Court Opinion

ID: 9493551
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:11:26.367236+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:54.045061
License: Public Domain

BRIGHT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. Anti-union animus contributed to the discharge decision here, and Carleton College does not satisfy its burden of showing that it would have taken the same action if Diekman had never participated in any of his organizing activities. The Board, thus, correctly found an unfair labor practice by Carleton College.
To establish an unfair labor practice, the general counsel must show by a preponderance of the evidence only that a discharge is in any way motivated by a desire to frustrate union activity. See NLRB v. Transportation Management Corp., 462 U.S. 393, 398-99, 103 S.Ct. 2469, 76 L.Ed.2d 667 (1983). In this case, the Board and the administrative law judge did a careful job of analyzing and discussing the evidence. When viewing the College’s actions in their entirety, the facts support the conclusion that the College was offering Diekman a choice: either quiet his activities or leave the school. The Board points out that the College’s September 9, 1996 letter to Diekman explaining the reasons for his release listed both the February 1996 and the October 1995 TAFC (The Adjunct Faculty Committee) memos as reasons for termination.
The National Labor Relations Act (Act) protects both of these actions. The Board found that TAFC is an admitted labor organization. As circumstantial evidence, the Board points to numerous comments by department faculty, particularly Arch-bold and Kelly, reflecting animus toward TAFC and, in particular, three of its organizing members, Diekman, Deichert, and Kodner. The Board’s ultimate conclusion that Diekman did not get a renewal contract to teach, while Deichert and Kodner did, seems indicative that the degree of retreat from demands for union organization demonstrated at the individual meetings with Dean McKinsey played a major role in the decision to discharge Diekman.
The Board drew reasonable inferences from the evidence to support its view that animosity toward Diekman’s union activity led to his termination of employment with Carleton College. The majority now draws its own inferences to reject the Board’s findings. Thus, the majority of this court has departed from its appropriate review function and endeavors to serve as a super administrative agency when it disagrees with the Board’s ultimate findings of fact.
Diekman’s language in his individual meeting on September 5, 1996 with McKinsey, that the music department was a “laughingstock” and a “pig”, upon which the majority cites as a focus for its decision, may well have been honest and sincere even though salty criticism of a music department which he and other adjunct faculty sought to improve. In the circumstances of that meeting, latitude must be allowed to implement the “congressional intent to encourage free debate on issues dividing labor and management.” Linn v. United Plant Guard Workers, 383 U.S. 53, 62, 86 S.Ct. 657, 15 L.Ed.2d 582 (1966) (footnote omitted).
Additionally, the Board carefully relied on evidence that McKinsey had harbored animus toward at least some of TAFC’s statutorily-protected activities. Indeed, she specified as one area of concern, during her meetings with each of the three TAFC supporters, the memorandum which had been sent to the FAC (Faculty Affairs *1083Committee) by TAFC on March 5, 1996. The Board determined that McKinsey had already concluded, by the time of the September 5 meeting, that Diekman had engaged in misconduct as reported by faculty and student accusers. Interestingly, the Board noted, none of those incidents of alleged misconduct were documented until after TAFC had submitted its memorandum to the FAC and the record was absent of any prior similar documentation pertaining to Diekman during the thirteen years that he worked for the College. In other words, misconduct as a pretext became documented following Diekman’s organizational activities.
Earle Indus., Inc. v. NLRB, 75 F.3d 400 (8th Cir.1996), does not support the majority. In that case, the conduct of the employee was egregious2 as opposed to Diek-man’s speaking to Dean McKinsey in a private meeting in a strong and forthright manner to support the right and need to organize adjunct faculty. By discussing the substance of TAFC’s February 27 communication to the FAC, the dean had injected herself into the overall bargaining process under the Act. Having done so, the meeting did not fall wholly within the ambit of employee-employer disciplinary discussions.
The decision of the majority in this case makes for a sad day for the rights of teachers in colleges to independently organize and support their rights with strongly held views.
Because Diekman refused to back down in his pro-organization views in the September 5 meeting in the way that his colleagues did, he received no contract. The College only needed one example to keep the adjuncts in line for the future. Diekman was that example.
As a result of this decision, the adjunct faculty of Carleton College and others similarly situated will hesitate to make any waves by attempting organized efforts to improve their conditions in opposition to the entrenched administrative and regular, tenured faculty.

. The worker, Earley Mae Wallace, was part of a group of employees who assisted and accompanied the Reverend Jesse Jackson in making his way through a part of the plant off-limits to nonemployees. When the personnel manager slopped Jackson, Wallace defied the manager before a crowd of employees and news cameras and did so by means of a false statement. See Earle Indus., Inc. v. NLRB, 75 F.3d at 405 (8th Cir.1996). The court emphasized the context in which the insubordinate, rude conduct arises. Id. at 406-7.