National Labor Rel. Bd. v. Morganton Full Fash. Hos. Co., 7320.

• Decision Date: 27 February 1957
• Docket Number: No. 7320.,7320.
• Citation: 241 F.2d 913
• Parties: NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. MORGANTON FULL FASHIONED HOSIERY COMPANY and Huffman Full Fashioned Hosiery Mills, Inc., Respondents.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

241 F.2d 913 (1957)

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. MORGANTON FULL FASHIONED HOSIERY COMPANY and Huffman Full Fashioned Hosiery Mills, Inc., Respondents.

No. 7320.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued January 8, 1957.

Decided February 27, 1957.

Frederick U. Reel, Atty., N. L. R. B., Washington, D. C., Theophil C. Kammholz, Gen. Counsel; Stephen Leonard, Associate Gen. Counsel; Marcel Mallet-Prevost, Asst. Gen. Counsel, and William

J. Avrutis, Atty., N. L. R. B., Washington, D. C., on brief), for petitioner.

Whiteford S. Blakeney, Charlotte, N. C. (Frank C. Patton; Mull & Patton, Morganton, N. C., and Blakeney & Alexander, Charlotte, N. C., on brief), for respondents.

Before PARKER, Chief Judge, and SOPER and SOBELOFF, Circuit Judges.

SOPER, Circuit Judge.

This petition for enforcement of an order of the National Labor Relations Board calls for consideration of a section of the Labor Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 159 (c) (5) which provides that, in determining the appropriate unit of employees for purposes of collective bargaining, the extent to which the employees have organized shall not be controlling. We dismissed a similar petition for enforcement in N. L. R. B. v. Glen Raven Knitting Mills, Inc., 4 Cir., 235 F.2d 413, on the ground that the Board had failed to observe this provision of the Act, and the respondents contend that we should take like action in the instant proceeding.

Respondents have approximately 450 employees at the Morganton plant and 200 at the Huffman plant. There are 88 knitters and 42 knitters' helpers at Morganton; 125 knitters and 48 helpers at Huffman. Each plant also employs a small number of knitter-trainees. The knitting department at both plants operate on a three-shift, around-the-clock basis as do the pre-boarders and throwers at Morganton; the seamers, inspectors, dyers, and finishers, packers and shippers work only one shift. The Huffman plant is devoted almost exclusively to knitting; it also contains an office which is separated from the knitting room. At the Morganton plant, which is devoted to the full production of hosiery, the knitting room "is distinctly separate from the rest of the plant." The knitters are under separate supervision from the other employees, although there is a single plant superintendent over both plants. The knitters also punch a different time clock from that used by the finishing employees. Respondents' policy is to hire and train only male knitters; a few women knitters have been "held over from the war," but respondents would like to eliminate women from the knitting department. All the seaming and most of the finishing operations are performed by women.

The knitters' wage rates are higher than those of the other employees. New wage rates are frequently instituted for knitters due to changes in hosiery styles, and the setting of a fair rate is a "complicated procedure" which "requires right careful study and careful negotiations." This "problem is really peculiar to the knitting employees." The knitters, unlike the other employees, work on large, heavy machines valued at from $35,000 to $40,000. The knitter-trainees or learners undergo a special apprenticeship training period of at least one year.

In 1952 the United Textile Workers of America represented all of respondents' production and maintenance employees in a single unit, but that union was decertified as the result of a Board election in January 1953, and since that time respondents' employees have not been represented by a labor organization.

In 1955 the American Federation of Hosiery Workers, AFL-CIO, the union involved in the present case, petitioned the Board to establish a bargaining unit consisting only of knitters, knitter-trainees and helpers. At the hearing the attorney for the union, in answer to a question by the examiner, stated that the union would not be at all interested in an over-all bargaining unit of employees, and would not go into an election for the establishment of such a unit. The companies' position was...