Court Opinion

ID: 9463239
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:01:28.852219+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:59.868590
License: Public Domain

GODBOLD, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
The majority opinion departs from our proper role in reviewing NLRB orders and from the standards that guide us in this role.
(1) The discharge of Stone
The majority opinion is neither more nor less than a retrial of this aspect of the case.
Stone had a prior record of absenteeism and was warned about it. From April 25 to May 4 he was hospitalized. He did not report for work, and the company was told *822that he was being seen around town. Thereafter it received three notes from Stone’s doctor. The first note, received May 9, stated that Stone should have been able to return to work May 6. That same day the company terminated him without discussion or notice, pursuant to a plant rule that one absent for three consecutive working days without permission would be considered a voluntary quit.
Stone showed up for work May 14 bringing the second note from his doctor, dated May 13. It said that he should be able to return to work May 14. Stone was not permitted to go to work, and he left the plant. The company then called the doctor and asked him what the May 13 note meant, and the doctor said that it referred to a sore throat that Stone had contracted. An hour later the doctor called back and asked the company to accept the May 13 note as a release for Stone’s return to work and to destroy the May 9 note. Later the same day, May 14, Stone came back with the third note, in which the doctor said that he probably told Stone to take a week off after leaving the hospital on May 4, because of his back problems, but that he was well enough to work as of May 14, that all previous statements made by the doctor were “null and void” and no other notes would be forthcoming.
The ALJ drew from these events an inference that Stone had used his excused absence for sickness as an excuse to stay out after May 6 and had prevailed on the doctor to contradict his earlier reports. That was a permissible inference. The Board, however, drew a different inference. It noted the following elements of proof: (1) The company was hostile to the union and previously had been before the NLRB for commission of unfair labor practices. (2) The company knew of Stone’s union sentiment and had actively sought to dissuade him from his union adherence. (3) The company made no effort to contact Stone to determine his condition. (4) On May 9, after determining Stone’s release date from the hospital, the company summarily terminated him and gave him no notice that he had been terminated. (5) The company admitted it had no reason to doubt the authenticity of the third note from the doctor. From all of the evidence the Board drew inferences that the third note dissipated the suspicion that Stone had been malingering, and that the discharge was pretextual. Certainly it was entitled to draw these inferences from the evidence before it.
Language quoted by Judge Hill from NLRB v. McGahey, 233 F.2d 406 (C.A.5, 1956), does not change the standard of review that this court has followed in innumerable cases. Further on in the opinion the court specifically noted that:
In the choice between lawful and unlawful motives, the record taken as a whole must present a substantial basis of believable evidence pointing toward the unlawful one.
Id. at 413. McGahey teaches us that reasonableness, or lack of it, may be circumstantial evidence of the employer’s motive in a discharge case, but the Board’s view of employer action is not to be treated as talismanic. In the present case the Board did not consider the employer’s action in the context of reasonableness or unreasonableness. It accepted the third note as credible, found it was sufficient to dissipate the charge of malingering, and pointed out that the company admitted there was no reason to doubt the authenticity of the note. On this evidence the Board concluded that the discharge was pretextual. Similarly, if introduced, evidence that the company was not acting in accordance with its usual practices would have been part of the overall evidence to be considered. But it is quite different to hold that evidence of motive is insubstantial unless it includes evidence of behavior inconsistent with usual practices.
This is a substantial evidence case. The record fully supports the Board’s inference of improper motive.
(2) The discharge of Rogers
This is a plain, everyday substantial evidence case except for two factors. First, *823the status of Rogers as a target for company action is recorded in two previous decisions of this court. Second, Rogers’ conduct, which the Board found was the asserted basis for a pretextual discharge, was sexually oriented.1
In Mueller I, NLRB v. Mueller Brass Co., 501 F.2d 680 (C.A.5, 1974), we enforced a Board order finding Mueller guilty of § 8(a)(3) discharges and § 8(a)(1) coercion. One of the targets of the coercive company statements was Rogers. 501 F.2d at 686. In that same case the ALJ made this finding with respect to Rogers:
. respondent’s industrial relations manager, Gregory, told an employee in September 1972, that Rogers’ name was on the desk of every employer in the area as a “union pusher” and that, if he lost his job with respondent, he would be unable to get another in that area.
This was quoted and relied upon in Mueller II, discussed below. See 509 F.2d at 708 n.5.2 In Mueller II, NLRB v. Mueller Brass Co., 509 F.2d 704 (C.A.5, 1975), we declined to enforce a Board order making Rogers whole for a three-day suspension for falsifying excesses for absenteeism because there was no substantial evidence that he was treated differently than others committing like offenses. In the present case, Mueller III, the Board properly considered this background in reaching its conclusions that the discharge was pretextual.
I turn now to the factor strongly emphasized by the majority, the sexual content of Rogers’ actions. The Board found that what Rogers did was not out of keeping with the general level of conduct in the plant, where bawdy sexual horseplay was commonplace, accepted, and not the subject of discipline. The evidence fully supports the Board’s finding. Pornographic pictures were passed around by employees and pornographic books left in accessible places for employees and supervisors to examine. The use of strong language, including four-letter words, dirty jokes and suggestive remarks was common among employees and supervisors. One witness told of means in the plant to order films, plainly referring to pornographic films. The general foreman on Rogers’ 11 p. m. to 7 a. m. shift freely exchanged sex jokes with female employees and joined in the general appreciation of pornographic material which turned up around the plant. There is testimony that in one incident he invited two women to examine a book with pictures of men and women having intercourse and approved their suggestion that they take it into the ladies’ room to look at it even though neither was scheduled for a break. This foreman was present when Rogers had the artificial sex organ, saw it and laughed at it, and did not say or do anything about its presence. The industrial relations manager of the plant was present, saw the organ and laughed at it. Another foreman saw it later the same evening and “just died laughing.” Rogers displayed the device to a group of male and female employees. Only one gave any indication of offense. The rest laughed at it.
Of equal, if not greater significance, is the evidence of other specific incidents of sexually oriented evidence that did not subject the participants to discipline. Rule 22 was given as the basis for Rogers’ discharge: “An employee shall not engage in disorderly, immoral, indecent or illegal conduct.” No one other than Rogers has ever been discharged for violation of this rule. I have already described the conduct of Rogers’ foreman and the industrial relations *824manager with respect to the very circumstances which cost Rogers his job. Also there is evidence of three specific incidents of sexually oriented conduct by male employees toward female employees. With respect to one incident, the husband and the father of the female victim complained to the plant manager and he promised to take action. There is no evidence that any action was ever taken, and the supervisor who was the alleged culprit was later promoted. More than a year later the female employee asked about the matter and was told that she ought to drop it since her complaint was so old.
In two other incidents female employees complained of offensive, sexually oriented remarks made to them by male employees. One of these occurred just a week before the hearing in this case. The male employees were not disciplined.
The majority incorrectly rely on Frosty Morn Meats, Inc. v. NLRB, 296 F.2d 617 (C.A.5, 1961). In that case there was uncontradicted testimony from several coworkers, including some who had signed union cards, that employee Judkins was a slow, uncooperative and dangerous worker who performed his duties in a manner that endangered his fellow employees. The trial examiner balanced this against evidence of company animus and of a specific threat to fire Judkins, and concluded that the discharge was pretextual. This court refused to enforce. As Judge Wisdom noted in Frosty Morn, and this court reiterated in Mueller II, “Discrimination consists in treating like cases differently.” In Frosty Morn, there was no evidence that like cases were treated differently. In the present case, all the evidence points to the fact that of the “like cases” — Rogers’ and all others — only Rogers was singled out for discipline. And the discipline inflicted was the harshest available. This uncontroverted evidence of disparate treatment acquires even greater force when laid against the strong antiunion bias specifically manifested in the past by threats directed at Rogers. 509 F.2d at 708 n.5.
I turn to some of the cases concerning coarse, abusive and profane conduct. In Mueller I we enforced an order reinstating employee Blanton who verbally abused a supervisor, accused him of being a “damn liar,” and invited him to fight. We relied on the grounds that the incident was provoked by the employer and that “Expression of his [Blanton’s] anger in the language of the mill” was “not nearly as shocking” as the employer suggested. In Brewers and Maltsters Local Union No. 6 v. NLRB, 301 F.2d 216 (C.A.8, 1962), the company was charged with discharging at the union’s request an employee who was “obnoxious, foul-mouthed and profane, prone to apply vile and indecent descriptions to others and one with a propensity for arguing and complaining . . . disliked generally, tolerated by a few, frustrated (etc.).” However the Board found that:
Profanity, vile name calling, including “muff diving fink” and manners ordinarily frowned upon in most instances, were a form of kidding or joshing in the beer-fumed atmosphere of the working fraternity to which he belonged and seemingly so regarded by the workers, the Union and the management, with physical assault, rather than disciplinary measures, used as the only deterrent, when uncouth habits and conducts of an employee violated standards of accepted tolerances.
301 F.2d at 220 (footnotes omitted). The Eighth Circuit enforced the Board’s reinstatement order, pointing out that the choice between either of two permissible inferences was for the Board, not the court. This court, in NLRB v. Georgia Rug Mill, 308 F.2d 89 (C.A.5, 1962), enforced the Board order directing reinstatement by an antiunion employer of a union adherent who had replied with obscenities to a supervisor’s questioning him concerning unauthorized absence. In NLRB v. Princeton Inn Co., 424 F.2d 264 (C.A.3, 1970), the Board found that a union adherent’s foul and abusive language toward a female employee was pretext for discharge, considered against his prior usage of similar language without warning, and the employ*825er’s background of antiunion bias, and the fact that a supervisor present did not admonish the employee. The court enforced. The union adherent in NLRB v. Reynolds Wire Co., 121 F.2d 627 (C.A.7, 1941), was fired on the alleged ground that he had scribbled on the newly painted door of the toilet an obscene remark describing the paint job. It was characteristic for employees to scribble indecent remarks on toilet walls and doors. The company had requested that employees refrain from doing this, but it had never fired anyone for doing it or indicated that it would be grounds for discharge. The Board’s reinstatement order was enforced.
There are, of course, many cases in which employees have been fired for obscene language or conduct, and the discharges have been held not to violate the Act. The key to understanding is that the drawing of permissible inferences from consideration of what the employee did and said, the mores of the work place, the employee’s union adherence, and the antiunion bias of the employer, is the province of the Board, not to be undone by judges. In this instance, the Board was entitled to conclude that, although Rogers’ conduct was “bad” in the sense that it was coarse and vulgar, he would not have been discharged in the absence of antiunion bias. It then becomes our duty to enforce. We do not sit as monitors of the level of sexual horseplay permitted in industrial plants or as censors of conduct by a worker which from an Olympian level we think distasteful. Nor do we have any business substituting our judgments of good taste for the experience and expertise of the Board in day-to-day matters of industrial life.
(3) The 8(a)(1) violations
(a) Bobby Taylor
This ease is not even close. During a “30-day probationary review” of Taylor’s work performance Foreman Gunter asked him if anyone had talked to him about the union or had tried to get him to sign a union card. Gunter told Taylor that the company felt that the employees did not need a union and that it would do anything legally to keep a union out. Two months later, during a “90-day probationary review,” Foreman Rose saw that Taylor was wearing a union button and asked him what he had against the company.
The Board could infer that these pointed questions, asked by foremen, in meetings at which Taylor’s future with the company was at stake, and against the background of the company’s open hostility to the union and other unfair labor practices, past and present, tended to be coercive. NLRB v. Standard Forge and Axle Company, 420 F.2d 508 (C.A.5, 1969), cert. denied, 400 U.S. 903, 91 S.Ct. 140, 27 L.Ed.2d 140 (1970); NLRB v. Camco, Inc., 340 F.2d 803 (C.A.5), cert. denied, 382 U.S. 926, 86 S.Ct. 313, 15 L.Ed.2d 339 (1965); NLRB v. American Mfg. Co., Inc., 132 F.2d 740 (C.A.5), cert. denied, 319 U.S. 743, 63 S.Ct. 1030, 87 L.Ed. 1700 (1943).
(b) Hansford Stone
The questions and statements made by the foreman to Stone were marginal. However, in light of the company’s open hostility, the statement to Stone that he was suffering from “rust poison” tended to restrain him in the exercise of his right to wear union insignia.

. “In view of Respondent’s opposition to the Union, its knowledge of Rogers’ union sympathies, its prior discrimination against him, and the protracted investigation into Rogers’ .two offenses, despite the absence of any employee complaints, as compared with its complacency over complaints by women employees in similar situations, I am satisfied that Respondent relied on Rogers’ improper conduct as a pretext for finally getting rid of him. I therefore find that Respondent violated Section 8(a)(3) in discharging Rogers.”
Appendix p. 359.

. Additionally, in Mueller I, this court found that there was “no question from the record that the Company was strongly antiunion.” 501 F.2d at 685.