Court Opinion

ID: 9480815
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:59:28.389498+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:55.863805
License: Public Domain

*326TORRUELLA, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Paraphrasing Chief Justice Rehnquist’s concurring opinion in NLRB v. Curtin Matheson Scientific, Inc., — U.S. -, 110 S.Ct. 1542, 1554, 108 L.Ed.2d 801 (1990), “[t]he Board’s ... rule [in this case] seems to me to press [past] the limit the deference to which the Board is entitled in assessing industrial reality....” This is an important case because it alters the balance of a framework carefully laid out by Congress and thoughtfully implemented by well-established Supreme Court doctrine. The issue presented here is not a new one although the standard applied by the Board in determining the commission of an unfair labor practice by Lechmere is of recent formulation. See Jean Country, 291 N.L.R.B. No. 4 (1988). In Jean Country, the Board reframed the balancing test required by the Supreme Court in the case of NLRB v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., 351 U.S. 105, 76 S.Ct. 679, 100 L.Ed. 975 (1956). To my view, it did so in a manner that attempts to circumvent the quintessential elements of that seminal decision.
In Babcock & Wilcox, as in the present case, the employer refused to permit distribution of union literature by non-employee union organizers on a company-owned parking lot. The Board found “that it was unreasonably difficult for the union organizers] to reach the employees off company property,” Babcock & Wilcox, 351 U.S. at 106, 76 S.Ct. at 681 (emphasis added), and held that the refusal of access to the parking lot impeded the employees’ right to self-organization in violation of § 8(a)(1) of the Act. The employer in Babcock & Wilcox was engaged in manufacturing, and its plant was located on a 100 acre tract about one mile from a community of about 21,000 people, in which lived about 40% of its 500 employees, the rest living within a 30 mile radius. The parking lot could be reached from a driveway which was entirely company property, except for a 31 foot public right-of-way extending from the highway. This strip was the only public place in the immediate vicinity of the plant at which leaflets could be distributed to employees. The Board found that, because of traffic conditions at that place, it was “practically impossible for union organizers to distribute safely to employees in motors [sic] as they enter[ed] or [left] the lot.” Id. at 107, 76 S.Ct. at 681. The union had used the mails to communicate with over 100 employees, and had also visited homes and talked to employees on the telephone. The company had a non-discriminatory no-solicitation policy prohibiting such actions by non-employees on company grounds.
On these facts, the Court reversed the Board’s conclusion that a violation of § 8(a)(1) had taken place. It ruled that the Board erroneously applied cases involving “employees isolated from normal contacts,” e.g., “personal contacts on streets or at home, telephones, letters or advertised meetings.” Id. at 111, 76 S.Ct. at 684. The Court ruled:
It is our judgment ... that an employer may validly post his property against nonemployee distribution of union literature if reasonable efforts by the union through other available channels of communication will enable it to reach the employees with its message and if the employer’s notice or order does not discriminate against the union by allowing other distribution....
... [I]f the location of a plant and the living quarters of the employees place the employees beyond the reach of reasonable union efforts to communicate with them, the employer must allow the union to approach his employees on his property. No such conditions are shown in these records.
The plants are close to small well-settled communities where a large percentage of the employees live. The usual methods of imparting information are available. The various instruments of publicity are at hand. Though the quarters of the employees are scattered they are in reasonable reach ....
Id. at 112-13, 76 S.Ct. at 684-85 (citations omitted, emphasis added).
*327Try as I may, I fail to see any significant factual or legal distinction between those presented in Babcock & Wilcox and those in this appeal. A illustrative: factual comparison is
(1) Nature of the business Babcock & Wilcox Manufacturing plant Lechmere Retail store in shopping center
(2) Description of private property in question Plant located in 100 acre tract, with parking lot 100 yards away from public highway Store located in 13.5 acres with parking lot immediately adjacent to public highway
(3) Number of employees 500 200
(4) Number of employees contacted by Union through various means 100 41
(5) Percentage of employees contacted by the Union 20% 20.4%
(6) Means of communication available Personal contact in streets and homes, mailings, telephone calls Some personal contact at homes and through handbillings, mailings, telephone calls to homes, pickets at public entrance, newspaper advertis-ments
(7) Community characteristics 40% of employees live in town of 21,000, the rest in radius of 30 miles 89% of employees live in three “urban-suburban areas” (pop. 900,000) with a maximum distance of 15 miles between them “ineffective and unsafe”
(8) Board’s findings regarding- organizational activity on public highway adjacent to private property “practically impossible for union organizers to distribute safely”
(9) No-solicitation rule Uniformly applied Uniformly applied
The only materially different fact in Bab-cock & Wilcox from the instant case is that, in Babcock, union organizers had the opportunity to speak with employees on the streets of the town. But, in that case, only 20% of the employees were ever contacted in any way by the union, and the Babcock opinion gives no indication of how many of those had the opportunity for face-to-face contact. In the instant case, by contrast, 20.4% of the employees were reached by four different mailings, and the Union had telephone numbers for half of these same employees. The Union also made ten home visits. There does not appear to be any reason for the Union’s failure to make home visits to all those employees for which it had addresses, although the Board’s opinion does say that many of the employees’ parents would not permit their children-employees to come to the telephone. But the point remains that the Union in this case had the opportunity for at least as much face-to-face contact as did the union in Babcock. Furthermore, although at first glance the populations in Babcock (21,000) and the present one (900,-000) appear to be a differentiating factor in favor of the Union, the litmus test indicates otherwise: in both cases the unions were able to reach the same percentage of employees, 20%. See Monogram Models, Inc., 192 N.L.R.B. 705 (1971) (size of city, Chicago, did not alone make employees inaccessible in their homes). Thus the size of the communities in question did not affect the ability of the Union to reach its constituency.
Notwithstanding the obvious factual similarity between these two scenarios, the Board, although paying lip service to Bab-cock & Wilcox, concluded that Lechmere violated the Act by denying access by the Union to its property to conduct proselytiz*328ing activities. The difference in result between Babcock & Wilcox and the present case is the Board’s newly-promoted Jean Country criteria, the crux of which is its balance-tipping dogma to the effect that barring “exceptional cases,” the use of newspapers, radio and television will not be considered a feasible alternative to direct contact with the employees. Thus, Jean Country brings about a skewed result whereby granting non-employee organizers entrance to employers’ property to carry out their activities becomes the rule rather than the exception, a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. I can find support in neither the Act nor in Babcock & Wilcox for such a rule, and in fact I believe it to be in direct contravention to the Court’s holding in that case.
My disagreement with the Board stems from various sources, not least of which is its pointed disregard of the indistinguishable factual basis of the present case with Babcock & Wilcox. See, ante at 327. It is not only in the factual context, however, that Jean Country and the Board’s decision in the present case transgress the principles laid down by the Court in Bab-cock & Wilcox. The clear impact of Bab-cock & Wilcox is that, in balancing the competing rights of the employer and the union, the Board should take into account the availability of “[t]he usual methods of imparting information ... [by the union, including] ... [t]he various instruments of publicity ... at hand.” Babcock & Wilcox, 351 U.S. at 113, 76 S.Ct. at 685 (emphasis supplied). Yet the Board, under the guise of fact-finding and “expertise,” in one clean swoop not only wipes out these specific directives but declares inexistent and impotent “the usual methods of imparting information” used by the entire advertising and publicity industry. This is a clearly unreasonable and arbitrary conclusion considering that these are the very tools normally used effectively by the political and commercial processes of this country, where in most cases actual personal contact is either minimal or absent. There is, of course, nothing in this record, or in Jean Country, to support such a wide sweeping conclusion by the Board, whether it be considered a factual or a legal finding.
The Board’s ruling in this case, and in Jean Country, to the effect that the use of newspapers, radio and television are ineffective methods of imparting information is not entitled to any deference under any of the recognized standards of review, all of which are ably recapitulated by the majority decision, ante at 317-18. If this be a factual determination, as stated above, there is not a scintilla of evidence much less “substantial” evidence to support it. See Universal Camera Corp. v. NLRB, 340 U.S. 474, 488, 71 S.Ct. 456, 465, 95 L.Ed. 456 (1951); see also 29 U.S.C. § 160(e). If this be the application of law to fact, it is reviewable under the same standard, see NLRB v. United Ins. Co., 390 U.S. 254, 260, 88 S.Ct. 988, 991, 19 L.Ed.2d 1083 (1968), and thus fails for the same reason. If the Board’s resolution is seen as a mixed question of fact and law, it is entitled to deference only if it is factually reasonable and legally sound, i.e. so long as the Board’s conclusion derives plausibly from the record. NLRB v. J. Weingarten, Inc., 420 U.S. 251, 266-67, 95 S.Ct. 959, 968, 43 L.Ed.2d 171 (1975). This is clearly not the present case, as the record is bare of any such support. The last possibility, one not mentioned by the majority but which would seem to best characterize the real nature of the Board’s actions in this case and Jean Country, is that the Board has attempted to exercise its rule-making authority. See 29 U.S.C. § 156; NLRB v. Bell Aerospace Co., 416 U.S. 267, 294-95, 94 S.Ct. 1757, 1771-72, 40 L.Ed.2d 134 (1974). If this be the case, the Board is equally lacking in support for its action, as “it is not entitled to disguise policymaking as fact-finding, and thereby to escape the legal and political limitations to which poli-cymaking is subject.” NLRB v. Curtin Matheson Scientific, Inc., supra, 110 S.Ct. at 1566 (Scalia, J., dissenting). See 29 U.S.C. § 156; NLRB v. Wyman-Gordon Co., 394 U.S. 759, 89 S.Ct. 1426, 22 L.Ed.2d 709 (1969) (Board cannot replace the rule-making requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act with a rule-making procedure of its own invention).
*329The principal flaw in the Board’s reasoning is that it equates an apparent lack of interest by Lechmere’s employees with the Union’s organizing campaign, with a lack of alternative means to reach these employees. The Board misconstrues Babcock & Wilcox in this respect. All that Babcock & Wilcox assures the Union is the opportunity to reach employees through “[t]he usual methods of imparting information.” Babcock & Wilcox, 351 U.S. at 113, 76 S.Ct. at 685. Babcock & Wilcox is not a guarantee of success, it is only a guarantee of an opportunity to reach the employees with the Union’s message.
The record in this case shows that the Union had ample opportunity to reach the employees. In fact, the Union was able to contact at least as many employees, percentage-wise, as the union in Babcock & Wilcox. Furthermore, the Union had a more diverse organizational campaign, and had more means available to impart its information, than did the union in that case, including the ability to carry out a six-month-long informational picket at the entrance to Lechmere’s parking lot. Furthermore, the employees’ homes in the present case were concentrated in a smaller geographical area than in Babcock & Wilcox. Although the total population in that area was considerably larger here than in Babcock & Wilcox, as it turns out, this is ultimately a neutral factor in the present case as the Union was able to reach the same percentage of employees, 20%, as in Babcock & Wilcox. Perhaps, as intimated by the Board’s findings, Lechmere, Inc., 295 N.L.R.B. No. 15, at note 10, the lack of receptivity of Lechmere’s employees was due to the large number of teenagers composing its work force whose parents were apparently opposed to their children joining the Union. If that be the case, although unfortunate from the Union’s viewpoint, it is certainly not a condition for which Lech-mere can either be faulted or penalized in the exercise of its property rights.
The bottom line is that the Board has reached a wrong and unsupported conclusion in finding that the Union did not have reasonable alternative means of communicating with Leehmere’s employees. In applying the Babcock & Wilcox balancing test, the Board, without any basis, labeled means of communication other than personal contact as ineffective. The Board has erroneously displaced the Babcock & Wilcox standard, which is reasonable opportunity to reach the employees with the union’s message, and replaced it with a mechanistic approach which totally disregards “usual methods of imparting information,” and is unfounded on the record.
Examination of previous application of the Supreme Court’s standard illustrates how far the Board has deviated from Bab-cock & Wilcox in steering its present course under Jean Country. For example, non-employee access was allowed to company property in Alaska where the mining employees lived and worked on an island, and where they could only get to the mainland by chartered seaplane or boat. Alaska Barite Co., 197 N.L.R.B. 1023 (1972), enf'd, NLRB v. Alaska Barite Co., 83 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2992 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 1025, 94 S.Ct. 450, 38 L.Ed.2d 316 (1975); Husky Oil, N.P.R. Operations, Inc. v. NLRB, 669 F.2d 643 (10th Cir.1982). Access by outside organizers was also granted in the case of company-owned towns, NLRB v. Stowe Spinning Co., 336 U.S. 226, 69 S.Ct. 541, 93 L.Ed. 638 (1949), self-contained labor camps, Petersen v. Talisman Sugar Corp., 478 F.2d 73 (5th Cir.1973), isolated resort hotels wherein employees lived on the premises, NLRB v. S & H Grossinger’s, Inc., 372 F.2d 26 (2d Cir.1967), and lumber camps in which the employees lived in company-provided and regulated housing, NLRB v. Lake Superior Lumber Corp., 167 F.2d 147 (6th Cir.1948). However, access to the employer’s property has been denied to non-employee union organizers in a variety of situations factually relevant to the present circumstances. For example, in Monogram Models, Inc., supra, the Board ruled that the union was not entitled to access to the employer’s property because it could reach the employees as they drove off a highway and down a 30 foot access road into the plant, and could reach employees at transportation pickup points in the city, or at their homes *330by mail, telephone and personal visits. The size of the city, Chicago, did not alone make employees inaccessible in their homes. In Falk Corp., 192 N.L.R.B. 716 (1971), the Board denied access where the union was able to pick out the employees’ license numbers as they left the plant and thereafter get their home addresses from the state license bureau. A similar result was reached by the Board in Lee Wards, 199 N.L.R.B. 543 (1972), which involved the parking lot of the employer’s retail store, in which it was ruled that reasonable access to employees existed because organizers could stand on an easement adjacent to the parking lot and record the license numbers of the cars entering the lot before the employer’s retail hours. See also NLRB v. Solo Cup Co., 422 F.2d 1149 (7th Cir.1970). And in NLRB v. Sioux City & New Orleans Barge Lines, Inc., 472 F.2d 753 (8th Cir.1973), the court ruled that a union did not have the right to board river towboats to reach employees who worked shifts of 30 to 60 days, where the record showed that with extra effort, the union could achieve personal meetings with off-duty employees without boarding the towboats. All of the above clearly illustrate that Bab-cock & Wilcox requires that “employees [be] isolated from normal contacts,” Babcock & Wilcox, 351 U.S. at 111, 76 S.Ct. at 683 (emphasis supplied), before entry to the employer’s property is required.
Jean Country is just another of the Board’s periodic attempts to expand Bab-cock & Wilcox, all of which have, in the past, received little encouragement from the courts. A clear example of this was the Board’s attempt to apply First Amendment criteria to organizational activity in private shopping centers. Although it met with some initial success, see Amalgamated Food Employees Union, Local 590 v. Logan Valley Plaza, Inc., 391 U.S. 308, 88 S.Ct. 1601, 20 L.Ed.2d 603 (1968), the Supreme Court eventually rejected this end-run tactic and it is now well-settled that the Babcock & Wilcox rationale is controlling. See Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U.S. 507, 96 S.Ct. 1029, 47 L.Ed.2d 196 (1976); Central Hardware Co. v. NLRB, 407 U.S. 539, 92 S.Ct. 2238, 33 L.Ed.2d 122 (1972).
Although adaptation of the Act “to changing patterns of industrial life is entrusted to the Board,” NLRB v. J. Weingarten, Inc., 420 U.S. at 266, 95 S.Ct. at 968, thus allowing the Board to reappraise prior rulings, “[a]n agency interpretation of a relevant provision which conflicts with the agency’s earlier interpretation is ‘entitled to considerably less deference’ than a consistently held agency view.” I.N.S. v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421, 446 n. 30, 107 S.Ct. 1207, 1221 n. 30, 94 L.Ed.2d 434 (1987). At the very least, “an agency changing its course ... is obligated to supply a reasoned analysis for the change beyond that which may be required when an agency ... act[s] in the first instance.” Motor Vehicle Mfrs. Ass’n v. State Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 463 U.S. 29, 42, 103 S.Ct. 2856, 2866, 77 L.Ed.2d 443 (1983). It is this reasoned analysis which the Board has failed to provide. Ex cathedra dogma is hardly reasoned analysis, particularly when we consider that what the Board is attempting to accomplish is the reversal of Supreme Court doctrine. Such imperious conduct can hardly be countenanced from an administrative agency which the law prohibits from acting in an arbitrary or capricious fashion. 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A); Universal Camera Corp. v. NLRB, 340 U.S. 474, 71 S.Ct. 456, 95 L.Ed. 456 (1951).
For the above reasons, I respectfully dissent.