Court Opinion

ID: 9447370
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:33:16.620072+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:00.730962
License: Public Domain

*797KALODNER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I would deny enforcement of the Board’s order.
The evidence is clear that respondent’s employees did not go on strike on the morning of November 26, 1957, nor was there a “spontaneous work stoppage” on their part as in N. L. R. B. v. Kennametal, Inc., 3 Cir., 1950, 182 F.2d 817, 819, 19 A.L.R.2d 562. It further establishes that all but two of respondent’s employees came to respondent’s plant at the customary time on the morning of November 26th, ready to report for work but were met at the plant’s entrance by three union organizers who were not employed by respondent and two of respondent’s employees who carried signs reading:
“Workers of Morris
Fishman and Sons, Inc.
Strike
For
Union Conditions Philadelphia Leather Workers Union Local 53.
Fur & Leather Dept., A.M.C. & B.W. of N.A., AFL-CIO.”
The record further discloses that respondent’s employees were dissuaded from reporting for work because of the picketing described, and that they had not earlier voted to strike, had not discussed it or even had it in contemplation. Further, the record fails to disclose that the majority of respondent’s employees had joined the union prior to the work stoppage and significantly the Trial Examiner’s “Intermediate Report” makes no finding to the contrary.
Moreover, it is undisputed that on the afternoon of November 25th when the union organizers (not employed by respondent) made their initial demand on respondent’s vice-president and plant manager, that he contract with the union they refused to display any evidence of their authority to represent the employees.
In view of the foregoing, the Board’s finding that respondent’s employees engaged in a “strike” and were discharged by respondent for doing so is utterly without basis.
I further find without basis the Board’s further finding that respondent was guilty of unfair labor practices, by reason of the conversations between respondent’s foremen and several of its employees. The finding was based on the following incidents:
(1) Foreman Matteo requested employee Rhem to “go around and see how many signed cards for the Union” and asked him “Do you know who it was started [the card signing] ?”
(2) Foreman Worthy told employee Milliner the respondent “couldn’t be bothered with no union and he would shut down if the union came in.” At the same time Worthy told Milliner to “vote whether you want the union or you don’t want the union.”
(3) Worthy “went into the employees dressing room and spoke to a number of employees there”; he asked them “to get to the plant early so that they could vote on whether or not they wanted the union” and told them “if they would get the Union in there the plant would close down.”
There is absent in the foregoing incidents the presence of “threat” violative of the Act. At the most the respondent’s foremen made known to the employees involved respondent’s hostility to the union. Such hostility is not an unfair labor practice. In N. L. R. B. v. Rockwell Manufacturing Co. (DuBois Div.), 3 Cir., 1959, 271 F.2d 109, 117, 118, we held the kind of conversations above detailed not to be violative of the Act, since they were not coercive. To the same effect see N. L. R. B. v. Arthur Winer, Inc., 7 Cir., 1952, 194 F.2d 370, certiorari denied 344 U. S. 819, 73 S.Ct. 15, 97 L.Ed. 638 where the employer expressed dislike for unions and inquired of employees as to the union’s organizational activities; Sax v. N. L. R. B., 7 Cir., 1948, 171 F.2d 769, 772 where the employees were asked *798whether they were “for the union” and. whether they had signed union cards; N. L. R. B. v. W. T. Grant Co., 4 Cir., 1953, 208 F.2d 710 and N. L. R. B. v. Hinde & Dauch Paper Co., 4 Cir., 1948, 171 F.2d 240 where the foreman predicted plant shutdown in the event of unionization.
As we stated in the Rockwell case, supra, (271 F.2d at page 115) “the burden of proving the unfair labor practice is on the charging party” and that burden has not here been met.