Court Opinion

ID: 9421281
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:57:44.709623+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:29.485776
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
whom Mr. Justice Clark and Mr. Justice Harlan join,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
This case involves the nature of the duty to bargain which the National Labor Relations Act imposes upon employers and unions. Section 8 (a) (5) of the Act makes it “an unfair labor practice for an employer ... to refuse to bargain collectively with the representatives of his employees,” and § 8 (b) (3) places a like duty upon the union vis-a-vis the employer. Section 8 (d) provides that “to bargain collectively is the performance of the mutual obligation of the employer and the representative of the employees to meet at reasonable times and confer in good faith with respect to wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment, or the negotiation of an agreement, or any question arising thereunder, and the execution of a written contract incorporating any agreement reached if requested by either party, but such obligation does not compel either party to agree to a proposal or require the making of a concession . . . .” 61 Stat. 142, 29 U. S. C. § 158 (d).
These sections obligate the parties to make an honest effort to come to terms; they are required to try to reach an agreement in good faith. “Good faith” means more than merely going through the motions of negotiating; it is inconsistent with a predetermined resolve not to budge from an initial position. But it is not necessarily *155incompatible with stubbornness or even with what to an outsider may seem unreasonableness. A determination of good faith or of want of good faith normally can rest only on an inference based upon more or less persuasive manifestations of another’s state of mind. The previous relations of the parties, antecedent events explaining behavior at the bargaining table, and the course of negotiations constitute the raw facts for reaching such a determination. The appropriate inferences to be drawn from what is often confused and tangled testimony about all this makes a finding of absence of good faith one for the judgment of the Labor Board, unless the record as a whole leaves such judgment without reasonable foundation. See Universal Camera Corp. v. Labor Board, 340 U. S. 474.
An examination of the Board’s opinion and the position taken by its counsel here disclose that the Board did not so conceive the issue of good-faith bargaining in this case. The totality of the conduct of the negotiation was apparently deemed irrelevant to the question; one fact alone disposed of the case. “[I]t is settled law [the Board concluded] , that when an employer seeks to justify the refusal of a wage increase upon an economic basis, as did the Respondent herein, good-faith bargaining under the Act requires that upon request the employer attempt to substantiate its economic position by reasonable proof.” 110 N. L. R. B. 856.
This is to make a rule of law out of one item — even if a weighty item — of the evidence. There is no warrant for this. The Board found authority in Labor Board v. Jacobs Mfg. Co., 196 F. 2d 680. That case presented a very different situation. The Jacobs Company had engaged in a course of conduct which the Board held to be a violation of § 8 (a)(5). The Court of Appeals agreed that in light of the whole record the Board was entitled to find that the employer had not bargained in good faith. Its refusal to open its “books and sales records” for union *156perusal was only part of the recalcitrant conduct and only one consideration in establishing want of good faith.* The unfair labor practice was not founded on this refusal, and the court’s principal concern about the disclosure of financial information was whether the Board’s order should be enforced in this respect. The court sustained the Board’s requirement for disclosure which “will be met if the respondent produces whatever relevant information it has to indicate whether it can or cannot afford to comply with the Union’s demands.” 196 F. 2d 680, 684. This is a very far cry indeed from a ruling of law that failure to open a company’s books establishes lack of good faith. Once good faith is found wanting, the scope of relief to* be given by the Board is largely a question of ádministra-tive discretion. Neither Jacobs nor any other court of appeals’ decision which has been called to our attention supports the rule of law which the Board has fashioned out of one thread drawn from the whole fabric of the evidence in this case.
The Labor Board itself has not always approached “good faith” and the disclosure question in such a mechanical fashion. In Southern Saddlery Co., 90 N. L. R. B. 1205, the Board also found that § 8 (a) (5) *157had been violated. But how differently the Board there considered its function.
“Bargaining in good faith is a duty on both sides to enter into discussions with an open and fair mind and a sincere purpose to find a basis for agreement touching wages and hours and conditions of labor. In applying this definition of good faith bargaining to any situation, the Board examines the Respondent’s conduct as a whole for a clear indication as to whether the latter has refused to bargain in good faith, and the Board usually does not rely upon any one factor as conclusive evidence that the Respondent did not genuinely try to reach an agreement.” 90 N. L. R. B. 1205, 1206.
The Board found other factors in the Southern Saddlery case. The employer had made no counter-proposals or efforts to “compromise the controversy.” Compare, McLean-Arkansas Lumber Co., Inc., 109 N. L. R. B. 1022. Such specific evidence is not indispensable, for a study of all the evidence in a record may disclose a mood indicative of a determination not to bargain. That is for the Board to decide. It is a process of inference-drawing, however, very different from the ultra vires law-making of the Board in this case.
Since the Board applied the wrong standard here, by ruling that Truitt’s failure to supply financial information to the union constituted per se a refusal to bargain in good faith, the case should be returned to the Board. There is substantial evidence in the record which indicates that Truitt tried to reach an agreement. It offered a 2%-cent wage increase, it expressed willingness to discuss with the union “at any time the problem of how our wages compare with those of our competition,” and it continued throughout to meet and discuss the controversy with the union.
*158Because the record is not conclusive as a matter of law, one way or the other, I cannot join in the Court’s disposition of the case. To reverse the Court of Appeals without remanding the case to the Board for further proceedings, implies that the Board would have reached the same conclusion in applying the right rule of law that it did in applying a wrong one. I cannot make such a forecast. I would return the case to the Board so that it may apply the relevant standard for determining “good faith.”

“The respondent contends that it was under no statutory duty to confer with the union after the second meeting since all of the issues had been fully explored and the position of both parties expressed. Whether this was true, however, was a question of fact which the Board found adversely to the respondent. Since at both the meetings the respondent took the position that discussion of wage increases would be futile because it was financially unable to make them, and since it refused to discuss the other subjects at all, the Board was justified in concluding that the respondent had refused to bargain in good faith as the Act requires. Collective bargaining in compliance with the statute requires more than virtual insistence upon a prejudgment that no agreement could be reached by means of a discussion.” Labor Board v. Jacobs Mfg. Co., 196 F. 2d 680, at 683.