National Labor Rel. Bd. v. VAN DE KAMP'S, ETC., BAKERS

• Decision Date: 29 March 1946
• Docket Number: No. 10949.,10949.
• Citation: 152 F.2d 818
• Parties: NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. VAN DE KAMP'S HOLLAND-DUTCH BAKERS, Inc.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

152 F.2d 818 (1946)

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. VAN DE KAMP'S HOLLAND-DUTCH BAKERS, Inc.

No. 10949.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

January 7, 1946.

Decree Amended March 26, 1946.

Rehearing Denied March 29, 1946.

David A. Morse, Gen. Counsel NLRB, Malcolm F. Halliday, Associate Gen. Counsel, A. Norman Somers, Asst. Gen. Counsel, and Joseph B. Robison and Eleanor Schwartzbach, Attys., NLRB, all of Washington, D. C., and Maurice J. Nicoson, Regional Atty., NLRB, of Los Angeles, Cal., for petitioner.

Guy T. Graves, of Los Angeles, Cal., for respondent.

Before STEPHENS, BONE, and ORR, Circuit Judges.

ORR, Circuit Judge.

Petitioner, hereinafter called the Board, issued a complaint against respondent, hereinafter called the Company, alleging the latter was engaged in unfair labor practices within section 8(1) and (5) of the National Labor Relations Act.¹ The complaint was issued on a charge filed by a bakery driver's local union of the A. F. of L. Brotherhood of Teamsters, hereinafter called the Union.

Following two hearings, the Board issued an order, pertinent parts of which follow:

"The Company shall:

"1. Cease and desist from:

"(a) Refusing to bargain collectively with Bakery Drivers Local 276, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, as the exclusive representative of the respondent's truck drivers at its Los Angeles plant, in respect to rates of pay, wages, hours of employment, and other terms and conditions of employment;

"(b) In any other manner interfering with, restraining, or coercing its employees in the exercise of the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing and to engage in concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, as guaranteed in Section 7 of the Act."

The Board now petitions for enforcement of its order.

The Company contends first that the National Labor Relations Act is not applicable to it, since it is not engaged in interstate commerce. This contention is without merit.

The Company, with its main plant at Los Angeles, California, manufactures and sells at retail general bakery products. Approximately thirty per cent of the materials it buys are shipped to it from points outside California. Its finished products, which have an annual approximate value of $5,000,000 have been sold wholly within the Los Angeles area since December 1942. In 1941 and 1942 the Company shipped supplies and materials worth approximately $2,600 each year to its Seattle plant, but this practice was discontinued in December 1942. Finished products valued at $1,500 were shipped to customers outside California prior to September 1942, but this practice was discontinued thereafter. The unfair labor practices complained of took place in 1941 and 1942. The Company argues that because the percentage of goods shipped out of California is so small this court should apply the maxim de minimis. It is immaterial whether or not we do so. The fact that approximately thirty per cent of the materials the Company uses are shipped to it from outside California is sufficient to bring the Company within the Act.²

It is the intent of Congress, expressed in Section 1 of the Act, that the free flow of commerce must not be interrupted, obstructed, or burdened by industrial strife or unrest. Congress intended to eliminate, by protecting workers in their various rights enumerated in the Act, the causes of substantial obstructions to the free flow of interstate commerce. It matters little where the obstruction to that free flow of commerce occurs. Here, labor strife in the Los Angeles plant of the Company would interfere with and obstruct the free flow of raw materials coming into California from other states, and it is just such an obstruction that Congress intended to prevent by the passage of this Act.

As the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals said in New Port News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. v. N.L.R.B., 101 F.2d 841, 843, (affirmed 308 U.S. 241, 60 S.Ct. 203, 84 L.Ed. 219):

"There can be no difference in principle between the case in which manufacture precedes and that in which it follows interstate commerce. If the flow of commerce is obstructed by labor disputes, it makes no difference from which direction the obstruction is applied."

The out of state purchases by the company, totalling as they do, thirty per cent of products used by it, bring the Company within the jurisdiction of the Board, notwithstanding virtually all finished products are sold in Los Angeles.³

The Board's trial examiner found that the Union, on July 11, 1942 and at all times thereafter, was the duly designated representative of a majority of the Company's drivers, an appropriate unit for collective bargaining, and that the Company refused to bargain collectively with the Union. His findings were adopted by the Board.

The Company contends 1 that the Union was not the representative of a majority of the drivers because some of the Union authorizations signed by the drivers had been obtained by fraud and...