Court Opinion

ID: 9456685
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:00:10.994837+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:04.447627
License: Public Domain

PELL, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Because of the careful and scholarly analysis of the matters here involved *403contained in the majority opinion written by Judge Eschbach, I am reluctant to dissent. Nevertheless, my examination of the record compels me to the belief that the majority has reached an incorrect result. In so believing, I am joined by the Trial Examiner and one of the three members of the National Labor Relations Board deciding the case below. I would particularly agree with member Fanning of the National Labor Relations Board that Haver’s bonus, to the extent that he had any valid basis for claiming a right thereto, was eliminated as a result of the 1967 contract negotiations.
The statutorily mandated right of a certified union to insist that the employer, whose employees the union represents, bargain with it should in my opinion be accompanied by a concomitant legal responsibility to bargain in good faith and to abide by the terms and provisions of the resulting labor agreement. This is not to say that the employer can engage in unilateral conduct affecting the subjects of the bargaining. This no doubt is true whether the particular unilateral conduct pertains to one which specifically is referred to in the contract or whether it is one which merely was a potential subject of bargaining. Here, however, it appears to me that the bonus, admittedly a proper potential subject in the negotiation, was in fact bargained away. Notwithstanding payment of a Christmas bonus to Haver for 19 years prior to 1967, he was not under the particular circumstances of this case entitled to claim that he had some type of fixed contractual or vested right to the continuance of the payment of the bonus.
There seems to be no dispute that the employer here as a matter of policy paid bonuses only to management employees. It did not pay bonuses to rank-and-file employees whether they were office clericals or production and maintenance employees. There seems to be no reason for doubting the company’s good faith in contending that the company in preunion days had considered Haver as having “both supervisory and managerial authority.” This was the position the company took at the time of the determination of the unit: The Board’s Regional Director determined that Haver was properly in the unit and on this determination he left the category in which the company had considered him to be and thereby relinquished any sort of contractual claim to the continued payment of a Christmas bonus.
Haver was one of the two negotiators in the six lengthy sessions leading to a contract and there is nothing in the record to indicate that the above matters pertaining to the payment of Christmas bonuses only to managerial employees and the company’s position of theretofore having treated him as a managerial employee was any secret insofar as Haver was concerned. The contract negotiations surely must have been conducted in this context.
The Trial Examiner, who had an opportunity to observe the demeanor of the witnesses and evaluate the credibility of their testimony,1 found that the union negotiators played “a game of cat and mouse” in the negotiations for Haver’s wage rate. This was not a case where the matter of Haver’s wage structure might easily have been lost in the shuffle of negotiations as he was one of the two negotiators and apparently only four employees altogether were involved. While Haver was acting in a representative capacity in the negotiations, I would see no reason for ascribing such unhuman motivation as to think he would wholly forget or ignore his own economic needs and desires during the course of the negotiating sessions.
In my opinion the record fully supports the Trial Examiner’s finding as follows:
“The bargaining was hard, and the Union apparently felt that the only *404way to get Haver a higher figure was to propose the $3 an hour figure, and remain silent about the bonus, and then allege an unfair labor practice or a breach of contract if the bonus was not paid. The Union had a duty to negotiate the bonus and not remain silent. The evidence, including the evidence of its proposals, shows it did negotiate it in fact, although it did not make reference to the term ‘bonus.’ The evidence, including the evidence of counterproposals of Respondent, shows that in fact Respondent was negotiating on the basis of Haver’s past earnings including the bonus, although it did not use the term ‘bonus.’ ”
Kubicki, the principal negotiator for the union, admitted that in a caucus with Haver the bonus had been discussed. He further admitted that it was general practice in negotiating contracts to attempt to negotiate all the terms and conditions of employment into the contract.
I find the matters here involved controlled by N. L. R. B. v. Nash-Finch Co., 211 F.2d 622 (8th Cir. 1954). The majority opinion purports to distinguish Nash-Finch on the factual differentiation that in the Nash-Finch negotiations the union had earlier proposed a “Maintenance of Standard” provision, which would have required the employer to maintain its insurance and bonus plan for its union employees. While it is true in Nash-Finch that the union proposal might have had this effect, the language of the union proposal was not specifically so couched. Instead, the union proposal in Nash-Finch, which the company refused to accept, was a general boiler-plate type proposal reading as follows:
“The Employer agrees that all conditions of employment relating to wages, hours of work, overtime differentials, and general working conditions shall be maintained at not less than the highest minimum standards in effect at the time of the signing of this agreement, and the conditions of employment shall be improved wherever specific provisions for improvement are made elsewhere in this agreement.” (at p. 624)
Such a provision is not uncommon to union contracts and the fact that they are proposed and are inserted in contracts is indicative to me that Kubicki was correct in testifying that the general practice in negotiating contracts is to attempt to negotiate all the terms and conditions of employment into the contract. When the parties sit down and work out in detail a written instrument purporting to cover terms and conditions of the employment, the unwritten rules pertaining thereto which had been in effect during the pre-union days if viable should be spelled out. Failure to do so would certainly be the basis of the presumption of abandonment which seems clear in the case before us, which presumption I would not find as having been overcome.
I find the language of the Eighth Circuit in Nash-Finch, supra, persuasive where the court states at p. 626:
“Where parties to a contract have deliberately and voluntarily put their engagement in writing in such terms as import a legal obligation without uncertainty as to the object or extent of such engagement, it is conclusively presumed that the entire engagement of the parties and the extent and manner of their undertaking have been reduced to writing.”
and at p. 627:
“It seems to us that what the Board has done, under the guise of remedying unfair labor practices, is to attempt to bestow upon the respondent’s union employees the benefits which it believes the Union should have obtained but failed to obtain for them as a result of its collective bargaining with the respondent on their behalf.”
I concur in that part of the majority decision with regard to the lack of an independent violation of Section 8(a) (1) but for the reasons hereinbefore set out I would deny the application of the *405Board for enforcement of its order in its entirety and would grant the company’s petition to review and set aside the Board’s order.

. The majority of the Board in its decision noted “that in reaching this conclusion the Board did not overturn any of the Trial Examiner’s credibility resolutions, but merely differed with him concerning conclusions to be drawn from the established facts.” This to me has some aspects of “differing” without a distinction.