Court Opinion

ID: 9642306
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:54:28.058629+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:45.755018
License: Public Domain

WÓODROUGH, Circuit Judge
(dissenting)-
I concur in all of the majority opinion except the reasons given for refusing to enforce the Board’s order to reinstate the discharged workman Likert. There was some evidence that Likert had committed a fault. The relation of the fault to the discharge was equivocal as it was committed in the presence of his foreman who apparently acquiesced at the time. The examiner thought that discharging the man was not an act of discrimination on account of his union activities. The Board found that it was. I think the evidence is such that some honest persons would honestly believe that it was and others might honestly believe that it was not. There was a question of fact which it was the sworn duty of the Board to determine. I dissent from the court’s conclusion that the claims made by the company threw the issue into the field of speculation or conjecture or justify the court’s refusal to adjudicate squarely upon the fact issue whether there was or was not discrimination in the act of discharging Likert.
Heretofore the effective way to prevent the unionizing of an industry has always been for those in control to cause the dis*789charge of any ringleaders who attempted to organize their fellow workmen. That course was legally open to all employers and was followed by those opposed to having their plants unionized. The Wagner Act denounces it as an unfair practice. Since then the idea has been seized upon that the Act can be aborted if any-kind of a fault can be shown on the part of a workman who engages in union activities. There is no human being in the industries utterly blameless or without fault and the idea is fallacious. Judicial sanction given to it will obstruct enforcement of the legislative will expressed in the Wagner Act, and as I think the court’s reasoning relative to the discharging of Likert tends to give such sanction I can not concur in it.