. B. v. Virginia Electric & Power Co., 314 U.S. 469, 62 S.Ct. 344, 86 L.Ed. 348 required recognition of the employer’s First Amendment right of free speech. That ruling “abolished the assumption that the employer’s position made his expressions in the organizing context coercive per se,” 63 Nw.U.L.Rev., supra at 44. The Board could still regulate employer speech, but only as part of a totality of employer activities that “restrain or coerce his employees in their free choice.” 314 U.S. at 477, 62 S.Ct. at 348.
In 1947, Congress reaffirmed the employer’s right to comment on union organizational efforts by adding section *11108(c) to the National Labor Relations Act. See Linn v. United Plant Guard Workers of America, Local 114, 383 U.S. 53, 62, 86 S.Ct. 657, 15 L.Ed.2d 582 (1966). And by the early 1950’s “the Board began to give greater latitude to employer speeches * * A trend that continued thereafter though ameliorated somewhat by changes in Board membership subsequent to 1961. Cox & Bok, supra at 176, 177.
During this period — the 1960’s, immediately preceding the decision in Gissel —Professor Cox and Dean Bok, among others, suggested that the prevailing rule (which prohibited employer “threats” during organizational campaigns, but permitted “predictions”) unduly inhibited the free exercise of the employees’ right to associate. Professor Cox wrote, “The lower value which the NLRB now puts upon freedom of association and the notion that an employer has a legitimate interest in defeating a union have led to increasing the latitude allowed employers in the name of free speech to the point where a clever lawyer can readily show an employer how to threaten and coerce his employees without fear of NLRB proceedings. An employer may not lawfully ‘threaten’ to reduce wages or close a plant if a union is organized but he may ‘predict’ that these things will happen.” Cox, Law and the National Labor Policy 42-43 (1960). And Dean Bok: “In principle, the policy was sound enough, for when the employer simply pointed out the adverse consequences which might lawfully result from unionization he provided the employees with information that was clearly pertinent to the decision they were called upon to make. In practice, however, the policy gave hostile employers great leeway to indulge in dire predictions in order to dissuade the employees from supporting the union.” Bok, The Regulations of Campaign Tactics in Elections under the National Labor Relations Act, 78 Harv.L.Rev. 38, 75 (1964).2
There were other complaints.
The point was made that it was difficult to administer the prohibition against fabrication or exaggeration of economic consequences of unionization, such as a plant shutdown or loss of business, because the factors involved were often complex, conflicting, and speculative, and the ultimate decision generally a matter of subjective judgment. “As a result, the Board could rarely disprove the employer’s predictions,” without an unjustifiable expenditure of agency resources. 78 Harv.L.Rev., supra at 81.
It was argued that the rule that “total context” determines whether employer statements are coercive “places both unions and employers in a position of uncertainty as to what may properly be said during the pre-election campaign,” and there was a need for “definite guidelines.” Cuneo, NLRB’s Totality of Conduct Theory in Representation Elections and Problems Involved in Its Application, 7 Duquesne L.Rev. 229, 238, 242, 244 (1968).
II
The section of the Gissel opinion that deals with the employer-speech issue is an apparent effort to restate and restructure governing doctrine to meet complaints of this kind.3 Although the remedies adopted by the Court were not invariably those suggested by the critics, “[i]t seems demonstrable that the appli*1111cable rules governing employer speech have been greatly altered by that case.” Browne & Sachs, The Suppression of Employer Free Speech — A New Ban on “Conscious Overstatements,” and a Caveat Against Brinksmanship, 15 Vill.L. Rev. 588, 599 (1970).
It should be emphasized that Gissel did not involve an express threat of retaliatory action — such overt coercion is rare 4 Indeed, Mr. Sinclair, the employer, had assured his employees that he “would not close the plant in retaliation for employees voting for a union.” 15 Vill.L.Rev., supra at 605. The question in Gissel, as in this case, was whether, despite the absence of an express threat, the Board could reasonably conclude that the employer’s statements would be understood by the employees not as bona fide predictions of economic consequences of unionization beyond management’s control, which they purported to be, but rather, in reality, as notice of changes that management might choose to make if the employees chose the union.
At the outset, Gissel rejected any notion that during an organizational campaign the employer is free to confront his employees with the “uninhibited, robust and wide open” speech appropriate in other contexts. On the contrary, “in the context of a nascent union organizational drive,” the Court held, “employers must be careful in waging their anti-union campaign” (395 U.S. 616, 89 S.Ct. 1941). “[A]n employer’s rights cannot outweigh the equal rights of the employees to associate freely * * *. And any balancing of those rights must take into account the economic dependence of the employees on their employers, and the necessary tendency of the former, because of that relationship, to pick up intended implications of the latter that might be more readily dismissed by a more disinterested ear ’ (617, 89 S.Ct. 1942). A vote on union recognition is not comparable to “the election of legislators or the enactment of legislation * * where the independent voter may be freer to listen more objectively and employers as a class freer to talk” (618, 89 S.Ct. 1942).
The Court then formulated specific standards for evaluating the impact of employer statements during a union organizational campaign.
An employer may freely state “his general views about unionism or any of his specific views about a particular union” subject only to the general statutory interdiction of “threat of reprisal or force or promise of benefit” (618, 89 S.Ct. 1942).
A stricter standard applies, however, to an employer’s “prediction as to the precise effects he believes unionization will have on his company” (IbidO. And for good reason. As Professor Cox and Dean Bok had pointed out, an employer’s forecast as to future working conditions of employees of his own business in the event of unionization is a ready vehicle for conveying the message that the employer does not care to deal with the union, and that if his employees are so unappreciative as to compel him to do so, he is likely to return the unkindness. Accordingly, the risk is high that employees will understand an employer’s predictions of such changes as a threat to bring them about.
The standard that the Court devised to assure that employer predictions of adverse consequences of unionization would not carry an implication of retaliation is this: “The prediction must be carefully phrased on the basis of objective fact to convey an employer’s belief as to demonstrably probable consequences beyond his control” (618, 89 S.Ct. 1942).5
*1112By requiring that the employer’s forecast be based upon “objective facts,” from which it appears that the predicted event is a “demonstrably probable consequence” of unionization, and one that is “beyond [the employer’s] control,” the Court established clear, largely objective criteria that virtually assure that a permitted prediction will reflect the bona fide judgment of the employer regarding the effects of unionization itself. It is implicit in Gissel that if an employer prediction does not meet these criteria the risk that it will have a coercive impact upon employees is so high as to justify prohibiting the employer from making it.
The Court imposed one additional restriction upon employer predictions — one of form rather than substance: they must be “carefully phrased * * * to convey an employer’s belief” in terms of the substantive criteria. The purpose of this requirement is to assure that the hearer will know that the employer’s statement is a bona fide prediction and not a threat, for the critical consideration is the impact of the statement upon the employees.
Ill
The Board summarized the statements of Linka, the employees’ supervisor, challenged in this case, as follows:
“[H]e told them, either directly or by clear implication, that if they selected the Union, their coffee breaks and lunch hours would be tightly controlled, their conversations during working hours would be restricted, the Respondent would stop providing smocks and laundry service for employees, and would run lesser grade paper stocks, which would make operating the presses more difficult. In addition, Linka told employees that under a union shop they would not enjoy present sick leave benefits, and would not be paid when time was lost due to sickness. Linka also admitted telling two employees, Brown and Birt-well, that their limited abilities could disqualify them for work in a union shop, because when the Union came in, employees would have to operate all presses, and those who could not might be replaced by other operators from the union hall. In addition, Lin-ka told Birtwell that if the Respondent wanted to rehire her, but found people at the hiring hall who could do better work, she would not be rehired and would forfeit her pension.” (Footnotes omitted.)
The Board noted that the statements were made at a series of a dozen or so meetings held in Linka’s office during the two-week period immediately preceding the election. Each meeting was attended by three or four of the fourteen employees of the unit — each employee attending three or four meetings. As the Board observed, “systematic interviews for the purpose of exposing employees to antiunion propaganda not dissimilar to those conducted by Linka have been held inherently coercive and grounds for setting aside an election.” 6 Although the Board did not rest its decision upon these circumstances, it did rely upon them, noting that “evaluation of Linka’s remarks requires consideration of the context in which they were made.” The Board continued:
“The clear import of his statements concerning coffee breaks, lunch periods, sick leave, possible loss of jobs, regimentation, etc., was that present benefits would be endangered or diminished with the advent of the Union. Coming from Linka who had been employed by Respondent for 15 years and was manager of the unit in which the election was directed these refer-*1113enees concerning steps that could be taken by management in the event the Union was certified would quite naturally be given great weight by the employees. Accordingly, whether they be viewed as predictions or expressions based upon Linka’s experience with unions, his statements were reflective of restrictions Respondent was in a position to invoke if the employees designated the Union. ‘It is well settled that an employer’s “prediction” of untoward economic events may constitute an illegal threat if he has it within his power to make the prediction come true.’ And as ‘the likely import of respondent’s pronouncements was coercive,’ and calculated to dissuade employees from supporting the Union in the impending election, the impact of Linka’s repeated threats upon employee freedom of choice cannot be dismissed as isolated or because not shown to have been motivated by anti-union animus. Accordingly, we find * * * that Respondent * * * violated Section 8(a) (1) of the Act.” (Footnotes omitted.)
This evaluation of Linka’s remarks is a rational choice on the record, particularly in light of the subsequent decision in Gissel.
The challenged statements predicted that the union would make certain demands, the company would grant them, and granting the demands would impose hardships upon the employees who had chosen the union to represent them. All of the predicted hardships related to matters within the employer’s control— the rigid enforcement of working rules, elimination of sick leave, use of inferior raw materials, curtailment of free supplies and services furnished to employees, and the discharge and rehiring of employees. These are precisely the sort of forecasts that employees would understand as describing changes management itself intended to impose if the union won.7
The question is whether the Board could reasonably conclude that they were not stated in terms of objective facts sufficient to demonstrate that the predicted events were probable consequences of unionization beyond the employer’s control and thus negative the natural inference of employer retaliation.
A.
Linka’s prediction that “possibly their sick leave would be changed, and as far as coffee breaks, lunch hour, regimentation of the shop, that would be enforced,” was based upon “what I had observed down in Building 4” — the company’s main factory unit, employing unionized labor. As to sick leave, Linka added, “[T]he arrangement had been that it was up to the department manager’s discretion * * * to approve a leave of absence up to five days with pay. My understanding of the Union was that if you didn’t come to work you didn’t get paid for it.” Linka testified that in referring to “the Union” he meant the IBEW, which represented the bulk of the factory unit workers. The Company asserts that the underlying factual basis of these predictions was that the Pressmen’s Union,8 involved here, would negotiate a contract changing the basis of pay from monthly salary to an hourly scale, as in the IBEW contract.
As the Board points out, the sample contract that the Pressmen’s Union circulated did not provide an hourly scale but a weekly salary and, further, it did provide sick leave. Faced with these *1114patent inconsistencies between the asserted basis for Linka’s prediction and the most obviously relevant facts, the employees would naturally infer that the real cause of the predicted changes was to be a retaliatory decision by management. Moreover, even if the conjectured change to an hourly pay scale had been a demonstrably probable consequence of unionization beyond the Company’s control, no one explained why this change would in turn compel the elimination of sick leave and the introduction of employee regimentation.
B.
The reason Linka gave for his predictions that he, Linka, would probably eliminate free work smocks and laundry service for the employees and shift to the use of lower-grade paper stock, which was more difficult for the employees to handle, was that the union would demand and obtain higher wages and these economies then would be necessary to permit the company “to remain competitive.”
It could hardly escape the listening employees that the hardships that would befall them in the event of unionization were described with great precision and specificity, but the cause of those calamities was identified only vaguely and in most general terms. Nothing that Lin-ka said approached the leval of objective fact sufficient to demonstrate that the predicted hardships were probable consequences of unionization beyond the company’s control. There is little anywhere in the record to demonstrate that the Printing Union’s as yet unannounced demands would substantially enhance the company’s costs. See Gissel, supra, 395 U.S. at 619, 89 S.Ct. 1918. Even if there were, there is nothing to demonstrate that the company “could not, in fact, meet higher labor costs out of current levels of income, or out of increased income, or from reduced costs in other areas.” Mon River Towing, Inc. v. NLRB, supra, 421 F.2d 1, 11 (3d Cir. 1969). Finally there were no facts bearing upon the “competitive” conditions that the company was required to meet.
C.
Linka’s most serious prediction was that employees Brown and Britwell would lose their jobs if the union won. Linka’s testimony as to these statements was as follows:
“In explaining this to [Wanda] Brown and [Eleanor] Birtwell, I told them that I felt they were specialized in what they could do. If the plant were to go union and I needed an operator on one of these other presses, and I didn’t feel they could operate it * * * I would be compelled to say, ‘Go home,’ and I would have to call the Union hall and get somebody who could. This is what I explained to them.
******
* * * In Wanda’s and Eleanor’s cases, being more or less specialized in the equipment they operated, * * * jn thg event there was a union, and I couldn't use her on another job or another press if the work should slow down on hers, or couldn’t move her into another department that wasn’t an hourly-type operation, it was conceivable that she would be laid off. * * *
****** I also explained to [Eleanor Birtwell] that if things were slow at Lenkurt for any period of time and she would go out to another job and we wanted to bring her back and we found somebody else out of the hall that would probably do her job a little better, she would foreit her pension if there wasn’t a spot with Lenkurt.
In Gissel the Supreme Court approved the principle “that ‘[conveyance of the employer’s belief, even though sincere, that unionization will or may result in the closing of the plant is not a statement of fact unless, which is most improbable, the eventuality of closing is capable of proof.’ ” Gissel, supra, 395 *1115U.S. at 618-619, 89 S.Ct. at 1942. The Court noted that employees are particularly sensitive to threats of plant closure. Ibid, at 619-620, 89 S.Ct. 1918. There would seem no reason to believe, however, that employees are not equally sensitive to threats of loss of employment and (as in Birtwell’s case) loss of pension rights as well.9
Linka . offered nothing approaching proof of these predictions. Again, while the evil Linka prophesied was clear and specific, the factual justification was vague and general.
The company suggests that Linka intended to convey the thought that the Printing Union would not permit its employee members to shift to other presses within the printing unit or to odd jobs in other departments. It would seem improbable that a union elected to represent fourteen employees in one small department of a company having a 3500-man work force would impose either condition.10 The company does not suggest that the sample contract circulated by the Printing Union purported to do so.
The point, again, is not simply that Linka’s statements were insufficiently supported by objective facts, but rather that the Board could conclude that because of this lack of objective factual support there would be a natural tendency for the employees to take the statements as a threat.
Finally, neither the company, nor the majority, attempts to justify Linka’s final prediction that Birtwell would not be rehired if the company found someone else “a little better.”
The Board’s order should be enforced.

. In NLRB v. Sinclair Co., 397 F.2d 157, 161 (1st Cir. 1968), one of the three consolidated cases disposed of in the Gissel opinion, the Court of Appeals said, “Whether an employer has used language that is coercive in its effect is a question essentially for the specialized experience of the Board.”

. Both writers made the point that the economic dependence of the employee conditioned his reaction to the employer’s words. Professor Cox: “Arguments which disclose the speaker’s strong desire are not wholly an appeal to reason if the listener is in the speaker’s power” (42). Dean Bok: It is “the power that [the employer] holds over the livelihood of his employees * * * which distinguishes him from the ordinary speaker and justifies special limitations on his right to communicate” (70).

. Of course, the Court was aware of the relevant legal literature. The publications of Professor Cox and Dean Bok referred to in the text are cited in the Gissel opinion, see 395 U.S. at 619, 620 n. 35, 89 S.Ct. 1918.

. “Today the employer seldom engages in crude, flagrant derelictions. Nowadays it is usually a case of more subtlety, perhaps the more effective, and certainly the more likely to escape legal condemnation.” NLRB v. Neuhoff Bros., Packers, Inc., 375 F.2d 372, 374 (5th Cir. 1967).

. The Court added, “or to convey a management decision already arrived at to *1112close the plant in case of unionization. See Textile Workers v. Darlington Mfg. Co., 380 U.S. 263, 274, n. 20, 85 S.Ct. 994, 13 L.Ed.2d 827 (1965),” to provide for the special situation dealt with in the cited case.

. Citing General Shoe Corp., 97 N.L.R.B. 499, 501-02; Economic Machinery, 111 N.L.R.B. 947; The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., 140 N.L.R.B. 133, 134-35.

. See Santa Fe Drilling Co. v. NLRB, 416 F.2d 725, 728 (9th Cir. 1969); NLRB v. Dow Chem. Co., 420 F.2d 480, 482 (5th Cir. 1969) ; NLRB v. Mink-Dayton, Inc., 416 F.2d 327, 328-329 (6th Cir. 1969) ; NLRB v. Wylie Mfg. Co., 417 F.2d 192, 194-195 (10th Cir. 1969) ; NLRB v. Varo, Inc., 425 F.2d 293, 300 (5th Cir. 1970).

. San Francisco & Vicinity Printing Pressmen, Offset Workers & Assistants’ Union No. 24, International Printing Pressmen and Assistants’ Union of North America, AFL-CIO.

. Eleanor Birtwell was 56 or 57. She would become eligible for benefits under the company’s pension plan at 62.

. Suprenant Mfg. Co. v. NLRB, 341 F.2d 756, 759-760 (6th Cir. 1965), relied upon by the company, is not to the contrary. The collective bargaining contract appears to have been plantwide, including a number of departments, and to have contained provisions restricting interdepartmental transfers. 341 F.2d at 759; 144 N.L.R.B. at 513-14.