Court Opinion

ID: 9459006
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:07:55.972983+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:58.866174
License: Public Domain

STEVENS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part).
Clark made two references to lockouts, the first concerning the labor dispute at the Red Cab Company and the second to the magazine article on the subject of lockouts. I agree that if either of these references was an implied threat to use the lockout to defeat Local 372’s organizing activities, an unfair labor practice was committed. On the other hand, the majority of the Labor Board assumed that if those two references merely related to a bargaining impasse that might or might not arise in the future, they were permissible.1 The case thus turns *169on a factual issue. Contrary to the analysis of that issue by the Trial Examiner, the Board majority concluded that the respondent was threatening its employees with a lockout or shutdown if the then organizational activities continued or if they selected Local 327.
After summarizing the oral testimony relating to the taxicab situation, the Trial Examiner found that Clark had “stated no more than that if the situation were the same between his Company and a union as between the Red Cab Company and the Union he would lock out the employees and take a vacation too. Inasmuch as lockouts, offensive and defensive, in many circumstances are lawful I cannot find that Clark overstepped the bounds by stating that under the circumstances in which the cab company found itself he too would lock out employees. This is surely the most that can be inferred from the remarks attributed to him by Turner. I cannot read his remarks, as attributed to him by Turner, as a threat to shut down in the event the Charging Party was successful in its organization.” A. 6-7.
With respect to the magazine article, three witnesses testified and the Examiner found that none of their stories was completely correct. Considering the testimony of Mrs. Turner, the strongest proponent of Local 372, he found:
“I believe further that when Turner asked Clark the question whether he could shut down the plant he brought her the article by way of an answer that he had a legal right to do so. Finally I believe that the conversation was not concerned with shutting down the plant in the event the Charging Party was successful in its organizing attempt but rather shutting the plant down from the standpoint of a strike/lockout situation. As I have found above an employer’s statement of his rights in this regard does not constitute an unlawful threat. If an employer has a right to lock out his employees in a bargaining situation he has a right to tell his employees that he has such a right and I find that this is all that Respondent did in this situation. To the extent that Mrs. Turner’s testimony can be construed to attribute to Clark a threat that he would close down the plant if the Charging Party was successful in its organizing attempt, I discredit them.” A. 9. (Emphasis added.)
As I read the portions of the record before us, I am persuaded that the Trial Examiner’s appraisal of the evidence was correct and, as Chairman Miller stated in dissent, the evidence does not “warrant the majority’s conclusions, which are in substance reversals of the Trial Examiner’s credibility findings, concerning the Respondent’s motivation.” A. 19.
The Board, in my opinion, improperly treated the issue as one of interpreting the written article, rather than the oral conversation between Turner and Clark which led to the reference to the article. The Examiner expressly found “that the conversation was not concerned with shutting down the plant in the event the Charging Party was successful in its organizing attempt but rather shutting the plant down from the standpoint of a strike/lockout situation.” 2 The Board’s *170opinion does not explain why this credibility determination was erroneous. Accordingly, I am persuaded that the Board majority erred. Universal Camera Corp. v. Labor Board, 340 U.S. 474, 496-497, 71 S.Ct. 456, 95 L.Ed. 456.
I respectfully dissent.

. “The Trial Examiner, considering the propriety of Clark’s conduct in posting the newspaper article and in urging upon the employees the magazine article on *169management’s right to lookout, concluded that Clark was referring to a ‘strike/lockout’ problem in a bargaining situation, and thus, was doing no more than telling his employees what were his legal rights. We reject that conclusion. There is no evidence that Clark ever stated to employees that any of the printed references to the right to lockout did not apply to organizing situations; similarly there is no evidence that the employees were under the impression that the lockout referenees involved bargaining situations only. Rather we believe that any realistic appraisal of the situation compels the conclusion that the emphasis of Clark on the right to lockout was made with respect to the organizing activities presently of concern to the employees and not with regard to some bargaining situation that might or might not arise in the future.” A. 13.

. Even if the magazine article incorrectly implied that respondent could legally lock *170out his employees in an organizing situation as well as during a bargaining impasse, it does not follow that the reference to the article implied a threat to do so. It is noteworthy that the article was produeed in response to n question from Turner and that even Turner testified that the Union had confirmed Clark’s comments about his rights. A. 41-42.