LOCAL U. 13410, UNITED MINE WKRS. v. UNITED MINE WKRS., 71-1272.
| Decision Date | 05 January 1973 |
| Docket Number | No. 71-1272.,71-1272. |
| Citation | 475 F.2d 906 |
| Parties | LOCAL UNION 13410, UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA, Appellant, v. UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA et al. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit |
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Mr. Jack H. Olender, Washington, D. C., with whom Mr. James P. Donovan, Washington, D. C., was on the brief for appellant.
Mr. Harold H. Bacon, Washington, D. C., for appellee, United Mine Workers of America, Welfare and Retirement Fund.
Mr. Charles L. Widman, Washington, D. C., for appellees, United Mine Workers of America and Edward L. Carey.
Mr. Jo V. Morgan, Jr., Washington, D. C., with whom Mr. John J. Wilson, Washington, D. C., was on the brief, for appellee, The National Bank of Washington.
Mr. Allen Jones, Jr., Washington, D. C., for appellee, Hamilton Leasing Corporation.
Before FAHY, Senior Circuit Judge, and ROBINSON and WILKEY, Circuit Judges.
Appellant is a local labor organization composed of clerks, medical assistants and hospital clerks. The members of the Local are employed in various clerical and administrative capacities by the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund.1 In turn the Fund is partially controlled by and receives a substantial portion of its assets from members of the United Mine Workers of America, an international labor union and appellee herein. The net result was that members of the Local were indirectly but essentially employed by the organization International which was supposed to represent them against their employer Fund, an interrelationship which continued for twenty years.
Twenty years was sufficient to bring this situation to the attention of the ever-watchful National Labor Relations Board. After hearing a Trial Examiner found that the employer (Fund) was engaged in unfair labor practices with respect to the Local.2 A major basis for this finding was the participation of supervisory personnel of the Fund in the affairs of the Local. The Trial Examiner also found that the Local was disqualified to represent the Fund's employees by reason of the Local's affiliation with the International. Since the Fund's payroll goes to the employees which the International represents, and the International helps to name the Fund's trustees, the Trial Examiner found an unacceptable conflict of interest to exist.
After posting the required notice, the Local met to consider the effect of the Examiner's decision. The remedial action decided upon was to take a secret ballot on a resolution providing for both disaffiliation from the International and separation of the Local's Death Benefit Fund. Based on the Examiner's opinion, fifty-eight alleged supervisory personnel were notified of their purported ineligibility for membership and were thus not allowed to vote on the resolution.
Alleging that the disqualification of the supervisors and various other acts constituted a breakdown in democratic procedures, the International placed the Local under a trusteeship. This trusteeship froze the Local's bank account, impounded the ballots on the disaffiliation resolution, and took over management of the Local's affairs. The Local responded by bringing suit against the International seeking a temporary restraining order, followed by a preliminary and permanent injunction, and damages.3 The District Court granted the temporary restraining order and permitted the ballots to be counted, revealing that the resolution to disaffiliate had passed by the decisive margin of 203 to 33. After trial on the merits, the District Court found for the International, holding the disaffiliation vote to be invalid and denying preliminary and permanent injunctions and the request for damages.4 The Local now seeks reversal of this action of the trial court.
The Local argues that the passage of the disaffiliation resolution effectively disassociated the Local from the International, and therefore a permanent injunction is justified to prevent meddling by the International in the affairs of the now unrelated Local.5 The trusteeship, however, was imposed before the disassociation became effective, and was specifically intended to prevent the disaffiliation of the Local. If the trusteeship was valid, the vote for separation came too late to be effective. The validity of the trusteeship is thus the principle issue upon which this dispute turns.6
The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act provides that a labor organization shall impose a trusteeship over a subordinate body for certain specified purposes, including "restoring democratic procedures."7 The International claims that the Local abrogated "democratic procedures" by three specific courses of action.
The International first claims that the notice to fifty-eight supervisory employees stating that the Local had "been informed" of their ineligibility for membership was an illegal expulsion.8 The letter's language and the surrounding circumstances, however, suggest that no members were expelled by this or any other act of the Local prior to imposition of the trusteeship. There is evidence that the supervisory employees were not in fact taken off the membership rolls of the Local.9 In addition, they were given an opportunity to appeal their classification ; this suggested that no final action had been taken.10
The International protests that requirements under 29 U.S.C. § 411(a)(5) of specific charges, time to prepare a defense, and full and fair hearing were not met. The section relied upon, however, is entitled "Safeguards against improper disciplinary action" and provides that "no member . . . may be . . . expelled, or otherwise disciplined"11 without the enumerated safeguards. Even assuming the Local had taken final action to expel the supervisors, that action was not disciplinary in nature. The supervisory personnel were not being removed in order to punish them but rather to comply with a decision of the NLRB Examiner. The Local was not obligated to conform to the specific provisions of § 411(a)(5).
Strictly speaking, the Local may not have been obligated to expel the supervisors since such individuals may be non-voting members of unions.12 The Local could have simply amended its bylaws to provide for this special non-voting status. As noted, however, the supervisors were not actually expelled by the letter. Indeed, they were specifically invited to show why they ought not to be expelled.13 The supervisors could have raised the possibility of a non-voting membership at that time. The Local's notice, therefore, met the minimum standards required by due process under the circumstances.
The tangible and final action which the Local did take with respect to the fifty-eight supervisors was barring them from voting on the disaffiliation resolution. This provides no basis whatever in support of the International's position. First, the NLRB Examiner's decision, as it then stood and as it was later adopted with modifications by the Board, specifically provided that voting by such supervisors was improper.14 Second, even a unanimous vote by the fifty-eight against the resolution would still not have defeated it. Third, the Local's Death Benefit Fund, in which the supervisors had an interest, was merely separated, not dissolved. No pecuniary interest of the supervisors was threatened by that action ; in fact, if the supervisors were not to remain members of the Local, separation of the Fund was desirable to protect the supervisors' financial interest.
Thus, the only possible result of permitting the supervisors to vote would have been to invalidate the entire ballot by violating the Examiner's order, and creating a greater potential of disqualification of the Local as bargaining representative of the non-supervisory employees. To accede to the International's claim would have required the Local to maintain union democracy by allowing what the NLRB had found to be an unfair labor practice. The Local's good faith attempt to comply with the law cannot be used by the International as the basis for imposition of a trusteeship.
The International claims the meeting following the Hearing Examiner's decision was called with inadequate notice to the farflung membership of the Local. Inasmuch as the posted notice complies precisely with the Local's by-laws,15 the International has been unable to illustrate what more could be required of the Local.
A further claim charges that the resolution contains two separate clauses (disaffiliation from the International and separation of the Death Benefit Fund) but allowed only one "yes" or "no" vote. Aside from the International's inability to cite any authority for the proposition that joint resolutions of this type are impermissible, this court finds it difficult to describe a procedure regularly followed in Congress as a breakdown in the democratic process. In any event, if the resolution for disaffiliation had carried, and the supervisors under the NLRB decision were no longer to be members of the Local, it was necessary to separate the Death Benefit Fund from purely Local administration to protect the interests of the non-member supervisors. The possibility of inconsistent votes on the two related questions was wisely not allowed.
Finally, the International objects to language within the resolution and accompanying it which can arguably be described as advocacy for passage of the resolution by the Local's leadership.16 Admittedly the challenged language does not go out of its way to point out that the Trial Examiner's decision on the need to disaffiliate might not be the final NLRB action. Someone had to send out the ballots and characterize the issues, however. Absent an outright distortion of...
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