Court Opinion

ID: 9449455
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:12:46.512148+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:50.467151
License: Public Domain

BOREMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part and concurring in part).
The insurance company here involved is a wealthy and widespread enterprise conducting substantial operations in sixteen states with its headquarters in Philadelphia. In the State of Virginia it maintains district offices, at Alexandria, Lynchburg, Martinsville, Norfolk, Richmond and Roanoke, six in all. The management of its operations is centralized at its Philadelphia home office from where all of its business and labor relations policies are controlled. All final authority on operating and personnel' matters such as hiring, firing, wage increases and promotions are thus under a common centralized control.
Each state in which the company does business imposes certain supervision over and regulation of the operations of the company within the particular state, thus substantially affecting the state-wide operations of the company. In Virginia the applicable regulations provide that no contracts of insurance may be offered without state approval; that no agent may be licensed to operate in the state unless trained in accordance with a training manual approved by the state to *695insure the fulfillment of the state’s own standards; and that the company must report all sales in the state, pay a premium tax on such sales and file with the state detailed annual statements respecting its operations in the state. While the requirements of the various states in these respects are varied each state imposes regulations which are uniform therein. Since regulation is on a state-by-state basis, the company’s operations are necessarily conducted, at least in substantial part, on that basis. Consequently, all of the insurance agents of the company operating from its six district offices in Virginia are similarly trained .and controlled, have exactly the same duties, sell, service and are familiar with the same state-approved insurance contracts ; they have uniform working conditions, pay scales and fringe benefits. There is, in fact, no distinct difference between the operations of the agents in the various district offices throughout the state.
The background of this proceeding ■shows that in 1953 the same union here involved conducted a state-wide organization campaign among all of the company’s agents in Virginia, but upon an election on this basis the union was rejected. Thereafter, in 1961, the same ■union attempted to organize the company’s agents in the three district offices located at Alexandria, Norfolk and Richmond. Apparently having been unsuccessful except among the agents in the Alexandria office, the union sought certification as the representative of the Alexandria group only, and subsequently the Board ordered an election restricted to the unit comprising the agents in the Alexandria office alone, which election the union won.
On these facts I am of the opinion that the instant case is controlled by our prior decision in National Labor Relations Board v. Glen Raven Knitting Mills, 235 F.2d 413 (4th Cir. 1956). The majority opinion in the instant case states that in Glen Raven the extent of organization was found to have been the only .factor relied on by the Board in deciding upon the appropriate unit. There were, however, other factors before the Board for consideration; extent of organization was found by this court to have been the controlling factor. In this court’s subsequent decision in National Labor Relations Board v. Morganton Full Fashioned Hosiery Co., 241 F.2d 913 (4th Cir. 1957), the facts respecting the common interests and working conditions of the employees in the unit involved, the knitters’ group, were identical with those in the Glen Raven case. Had there not been such a clear indication in Glen Raven that extent of union organization was a paramount consideration of the Board in determining the appropriate unit, it is more than probable that this court would have reached the same conclusion as it did in Morganton. The late Judge Soper wrote the opinions in Glen Raven and Morganton. The real import and significance of the Glen Raven decision is actually more clearly explained by Judge Soper in the opinion in Morganton than it was by his language in the Glen Raven decision itself. In Morganton, 241 F.2d at p. 915, the court, in explaining the rationale of Glen Raven which distinguishes that decision, said:
“When the union, after a lapse of three years, made its second attempt to organize the Glen Raven plant it was its intention to organize all the production workers, and in its literature it appealed to all of them to come in; and it was only after this attempt failed that it confined its efforts to the knitters and won a majority of them. Clearly the union was controlled by the extent of its organization, and when the Board, with full knowledge of the facts, gave its approval, it failed to observe the provisions of the statute, and we felt obliged to dismiss its petition for enforcement. We have no doubt of the correctness of that decision and accordingly reaffirm it. Judicial review of administrative tribunals would be of little value if this Court were obliged to accept without question administrative pronounce*696ments clearly at variance with established facts.
“There are these differences in the pending ease. The American Federation of Hosiery Workers, which applied to the Board in 1955 to certify the knitters as a separate bargaining unit, was not the same union which several years before had represented all the production employees and had been decertified in 1953; and it made no effort in 1955 to organize the entire body. The only evidence on this point is the statement of the union’s attorney that it would not be interested in an over-all unit. * * * ”
Here the evidence clearly shows that a state-wide or multi-office bargaining unit would have all of the positive indicia of an appropriate bargaining unit as set forth in National Labor Relations Board v. Williams, 195 F.2d 669 (4th Cir. 1952). In fact, the state-wide unit would seem to be far more appropriate. As the court said in the Glen Raven decision, 235 F.2d at p. 415:
« -» * * Unity of interest, common control, dependent operation, sameness in character of work and unity of labor relations have led the Board and the courts in many cases to approve the inclusion in a bargaining unit as many employees as possible who have a common interest. * * *”
Although the Board is empowered to make its own policy decisions, it seems that the abuses (which the statute prohibiting the consideration of extent of organization as a controlling factor was designed to curb) were substantially the same abuses which the Board meant to eliminate by its decision in Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., 56 NLRB 1635 (1944). There the Board stated, “based upon the extent of organization among employees of an employer we have frequently found appropriate for bargaining purposes small groups of employees with a provision for revision of the unit upon a broader organizational showing at a later time.” (Emphasis supplied.) The Board in the Metropolitan decision thereupon established a new policy of avoiding the extent of organization as the controlling factor in units of debit insurance agents, a policy consistent with and compelled by the statute referred to above, enacted in 1945. Indeed, in its decision in the instant case, the Board, in stating the rationale of its determination to reverse the policy decision in Metropolitan, clearly indicates that its. newly adopted policy is, in reality, based upon the extent «of organization factor when it now says that the “language of the Metropolitan Life case indicates that the rule was adopted solely in anticipation of broader organization on a company or state-wide basis, which at that time appeared imminent,” but that “as a practical matter, however, such state or company-wide organization has not. materialized.” The Board then concludes, that since the underlying reason for the-adoption of the rule of the Metropolitan case had failed, the rule itself must also fail. The instant ease reeks with consideration of extent of organization. It. is quite clear that the reason for the Board’s decision to change the policy of' Metropolitan is that it is easier to organize small local district offices one at. a time and thus eventually spread to a state-wide or company-wide organization than it is to organize the state-wide or company-wide group as a single unit. This appears to me to be nothing less, than a return to the heretofore unacceptable and outlawed practice of establishing provisional units which were admittedly based on the extent of organization and a circumvention of the express prohibition of the statute under the-guise of a policy change. To require the-Company to bargain separately with a. representative of the employees in each district office, as organization of each small unit may succeed, can result in; nothing but confusion and turmoil.
Therefore, I respectfully dissent from, that portion of the majority decision which approves the Board’s order, but I concur in the holding that Mrs. Collier-should be excluded from the unit.