Court Opinion

ID: 9449387
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:11:06.779288+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:49.199350
License: Public Domain

LEWIS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
As my brother BELL indicates, the question here, when approached without artifice, is whether uniformed hotel employees such as waitresses and bellboys have a protected right to wear a union badge as a symbol of their position, interest and pride in their organization. The Board held that an order of management prohibiting the wearing of any pin or badge by this type of employee was violative of Sec. 8(a) (1) of the Act and this court grants enforcement, narrowing its approval to the particular facts of this case. The effect of the decision is thus to hold that a hotel waitress has a protected right to wear a union badge but that such right is a limited one subject to loss under circumstances not present in the case at bar. I believe that no special circumstances other than those inherent in the question as stated are necessary to show the reasonableness of management’s concern at this curtailment of its power to manage.
The operation of a hotel is a highly competitive business dependent for its economic health in large part upon the good will generated by its service employees who are in continuous and daily contact with the public. To obtain customer satisfaction and to avoid customer irritation through the medium of its employees are daily problems of hotel management. Here, after the wearing of union pins by some of its waitresses was called to its attention by a customer, management decided that the display of unionism in such fashion was an actual or potential source of customer irritation. The error of the Board’s basic reasoning seems glaringly apparent in the words of the trial examiner in his analysis of this decision of management:
“It (management) apparently issued its rule upon the representation of one patron. Certainly this one man, who allegedly was rebuffed by the appearance of the pins, does not represent a true cross-section of the opinion of the hotel guests.”
Management is not required to cater to but a cross-section of its customers and would probably commit economic suicide by limiting its service in such regard. And to me it seems totally unrealistic to deny or ignore the fact that unionism is a source of controversy. A multitude of Board decisions are premised upon a finding of “anti-union animus.” Rivalry exists between competitive unions and often unions take publicized positions upon controversial political and legislative issues. These issues are not of management’s making and it should not be enforced to expose its customer good will to the potential of loss of business by indirection.
The validity of the Board order can find no warranted comfort in its supporting findings of fact. Respondent was not required to await diminution of business before acting. Its management had a right to act to avoid risk of loss. The fact that the badges worn were “small, neat and inconspicuous” is not determinative. Surely the issue is broader and cannot turn on a continuing examination by the Board, and by review of this Court, of whether the particular pins are in good taste or not.
Again, as Judge BELL states, the case requires a balancing of the right of employees to engage in union activities as against the right of management to man*550age. I am of the opinion the Board order has weighted the scale and I would deny enforcement to the extent the order affects employees who are in continuous and daily contact with the public.