May Department Stores Co v. National Labor Relations Board

• Decision Date: 10 December 1945
• Docket Number: No. 39,39
• Citation: 66 S.Ct. 203,90 L.Ed. 145,326 U.S. 376
• Parties: MAY DEPARTMENT STORES CO. v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

326 U.S. 376

66 S.Ct. 203

90 L.Ed. 145

MAY DEPARTMENT STORES CO.

v NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD.

No. 39.

Argued Oct. 12, 1945.

Decided Dec. 10, 1945.

Rehearing Denied Jan. 7, 1946.

See 326 U.S. 811, 66 S.Ct. 468.

Messrs. Robert T. Burch and Milton H. Tucker, both of St. Louis, Mo., for petitioner.

Miss Ruth Weyand, of Washington, D.C., for respondent.

Mr. Justice REED delivered the opinion of the Court.

This writ of certiorari brings here for review the decree of the Circuit Court of Appeals enforcing an order of the National Labor Relations Board which was entered after the Board found upon hearings that petitioner had violated Sections 8(1) and 8(5) of the National Labor Relations Act.¹ The petition for the writ presented issues (1) as to whether two small related departments with thirty to forty employees may be an appropriate bargaining unit when the department store of which they are a part has around three hundred and fifty departments and approximately five thousand employees; (2) as to whether the Board could properly place the name of a Joint Labor Council on the ballot for the employees' bargaining representative when none of the employees were members of the Council but only of a local union which was associated with others in the Council; (3) as to whether seeking authority by the employer from the National War Labor Board to increase wages without taking up the increase with a certified bargaining agent may be an unfair labor practice under Section 8(1) of the Labor Act; and (4) as to the propriety of a Board order to cease and desist generally from unfair labor practices instead of an order to cease and desist only from the type or types of unfair practices which the Board found the employer committed. As these issues presented important problems in the administration of the National Labor Relations Act, certiorari was granted. 324 U.S. 838, 65 S.Ct. 1014.

Appropriate Unit. After a hearing in which the employer, the petitioner here, the May Department Stores Company, doing business as Famous-Barr Company, a St. Louis department store, took part, the Labor Relations Board, on June 16, 1943, found that all non-supervisory employees of the Company, then 28 in number, working in the main and basement men's busheling rooms constituted an appropriate unit for collective bargaining within the meaning of Section 9(b) ² of the Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 159(b). An election was ordered. It resulted in the choice and designation of the St. Louis Joint Council, United Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Employees of America, C.I.O., as the representative for collective bargaining of the employees of the unit.

The Company contended that a storewide unit of its five thousand employees was the most appropriate and at any rate that employees in the women's alteration and the fur alteration departments should be added to the employees in the men's busheling rooms to form the unit. As there is no provision for direct review of the determination and certification of the bargaining representative, the Company, in order to secure judicial view of the finding as to the unit, awaited this proceeding which sought a decree directing it to bargain collectively with the representative. See Inland Empire Dist. Council, etc., v. Millis, 325 U.S. 697, 65 S.Ct. 1316.

A few months before this proceeding a determination that all employees of the Company subject to stated exceptions were the appropriate unit for collective bargaining had been sought by the C.I.O. The Company objected because no sufficient showing of representation was made and because it took exception to the exclusion of certain employees from the proposed unit. This petition was dismissed for failure of the C.I.O. to make a substantial showing of membership in the suggested store-wide unit. 46 N.L.R.B. 305. That prior application is not a bar to this. The Board was careful to note in this proceeding that a larger unit might be fixed as appropriate if self-organization developed. Other departments of the store had members of this and other unions as employees. This presence of union members throughout the enterprise was a matter of consideration in deciding upon the appropriate unit but was not decisive. Compare Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 313 U.S. 146, 156, 61 S.Ct. 908, 914, 85 L.Ed. 1251. No labor organization claimed to represent the entire body of employees. Therefore the Board determined to approve this unit as appropriate so that collective bargaining might start for these employees without waiting until more employees might be organized into a larger unit. Compare National Labor Relations Board v. Hearst Publications, 322 U.S. 111, 134, 64 S.Ct. 851, 862, 88 L.Ed. 1170.

Under Section 9(b) the Board is delegated the authority to determine the unit. The judicial review afforded is not for the purpose of weighing the evidence upon which the Board acted and perhaps to overrule the exercise of its discretion but to 'guarantee against arbitrary action by the Board.'³ The Board had before it the business of the company, the numbers of employees, the treatment of all employees as a unit by management with reference to sick leave, hospitalization, employee privileges, vacations, et cetera. Evidence was presented that a large proportion of employees in the proposed unit were members of the same union. It had testimony as to similarity and dissimilarity in tailoring and altering between the men's and women's alteration rooms. There was evidence that those who work on men's clothing, speaking generally, belong to a different union organization than those who work on women's clothes. The Board considered the interchange of workers between the two groups. We think that there was ample testimony to support the Board's conclusion that the employees of the two busheling rooms were an appropriate unit, since these employees had a degree of self-organization and a special trade which sufficiently differentiated them from other employees.

Form of Ballot. Petitioner objects to the certification because the ballot contained the name of the St. Louis Joint Council, United Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Employees, as a candidate for bargaining representative from the unit. This was the organization which was certified. It had filed the petition for determination of the representative. The Council claimed that more than 51% of the employees in the suggested unit had designated it as their collective bargaining representative. The Board directs what names go on the ballot. Unless there is a showing of a substantial number of employees in the proposed unit who have become members of and selected the petitioner as their bargaining representative, the Board does not ordinarily order an election. ⁴ This is an administrative policy of the Board. In this case on the Joint Council's petition for certification, the Board found that the Council had a majority of the employees. As a matter of fact it was a local union which the employees had selected and joined. The Board pointed out in its finding of facts on the petition for an election that the Joint Council represented this local and similar locals in other stores.

The Company says that some employees may have been misled by the ballot into thinking that the Joint Council had a substantial number of the unit's employees as members because elections are not ordinarily called unless that situation exists. The local was represented by the Joint Council. Cf. National Labor Relations Board v. Franks Bros. Co., 1 Cir., 137 F.2d 989, 992, affirmed on other grounds Franks Bros. Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 321 U.S. 702, 64 S.Ct. 817, 88 L.Ed. 1020. The Joint Council was chosen by a majority of the employees of the unit and certified. In the circumstances of this election, we see no basis for the Company's objection to the certified representative on the ground of possible confusion of the employees.

Action on Wages. The Board found that the Company interfered with, restrained and coerced its employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed by Section 7 of the Act under the circumstances herein detailed, in seeking the necessary approval (56 Stat. 765, 50 U.S.C.A.Appendix, § 961 et seq.; Executive Order 9250, 50 U.S.C.A.Appendix, § 901 note, 7 Fed.Reg. 7871) on August 30, 1943, of the National War Labor Board for an upward wage adjustment for a large proportion of its employees, including the employees of the unit here involved, without bargaining collectively on the subject of the wages with the certified union. A letter accompanied the request to the War Labor Board which explained that certain craft employees, not here involved, were excluded from the application for authority to increase wages because they were covered by collective bargaining agreements. The letter went on to say:

'The St. Louis Joint Council, United Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Employees of America, C.I.O., * * * has been certified by the National Labor Relations Board, but we do not regard this as an appropriate unit and have consistently taken that position and have so notified all parties concerned. It is our intention to submit that question to the Courts, if and when the occasion arises. We have not recognized this Union and have not bargained with it for the employees in Departments 280 or 281 and no negotiations with that Union are pending. It is intended, however, that the employees in Departments 280 and 281 shall be included in this application.

'We do not believe that any of the organizations named in the application, nor the organization named above, have any interest whatever in the enclosed application. However, if the organization named above should object to the inclusion of the employees of Departments 280 and 281 in the application, you are advised that said application may be considered as having been amended so as to exclude those employees from the...