Court Opinion

ID: 9448128
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:23:57.778837+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:18.226723
License: Public Domain

ALDRICH, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
The two loom fixers were concededly supervisors, and were active leaders in the unionization movement. The respondent requested them to be neutral, and discharged them when they refused. This was not a case where supervisors were discharged for failure to take active steps to prevent unionization. Cf. N.L.R.B. v. Talladega Cotton Factory, Inc., 5 Cir., 1954, 213 F.2d 209, 40 A.L.R.2d 404. The respondent had an absolute right to insist upon their neutrality, and I cannot accept that part of the opinion which states that a strike for their reinstatement could be found to be for mutual protection of job security. N.L.R.B. v. Southern Airways, 5 Cir., 290 F.2d 519. It could not even be thought to be. The employees had no more right to be ignorant of the law than the respondent could be with respect to the loom fixer learner, where the shoe was on the other foot.
However, the respondent on the same day discharged a dozen other employees for failure to be neutral; in their case a demand it had no right to make. I accept the alternative part of the opinion citing Summit Mining that if the strike was largely protected it is within the competence of the Board to find that it did not lose that characteristic because some other object was unprotected, provided that other object was not actually illegal. See, in general, Cox, The Right to Engage in Concerted Activities, 26 Ind.L.J. 319 (1951).