1175 National Labor Relations Board v. Cabot Carbon Company

• Decision Date: 08 June 1959
• Docket Number: No. 329,329
• Citation: 79 S.Ct. 1015,3 L.Ed.2d 1175,360 U.S. 203
• Parties: . 3 L.Ed.2d 1175 NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. CABOT CARBON COMPANY and Cabot Shops, Inc
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

360 U.S. 203

79 S.Ct. 1015.

3 L.Ed.2d 1175

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner,

v CABOT CARBON COMPANY and Cabot Shops, Inc.

No. 329.

Argued March 24, 1959.

Decided June 8, 1959.

[Syllabus from 203-204 intentionally omitted] Mr. Thomas J. McDermott, Washington, D.C., for petitioner.

Mr. Haywood H. Hillyer, for respondents.

Mr. Justice WHITTAKER delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question for decision in this case is whether 'Employee Committees' established and supported by respondents at each of their several plants for the stated purposes of meeting regularly with management to consider and discuss problems of mutual interest, including grievances, and of handling 'grievances at nonunion plants and departments,' are, in the light of their declared purposes and actual practices, 'labor organizations' within the meaning of § 2(5) of the National Labor Relations Act.¹

Respondents are affiliated corporations under the same general management and maintain their principal office at Pampa, Texas. They are, and for many years have been, engaged in operating a number of plants, principally in Texas and Louisiana, primarily for the purposes of manufacturing and selling carbon black and oil field equipment. Pursuant to a suggestion of the War Production Board in 1943, respondents decided to establish an Employee Committee at each of their plants. To that end, respondents prepared, in collaboration with employee representatives from their several plants, a set of bylaws, stating the purposes, duties and functions of the proposed Employee Committees, for transmittal to and adoption by the employees in establishing such Committees. The bylaws were adopted by a majority of employees at each plant and by respondents, and, thus, the Employee Committees were established. Those bylaws, and certain related company rules, were later published by respondents in a company manual called 'The Guide,' and are still in effect.

In essence, the bylaws state: that the purpose of the Committees is to provide a procedure for considering employees' ideas and problems of mutual interest to employees and management;² that each plant Committee shall consist of a stated number of employees (ranging from 2 to 3) whose terms shall be one year, and that retiring members, with the help of plant clerks, will conduct the nomination and election of their successors; that each plant Committee shall meet with the plant management at regular monthly meetings and at all special meetings called by management, shall assist the plant management in solving problems of mutual interest, and that time so spent will be considered time worked; and that 'It shall be the Committee's responsibility to: * * * Handle grievances at nonunion plants and departments according to procedure set up for these plants and departments.'³

In November 1954, International Chemical Workers Union, AFL CIO, filed with the National Labor Relations Board, and later several times amended, an unfair labor practice charge against respondents, alleging, in part, that respondents were unlawfully dominating, inter- fering with and supporting labor organizations, called Employee Committees, at their several plants. Thereafter the Board, in April 1956, issued a complaint against respondents under § 10(b) of the Act (29 U.S.C. § 160(b), 29 U.S.C.A. § 160(b)) alleging inter alia, that the Employee Committees were labor organizations within the meaning of § 2(5) (see note 1), and that respondents, since May 1954, had dominated, interfered with, and supported the Committees in violation of § 8(a)(2) of the Act.⁴

After a hearing, the trial examiner issued his intermediate report containing detailed findings of fact. The relevant findings, mainly based on undisputed evidence, may be summarized as follows: The Committees' bylaws were prepared and adopted in the manner, and contain the provisions, above stated. During the period here involved (from May 1954 to the date of the hearing before the Board in June 1956), the Employee Committees, in addition to considering and discussing with respondents' plant officials problems of the nature covered by the bylaws, made and discussed proposals and requests respecting many other aspects of the employee relationship, including seniority, job classifications, job bidding, makeup time, overtime records, time cards, a merit system, wage corrections, working schedules, holidays, vacations, sick leave, and improvement of working facilities and conditions. Respondents' plant officials participated in those discussions and in some instances granted the Committees' requests.⁵ Although not provided for in the bylaws, a 'Central Committee,' consisting of the chairmen of the several plant Committees, met annually with respondents' Director of Industrial Relations in Pampa, Texas, where, during the 1955 and 1956 meetings, the Central Committee made proposals and requests with respect to many matters covering nearly the whole scope of the employment relationship.⁶ The Director of Industrial Relations discussed those proposals and requests, their feasibility and economic consequences from respondents' point of view, and sought to reach some solution. In some instances he expressed approval of requests or promised to see what could be done toward meeting them, in other instances he suggested that the matter be taken up with local management, and in still other instances he rejected the proposals and requests and explained his reasons for doing so.

The trial examiner also found that the Employee Committees have no membership requirements, collect no dues and have no funds; that plant clerks assist the Committees in conducting their elections and do all of their clerical work; and that respondents pay all of the necessary expenses of the Committees. None of the Committees has ever attempted to negotiate a collective bargaining contract with respondents. From time to time the Board has certified independent labor organizations as the exclusive bargaining agents for certain bargaining units of employees in approximately one-third of respondents' plants, and, as such agents for those bargaining units, the respective certified labor organizations have entered into collective bargaining contracts with respondents which, as they may have been amended, are still in effect. Since the respective dates of those collective bargaining contracts the certified labor organizations and the Employee Committees have coexisted in those plants, but the functions of those Employee Committees have generally been reduced to plant efficiency, production promotion and the handling of grievances for employees who are not included in the bargaining units.

Upon these findings the trial examiner concluded in his intermediate report that the Employee Committees and the Central Committee are labor organizations within the meaning of § 2(5), and that during the period here involved respondents dominated, interfered with, and supported those labor organizations in violation of § 8(a)(2) (see note 4). He therefore recommended that respondents be ordered to cease such conduct, and to withdraw all recognition from, and completely disestablish, the Committees 'as the representative of any of (their) employees for the purpose of dealing with Respondents concerning grievances, labor disputes, wages, rates of pay, hours of employment, or conditions of work.' The Board adopted the findings, conclusions and recommendations of the trial examiner and entered its order accordingly. 117 N.L.R.B. 1633.

Respondents then petitioned the Court of Appeals to review and vacate the Board's findings and order, and the Board's answer sought enforcement of its order. The Court of Appeals denied enforcement of the Board's order and set it aside. 256 F.2d 281. It found that respondents dominated and supported the Committees but held that they were not 'labor organizations' within the meaning of § 2(5) (see note 1) because it thought (a) that the term 'dealing with,' as used in that section, means 'bargaining with,' and that these Committees 'aboid(ed) the usual concept of collective bargaining,' and (b) that the provisions and legislative history of the 1947 amendment of § 9(a) of the Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 159(a) show that Congress, in effect, excluded such employee committees from the definition of 'labor organization' contained in § 2(5). 256 F.2d, at pages 285—289. Because of an asserted conflict of that decision with the decisions of other Courts of Appeals, and of the importance of the matter to the proper administration of the National Labor Relations Act, we granted certiorari. 358 U.S. 863, 79 S.Ct. 98, 3 L.Ed.2d 97.

We turn first to the Court of Appeals' holding that an employee committee which does not 'bargain with' employers in 'the usual concept of collective bargaining' does not engage in 'dealing with' employers, and is therefore not a 'labor organization' within the meaning of § 2(5). Our study of the matter has convinced us that there is nothing in the plain words of § 2(5), in its legislative history, or in the decisions construing it, that supports that conclusion.

Section 2(5) includes in its definition of'la bor organization' any 'employee representation committee or plan * * * which exists for the purpose, in whole or in part, of dealing with employers concerning grievances labor disputes, wages, rates of pay, hours of employment, or conditions of work.'⁷ (Emphasis added.) Certainly nothing in that section indicates that the broad term 'dealing with' is to be read as synonymous with the more limited term 'bargaining with.' See e.g., National Labor Relations Board v. Jas. H. Matthews & Co., 3 Cir., 156 F.2d 706, 708, and Indiana Metal Products Corp. v. National Labor Relations Board, 7 Cir., 202 F.2d 613, 620—621. The legislative history of § 2(5) strongly confirms that Congress did not understand or intend those terms to be synonymous. When the original print of the 1935 Wagner bill...