National Labor Rel. Bd. v. Glen Raven Knitting Mills, 7215.
| Decision Date | 30 July 1956 |
| Docket Number | No. 7215.,7215. |
| Citation | 235 F.2d 413 |
| Parties | NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. GLEN RAVEN KNITTING MILLS, Inc., Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Robert Cohn, Atty., National Labor Relations Bd., Winston-Salem, N. C. (Theophil C. Kammholz, Gen. Counsel, David P. Findling, Assoc. Gen. Counsel, Marcel Mallet-Prevost, Asst. Gen. Counsel, and Frederick U. Reel, Atty., National Labor Relations Bd., Washington, D. C., on brief), for petitioner.
Whiteford S. Blakeney, Charlotte, N. C. (J. W. Alexander, Jr., Charlotte, N. C., on brief), for respondent.
Before PARKER, Chief Judge, SOPER, Circuit Judge, and BARKSDALE, District Judge.
This petition was filed by the National Labor Relations Board to secure the enforcement of an order whereby it directed Glen Raven Knitting Mills, Inc., amongst other things, to bargain collectively with American Federation of Hosiery Workers, an AFL-CIO union, as the representative of the employees organized in a unit consisting of the company's full-fashioned hosiery knitters in its plant at Altamahaw, North Carolina. The refusal to bargain and other actions complained of as unfair labor practices were admitted. They were taken by the company as a method, approved in Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 313 U.S. 146, 154, 61 S.Ct. 908, 85 L.Ed. 1251, for securing a decision of the courts upon the only disputed issue in this case, that the decision of the Board setting up the knitters as a separate bargaining unit was not only arbitrary and capricious but also in disregard of the express provisions of the National Labor Relations Act.
The company's plant produced ladies full-fashioned hosiery and had a complement of 525 employees of whom approximately 182 were engaged in full-fashioned knitting. In addition, the operations included seaming, inspecting, mending, dyeing, boarding, pairing, transferring, folding and shipping, each operation being essential to the production of the goods and calling for the exercise of a special skill.
In 1951, the union attempted to organize the plant as a whole and on April 16 of that year the Board conducted a consent election in which the bargaining unit was composed of all the production and maintenance workers and excluded office, clerical and supervisory employees; but the union failed to win a majority of the votes. Subsequently, in August, 1954 the union again sought to gain a foothold in the plant. It was its intention to apply to the Board to certify all the production workers as an appropriate bargaining unit, if it should be able to persuade a majority of them to join. In the literature which it circulated it appealed to the employees on the ground that the "hosiery workers, knitters, loopers, seamers, fixers, menders, boarders, pairers, etc." all spoke the same language and had the same problems which would be taken care of if they were left to the union. This attempt to organize the whole plant also failed and the union then concentrated its efforts upon the knitters and secured a majority of them. Thereupon it applied for and obtained a determination of the Board that the knitters alone constituted an appropriate bargaining unit and an election was held in which a majority of the group voted in favor of the union and it was accordingly certified. Following the certification the company refused to bargain with the union and performed the other actions on which the petition for enforcement is based.
The law applicable to the situation is not in dispute. It is provided by § 9(b) of the statute, 29 U.S.C.A. § 159 (b), that the Board shall decide in each case whether, in order to assure to employees the fullest freedom in exercising the rights guaranteed by this Act, the unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining shall be the employer, craft unit, plant unit or sub-division thereof; and the courts have given a liberal interpretation to this provision...
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...boundaries of an appropriate unit. The Board seeks homogeneous, identifiable and distinct units. National Labor Relations Board v. Glenn Raven Knitting Mills, 235 F.2d 413 (4th Cir. 1956); National Labor Relations Board v. Moss Amber Mfg. Co., 264 F.2d 107 (9th Cir. 1959); Metropolitan Life......
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