Court Opinion

ID: 9470077
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:56:42.325022+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:43.289115
License: Public Domain

ADAMS, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
Although I join the majority opinion, I write separately to express my concern about one issue. Judge Weis’ dissent raises a substantial point as to the validity of the authorization cards used in this proceeding. If this were a case of first impression, I might well have agreed with him. His position, as I understand it, is that a card *266should not be counted for purposes of a bargaining order when there is no evidence that an employee has read the union card before signing it, and there is evidence that a union agent in obtaining the signature on the card represented only that the card would be used for an election. There is much to commend such a position, since the NLRA itself admonishes us to take steps to protect the right of each employee to vote for or against union affiliation. However, after carefully reviewing the Supreme Court’s opinion in NLRB v. Gissel Packing Co., 395 U.S. 575, 89 S.Ct. 1918, 23 L.Ed.2d 547 (1969), I am persuaded that that decision compels the conclusion that a card under these circumstances must be considered valid for determining union representation.
In Gissel, the Court held-that “employees should be bound by the clear language of what they sign unless that language is deliberately and clearly canceled by a union adherent with words calculated to direct the signer to disregard and forget the language above his signature.” 395 U.S. at 606, 89 S.Ct. at 1936. Inasmuch as the Court in Gissel sustained the use of authorization cards where some of the employees had been told, as they were in the present case, “that the card would be used to get an election” (395 U.S. at 584 n. 5, 89 S.Ct. at 1925 n. 5), it must have concluded that such a statement alone did not rise to the level of misrepresentation necessary to cause the employees to ignore the card’s printed text. Nothing in the facts of the proceeding before us today would indicate that the union representative’s conduct here converted his statement to “words calculated to direct the signer to disregard and forget the language above his signature.” Accordingly, I join the majority in upholding the validity of these cards.