N.L.R.B. v. Certified Grocers of Illinois, Inc., 85-2918
| Decision Date | 21 November 1986 |
| Docket Number | No. 85-2918,85-2918 |
| Citation | 806 F.2d 744 |
| Parties | 123 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 3133, 55 USLW 2343, 105 Lab.Cas. P 12,094 NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. CERTIFIED GROCERS OF ILLINOIS, INC., Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Mark Seidman and Elliott Moore, N.L.R.B., Washington, D.C., for N.L.R.B.
Lawrence M. Cohen, Fox & Grove, Chicago, Ill., for respondent.
Before POSNER and RIPPLE, Circuit Judges, and CAMPBELL, Senior District Judge. *
The Labor Board asks us to enforce its order finding that Certified Grocers, a cooperative buying organization, violated section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 158(a)(1), which forbids interference with rights protected by section 7, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 157, by promulgating an overbroad rule against disclosure of employees' names, addresses, and wages. Certified argues that the Board's order is not supported by substantial evidence on the record considered as a whole.
At a time when the union was trying to organize the 100 to 200 clerical employees at three of Certified's facilities (all the rest of Certified's nonsupervisory employees were unionized), Certified's management conducted four essentially identical meetings with its clerical employees. Each employee was required to attend at least one meeting. The reasons for the multiple meetings were that there were too many employees to have a productive meeting attended by all of them and that the employees were split among different locations. At each meeting management discussed the state of the company and various company policies and closed with a request that the employees not sign union-authorization cards. After management spoke, employees were invited to ask questions. At the question-and-answer session in the first meeting (attended by about 100 employees), employee Beukema--who had already complained to Alessi, an officer of Certified, that the union had mailed campaign literature to her new address, which she hadn't wanted given out--asked how the union had gotten her address. Alessi answered that the company didn't know, that an employee's name and address are confidential, that the leak could only have come from the payroll, personnel, or data-processing departments, and that if the company discovered who was responsible for the leak it would take disciplinary action. At the three later meetings Alessi repeated Beukema's question and his answer. Finally, while testifying at a hearing (where several employees were present) on the union's petition for a representation election, Alessi answered "yes" to two questions by Certified's lawyer on whether it was the company's policy to keep information on wages confidential.
The union filed an unfair labor practice charge, complaining that Alessi's statements about confidentiality added up to the announcement of an overbroad rule that interfered with the workers' statutory right to engage in concerted activities by exchanging nonconfidential information. Later a representation election was held which the union lost by a large margin. The Board's regional director has ordered a new election; his order is at present on appeal to the Board.
The Board's practice, upheld in NLRB v. Wyman-Gordon Co., 394 U.S. 759, 89 S.Ct. 1426, 22 L.Ed.2d 709 (1969), is to require the employer to disclose to the union, once a representation election is either ordered or agreed to, the names and addresses of the employees eligible to vote. But the incidents giving rise to the unfair labor practice charge in this case occurred before the election was ordered, and neither party has suggested that the Board's requirement of disclosure after the election is ordered is material to our consideration. Cf. Southern & Western Lumber Co., 212 N.L.R.B. 668, 669 n. 2 (1974).
The administrative law judge held that Alessi's statements "would have reasonably led the employees to believe that any disclosure of names, addresses, and/or wage rates, regardless of how they became aware of the information, could lead to discipline." (Emphasis in original.) Thus, even if the employee had not obtained the information from a confidential source--even if the information consisted of the employee's own name, address, or wages--the employee might (the administrative law judge thought) reasonably believe himself forbidden to disclose the information to anyone. Although the administrative law judge rejected the argument that Alessi's purpose in formulating and announcing such an overbroad "rule" was to interfere with the union's organizing campaign, she concluded that this was the likely consequence; and since the exchange of nonconfidential information ancillary to protected concerted activities is itself protected by section 7 of the Act, the rule, regardless of its purpose, was, she thought, an interference with rights protected by section 7, and therefore violated section 8. The Board upheld the administrative law judge's decision without opinion.
The parties agree that a rule which merely forbids employees with access to confidential information to disclose it without the company's authorization is valid even though an incidental effect may be to make it harder for the union to organize the company's workers. See, e.g., Texas Instruments, Inc. v. NLRB, 637 F.2d 822, 827-32 (1st Cir.1981); NLRB v. Florida Steel Corp., 544 F.2d 896, 897 (5th Cir.1977); International Business Machines Corp., 265 N.L.R.B. 638 (1982). The parties also agree that the company cannot go further and forbid the disclosure of nonconfidential information as well, to the detriment of the union's organizing efforts. See, e.g., Bullock's, 247 N.L.R.B. 257, 258 (1980). If Certified had announced that an employee cannot disclose his own name, address, or wages, or the name, address, or wages of any other employee however the information about the other employee was obtained--so that if Beukema had told the two employees who were conducting the union's organizing campaign, "My name is Beukema, and I live at such-and-such address," she would have violated the rule--section 8 would have been violated. See, e.g., W.R. Grace Co., 240 N.L.R.B. 813, 815-16 (1979). Such a rule would impede the union's organizing efforts while serving no lawful interest of either the company or its employees. The issue is whether the "rule" supposedly announced, piecemeal, by Alessi could reasonably be understood to reach so far.
We find incomprehensible the characterization of Alessi's answer to Beukema's question (an answer repeated at the three other meetings), and to the questions put by Certified's lawyer in the representation hearing, as the announcement of a rule forbidding the disclosure of nonconfidential information. This is not because a company rule or policy, to run afoul of section 8, need always be in writing; plainly it need not be. It is because context and common sense make clear that Alessi's oral responses could not have been understood to be laying down a company policy against workers' disclosing information obtained without any breach of confidence, such as their own names. Beukema was not complaining to Alessi that the union was using information it had obtained from her; she was complaining because she believed that only the company had her new address and that it should not have given it to the union. When against this background Alessi told the workers at the four meetings that the names and addresses of employees were indeed confidential, that the leak of which Beukema had complained could only have come from one of three departments in the company, and that whoever was responsible for the leak would (if caught) be disciplined, he could only have meant--and more important could only have been understood to mean--that it was against company policy for workers to disclose confidential information to which they had access by virtue of their employment in the payroll, personnel, or data-processing departments. To understand Alessi to have meant that one worker could not tell another worker his or her name would be fantastic. It is hardly surprising that no one testified to any such understanding.
The implicit premise of the Board's decision--that an answer to a question is a rule, and had...
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