Court Opinion

ID: 9458443
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:51:59.775278+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:45.830344
License: Public Domain

STEVENS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
“If we win the election and if we are as successful in bargaining with your employer as we were with Central Industries in Chandler (Indiana), you can expect to receive wage and fringe benefit increases averaging one-half cent over $1.00 per hour some time in the next eight years.”
If that is what the Union’s letter had said, it would have been accurate but unpersuasive. Instead, its author cleverly implied that the Union’s success at Chandler justified an expectation of an immediate raise of more than $1.00 an hour.
Regardless of whether one or 100 votes were obtained by the use of this misleading propaganda on the eve of the election, I consider the deception sufficiently gross to justify strong measures to discourage comparable misbehavior by sophisticated organizers in the future. In my opinion, administrative approval of such fraud does not merit the label “expertise.” I would set aside the election. Cf. Cross Baking Co. v. N.L.R.B., 453 F.2d 1346, 1349 (1st Cir. 1971).1

. Gross Baking is not distinguishable on the ground that the statement that the employees had received 75 cents an hour was a misstatement of the actual value of the benefits, whereas that element is not present in the instant case. The 75 cent increase in Cross Baking, averaged over three years, approximated 40 cents. The $1.005 involved here, averaged over three years, would equal about 67 cents. Of course, if the wage levels during the preceding five years at Central Industries were taken into account, the average rate of increase would probably have been even lower, since the Union presumably referred to its most favorable negotiation.