Court Opinion

ID: 9458431
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:51:49.069681+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:45.719987
License: Public Domain

COLEMAN, Circuit Judge:
In our opinion the disposition of this appeal is controlled by the principles enunciated in Templeton v. Dixie Color Printing Company, 5 Cir., 1971, 444 F.2d 1064. The opinion in that case was authored by Mr. Justice Clark (retired), sitting by designation as a Judge of this Court. There was a petition for rehearing en banc. Upon a poll of all Judges of this Court, the petition for rehearing was denied, 444 F.2d 1070 (1971).
We need not recopy here the decision reported in Tem/pleton.
We simply allude to the following language of that opinion:
“A party is as aggrieved of the failure of the Board to exercise its statutory responsibility, as by an act of the Board contrary to an express prohibition.” 444 F.2d at 1068.
“Further, the Supreme Court has not hesitated to grant relief where the Board has wrongfully and arbitrarily refused to exercise its jurisdiction.” 444 F.2d at 1068.
“The short of the matter is that the Board has refused to take any notice of the petition filed by the appellees and by interposing an arbitrary blocking charge practice, applicable generally to employers, has held it in abeyance for over 3 years. As a consequence, the appellees have been deprived during all this time of their statutory right to representation ‘of their own choosing’ to bargain collectively for them, 28 U.S.C., § 157, despite the fact that the employees have not been charged with any wrongdoing. Such practice and result are intolerable under the Act and cannot be countenanced. ‘The purpose of the Board is to protect the bargaining rights of employees, not the bargaining rights of union’ (citations omitted) . The union cannot avoid the consequence of the loss of its majority status by the mere filing of unfair labor practice charges against the employer. Nor does the filing of such *380unproved charges relieve the Board of its statutory duty to consider and act on a petition for .decertification (citation omitted).” 444 F.2d at 1069.
Since October 31, 1969, following a secret ballot election conducted under the supervision of the Regional Director, Local Union 253, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO (herein the Union) has been certified by the National Labor Relations Board as the exclusive bargaining representative for the following collective bargaining unit of employees employed by New-house Broadcasting Corporation (herein the Company) in Birmingham, Alabama:
All employees employed in the Engineering Department of . WAPI-TVAM-FM, but excluding all office clerical employees, guards and supervisors as defined in the Act.
Thereafter, bargaining ensued but, at all times material herein, there has been no collective bargaining contract between the Company and the Union.
On or about December 11, 1970, plaintiffs, representing ten of the twenty employees in the unit, filed with the Board’s Regional Office a petition for an election in Board Case No. 10-RD-414, to determine whether the Union should be decertified, alleging that the Union no longer represented a majority of the employees. Thereafter, the Board’s Regional Director administratively determined that the petition sought an election in an appropriate unit, that the Company’s operations affected commerce and met the Board’s jurisdictional standards, and that the petition was supported by the requisite showing of interest among employees in the bargaining unit.
Twelve days later the Union filed unfair labor practice charges in Board Case No. 10-CA-8771, charging the Company with violating § 8(a) (5) and (1) of the Act by “[o]n or about June 22, 1970, and thereafter refus[ing] to bargain collectively with the undersigned Union, a labor organization chosen by a majority of its employees,” further action on plaintiffs’ election petition was suspended, and the unfair labor practice charge investigated. The Regional Director investigated the charge on behalf of the General Counsel, and determined that a complaint should issue on the violation charged.
The Regional Director on February 3, 1971, dismissed the petition for a decertification election.
On plaintiffs’ appeal to the Board from the dismissal of this election petition, the Board, on March 9, 1971, noting that the General Counsel had issued the unfair labor practice complaint against the Company, affirmed the Regional Director’s dismissal solely on that basis. On March 17, 1971, the Board denied plaintiffs’ motion for reconsideration.
Thereafter, on April 15 and May 11, 1971, two more complaints were issued in Board Case Nos. 10-CA-8928 and 10-CA-8972’ on the basis of charges filed by the Union on March 29 and April 28, 1971, which alleged further bargaining violations by the Company, including unlawful withdrawal of recognition of the Union at the conclusion of the first year of the Union’s certification. The two complaints were consolidated with the earlier complaint and came on for hearing before a trial examiner the week of August 16,1971.
Meanwhile, on June 2, 1971, plaintiffs-appellees, alleging that they represented a majority of all employees in the unit, instituted suit in the District Court against the Board. The complaint alleged, inter alia, that the Board, contrary to § 9(c) (1) of the Act, had wrongfully and arbitrarily refused to exercise its jurisdiction over their decertification petition. They asked that the Board be required to investigate further, consider and act upon their petition, and that until then the Board be enjoined from conducting the scheduled unfair labor practice hearing.
*381On July 26, 1971, the District Court issued its Memorandum Opinion and Order declining to enjoin the unfair labor practice proceeding, but holding that it had jurisdiction over the action and to direct the Board to process the decertification petition under the authority of this Court’s decision in Templeton v. Dixie Color Printing Company, supra. Accordingly, the Court ordered the Board to investigate the decertification petition, and if it finds that there is reasonable cause to believe that a question of representation affecting commerce exists, to proceed promptly with a hearing on the petition and thereafter to enter such order as is appropriate, “including ordering due conduct of an election if such question of representation is held to exist and if such election can be reconciled with the statutory policy of the NLRA requiring the employer to bargain collectively with the chosen representative of the bargaining unit of which plaintiffs are a part”.
On August 5, 1971, the Board filed a notice of appeal, and requested the District Court to stay its order pending appeal. On September 7, 1971, the court below entered an order denying the Board’s motion for a stay. Thereafter, on September 14, 1971, the Board filed a motion with this Court for a stay of the order below pending appeal. On October 1, 1971, that motion was denied.
The Board seeks quite energetically to distinguish this case, both factually and legally, from the situation presented in Templeton. It is true that in Templeton the delay was much longer than here encountered but that is a difference only in degree, not in controlling principle. Nor do we perceive any other legally significant distinction.
The Board had a clear duty under § 9(c) (1) of the Act to consider, investigate, and act upon the decertification petition. That action, had it been taken, would have been reviewable here. Instead, by the mechanical application of a blocking charge, brought by the Union which the employees said no longer represented them, the employees were disarmed.1 Their petition was dismissed. This, we think, is what Temple-ton proscribed.
 We emphasize, of course, that injunctions should be issued sparingly and only in those cases where the rights of the parties clearly conferred by the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 151 et seq. are being seriously infringed under the facts presented. The crucial considerations in this case are that the rights of the employees would be seriously jeopardized if we sustained the Board action merely to avoid a collision with the Board’s general “blocking charge practice”. More specifically, the Board should not be allowed to apply its “blocking charge practice” as a per se rule without exercising its discretion to make a careful determination in each individual case whether the violation alleged is such that consideration of the election petition ought to be delayed or dismissed. We are of the view that the record before us clearly demonstrates a failure to give that careful consideration to the petition of the employees for the decertification election.
The motion of the appellees to dismiss the appeal is denied.
The judgment of the District Court is
Affirmed.

. At oral argument it developed that the charges filed by the union had been heard by a trial examiner and a recommended decision filed by the examiner. By agreement of counsel for the parties to this appeal, a copy of the trial examiner’s decision has been furnished to the Court. After a full hearing the trial examiner concluded that the allegations of the complaint charging unfair labor practices were not sustained by the evidence and that all of the allegations of the complaint should be dismissed. The Board has not passed upon the trial examiner’s conclusions and recommended order.