Black v. Cutter Laboratories

• Decision Date: 18 January 1955
• Citation: 43 Cal.2d 788,278 P.2d 905
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 35 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2391, 27 Lab.Cas. P 68,917 Petition of Mabel BLACK and T. Y. Wulff, in a representative capacity for, by and on behalf of Bio-Lab Union of Local 225, United Office and Professional Workers of America, its officers and members, for an order confirming an award in arbitration, Petitioners and Respondents, v. CUTTER LABORATORIES (a corporation), Respondent, Adverse Party and Appellant. S. F. 18522

Page 905

278 P.2d 905

43 Cal.2d 788, 35 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2391, 27 Lab.Cas. P 68,917

Petition of Mabel BLACK and T. Y. Wulff, in a representative capacity for, by and on behalf of Bio-Lab Union of Local 225, United Office and Professional Workers of America, its officers and members, for an order confirming an award in arbitration, Petitioners and Respondents, v. CUTTER LABORATORIES (a corporation), Respondent, Adverse Party and Appellant.

S. F. 18522.

Jan. 18, 1955.

Rehearing Denied Feb. 16, 1955.

Johnson & Stanton, Gardiner Johnson and Thomas E. Stanton, Jr., San Francisco, for appellant.

Edises & Treuhaft, Bertram Edises, Oakland, and Henry F. Saunders, Stockton, for respondents.

SCHAUER, Justice.

Cutter Laboratories, Inc., appeals from a judgment entered upon the granting of an order confirming the award of an arbitration board. (See Code of Civ.Proc. §§ 1291-1293.) By the award, rendered by two of the three arbitrators with the third dissenting, it was held that appellant (hereinafter sometimes termed the company) had discharged one of its employes in violation of a collective bargaining agreement between appellant and the Bio-Lab Union (hereinafter sometime called the union) of Local 225, United Office and Professional Workers of America, and that the employe was entitled to reinstatement and to back pay limited by the bargaining agreement to eight weeks regular pay less any outside earnings or unemployment compensation received during such period. We have concluded that, upon the undisputed evidence and upon the facts found by the arbitration board, the company is correct in its contention that the arbitrators exceeded their powers, that the award is contrary to law, that it would contravene public policy for the courts of this State to enforce reinstatement of the discharged employe, and that the judgment must therefore be reversed.

From extensive findings made by the arbitration board it appears that the employer Cutter Laboratories, Inc., with offices and laboratories located in Berkeley, manufactures and sells throughout the United States and certain foreign countries vaccines, serums, antitoxins and other antibiotics for both civilian and military use. During World War II the company was subject to stringent security control by federal authorities, and its products and processes are said to be peculiarly subject to sabotage. Since World War II the company has been under no specific contract obligation to any governmental agency to discharge employes who are 'bad security risks'; any obligation to take such steps grows out of the duties it owes generally to its customers, its dealers, its employes, and its stockholders.

The Bio-Lab Union of Local 225, United Office and Professional Workers of America C.I.O., was recognized in February, 1944, by the company pursuant to a National Labor Relations Board election. It is a union 'generally denominated as 'leftwing" and it as well as the U.O.P.W.A. was expelled from the C.I.O. in March, 1950.

The discharged employe, Mrs. Doris Walker, graduated from the University of California School of Jurisprudence in 1942, and is an active member of The State Bar of California. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and to the editorial board of the California Law Review. From 1942 to 1944 she was employed as an enforcement attorney with the federal Office of Price Administration in San Francisco and from 1944 to 1946 as an attorney with a firm of lawyers in the same city. She left the law firm and secured employment as a cannery worker sorting and trimming vegetables in three canneries in Oakland and San Francisco and (later in 1946) as an organizer for the Food and Tobacco & Agricultural Workers Union. She testified that she went to law school 'because I was interested in becoming a labor lawyer' and that she left the law firm because her 'time was spent on routine civil matters * * * and I became dissatisfied with my work and felt that I would rather take a more active role in the filed in which I was interested and so I quit in order to take a job in a plant.'

In October, 1946, Mrs. Walker sought employment at Cutter Laboratories and filled out an application form supplied by the company, on which under the heading of 'Education' she concealed her attendance at law school, her law degree, and her admission to practice law in this State. Under the heading 'Previous Employment' she concealed her entire previous employment record and showed a false employment as file clerk for six or eight months in 1939 by 'John Tripp Att'y,' which the company later discovered to be a fictitious name. Mrs. Walker also gave a dentist and a lawyer in San Francisco as references, but at her request their letters of recommendation to the company did not reveal her subterfuge. She states that she intentionally deceived the company because of her belief it would not employ her if she were truthful. The company hired her as label clerk in its production planning department, and in April, 1949, she became a clerk typist in the purchasing department.

At the company plant Mrs. Walker became active in union affairs and in April, 1947, was elected shop chairman and also a member of the executive board of Local 225. Late in 1948 she was elected chief shop steward; her duties as steward took her to all departments in the plant except the executive and administrative departments and primarily entailed representing the union in grievances arising under its collective bargaining agreement with the company. In the spring of 1949 she was elected president of Local 225; her term expired December 15, 1949, and a new president was elected.

Meanwhile, in May, 1946, following proceedings before the National Labor Relations Board, the company and the union entered into a contract; in January, s947, the wage provisions thereof were opened and a ten cent hourly wage increase agreed upon. In April, 1947, Mrs. Walker had been elected shop chairman and during the same month she and another union official learned that they were being investigated by the company as to past employment, character, and Communist affiliation. In June, 1947, the union served notice of intention to amend the contract and at the same time filed with the National Labor Relations Board an unfair labor practice charge against the company based on the investigations. A week-long strike ensued in August, 1947, which was settled following the intervention of Harry Bridges and as a result of negotiation with him. June 9, 1949, the contract was again opened, solely as to wages, and November 30, 1949, a two-year contract was agreed upon; on October 6, 1949, during the negotiations and at a time when company officials were angry at certain activities of Mrs. Walker purportedly in connection with union demands, the company's discharge of Mrs. Walker which is here involved took place.

At the time of the discharge a company official read to Mrs. Walker the following notice:

'Mrs. Walker: As you are aware, the company has known for some time that when you applied for work with Cutter Laboratories on October 4 1946, you made a number of false representations on your 'Application for Employment'.

'As we know now, you falsified the statement of your education so as to conceal the fact that you had completed a law school (sic) course at the University of California's School of Jurisprudence at Berkeley in May, 1942. You concealed the facts that you received the degree of Bachelor of Laws in May, 1942, and that you were admitted to the State Bar of California on December 8, 1942. You concealed that since that date you have at all times been admitted and entitled to practice as an attorney before all of the Courts of California.

'We know now that by falsification of the name of a previous employer, you concealed the fact that from June, 1942 to February, 1944 you were employed by the Federal Government's Office of Price Administration, including employment as an Enforcement Attorney at a salary of about $3,200.00 a year.

'We know now that you deliberately concealed from us that from February 1944 to December, 1945 you were employed as an attorney by Gladstein, Grossman, Sawyer and Edises, a well-known firm of lawyers specializing in labor cases.

'You know that a few weeks ago the 'Labor Herald', the official CIO newspaper, stated that the National Labor Relations Board had sustained a cannery firm that had discharged you for refusing to answer whether or not you were a Communist.

'We have checked the records. We know now that you deliberately concealed that in 1946, just before you applied for work here, you were employed by a series of canneries and had been discharged by them.

'Ordinarily, an employee of the Company would be discharged immediately for falsifying material facts on an 'Application for Employment'. Because you were an officer of the Union we kept you on the pay roll rather than open ourselves to a charge of persecuting a union officer. We have given your case careful consideration because we know very well that no matter how strong the case against you there will be a claim of discrimination because of union activities. 'Because no employer wants to become involved in a dispute of that kind we have been patient and deliberate in our consideration of your misconduct.

'On October 1, 1948, when you testified under oath before a Trial Examiner of the National Labor Relations Board, you refused to answer the question as to whether or not you were a member of the Communist Party.

'You refused to answer under oath the question as to whether or not you were or had been a member of the Federal Workers' Branch No. 3 of the Communist Party.

'You refused to testify under oath whether or not you were or had been a member of the South Side Professional Club of the Communist Party.

'We are convinced now, that you were and still are a member of the Communist Party, that you were a member of the Federal Workers' Branch No. 3 of...