National Labor Relations Bd. v. Valentine Sugars

• Decision Date: 05 March 1954
• Docket Number: No. 14662.,14662.
• Citation: 211 F.2d 317
• Parties: NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. VALENTINE SUGARS, Inc. et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

211 F.2d 317 (1954)

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. VALENTINE SUGARS, Inc. et al.

No. 14662.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

March 5, 1954.

David P. Findling, Associate Gen. Counsel, N.L.R.B., A. Norman Somers, Asst. Associate Gen. Counsel, N.L.R.B., Samuel M. Singer, Atty., N.L.R.B., George J. Bott, General Counsel, Morris A. Solomon, Attys., N.L.R.B., Washington, D. C., for petitioner.

Samuel Lang, John L. Toler (of Chaffe, McCall, Toler & Phillips), of Kullman & Lang, New Orleans, La., for respondents.

Before HUTCHESON, Chief Judge, and HOLMES and RIVES, Circuit Judges.

HUTCHESON, Chief Judge.

This is a petition for enforcement of an order of the Board¹ which was based upon the conclusion that, in violation of Section 8(a)(2), 29 U.S.C.A. § 158(a) (2), the respondents had supported the Independent and interfered with its administration. This conclusion was in turn based on findings and the conclusion that, though the Independent was not company formed or company dominated, certain acts of respondents constituted lending it support; and that respondents interfered with the administration of the Independent through the action of one Hector Curole, a supervisor of respondents and a member of Independent, and gave it illegal support by their actions on May 14th in regard to the yet unratified contract with the Independent of April 30th at the Independent's meeting.

The respondents do not at all contest the factual truth of these findings except the findings that Curole was a supervisor and that by his membership in the Independent and their action on May 14th, respondents gave illegal support to the Independent or illegally interfered in its affairs. Indeed, they frankly admit that they did the things² that the Board found that they did.

They vigorously insist, though, that as matter of law, none of the things found, including Hector Curole's membership in the Independent if he was, as the Board found and as respondents denied, a supervisor, taken singly or together, constituted or could constitute furnishing support to the Independent or interfering with its administration, within the meaning of the invoked section.

They urge upon us that the language of the section makes this plain, that it is made even more plain when read in the light of the preamble of the original act and the amendment thereto, and that the legislative history of the original act and its amendment makes this construction mandatory. In short, respondents insist that what was done by it, as found by examiner and Board, was only the manifestation of the existence of that decent and kindly human relationship which should prevail between management and men, employees and their employer, and was not in any respect within either the language of the act or the mischief it was designed to meet and prevent.

They point in support of this contention to what was said in National Labor Relations Board v. Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines, 303 U.S. 261, 263, 58 S.Ct. 571, 82 L.Ed. 831. There, dealing with the formation and domination of a company union, in violation of Section 8(a) (2), and the appropriate order of the Board to meet such a situation, the court, 303 U.S. at page 265, 58 S.Ct. at page 574, stated:

"Hence, upon the challenge of the affirmative part of an order of the Board, we look to the Act itself, read in the light of its history, to ascertain its policy, and to the facts which the Board has found, to see whether they afford a basis for its judgment that the action ordered is an appropriate means of carrying out that policy."

Then, following an illuminating discussion of the Railway Labor Act of 1926, 45 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq. and of the Railway Clerks case,³ in which the court points out that the reports of the House Committee on Labor shows that it had before it the Railway Clerks case and that, in recommending the adoption of 10(c), 29 U.S.C.A. § 160(c), authorizing the Board to order the abandonment of unfair labor practices and to take affirmative action which would carry out the policy of the Act, the Committee had the decree in this case definitely in mind, the court went on to say:

"In recommending the adoption of this latter provision the Senate Committee called attention to the decree which, in the Railway Clerks Case, had compelled the employer to `disestablish its company union as representative of its employees.\'"

We turn, then, to the opinion of the District Court in the Clerks case where the whole controversy was set out, and the reasons for the particular disposition of it were fully given. There the district judge pointed out that by the formation of the company union involved in that case, at the instance and with the assistance of the company, the respondent had gone about to put itself in a position to conduct sham bargaining by controlling both sides of the table, and, after stating the facts, said:

"In short, upon a foundation laid in direct violation of the statute, they have sought to erect a superstructure of exclusive representation, and in the face of a statute and an injunction designed to secure the observance of the fundamental maxim, `Audita alteram partem,\' they have gone about to arrange it so that the railroad would be in a position of surely having a vote on both sides of the table, its own side and that of its employees.

"* * * It appears that organizers of the Association of Clerical Employees have been sent out, on company time, and on company pay, and with company consent and approval, to organize the Association, while officers of the Brotherhood have been discharged from the service and excluded from wage conferences, members of the Brotherhood have had their pay docked for the time spent on its business, and other members have been dismissed from the service, * * *."

It must, of course, be conceded: that there were prevalent in some quarters⁴ in 1935, when the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq., was passed, views that a class war, with employees on one side and employers on the other, was not only irrepressible but desirable, and that the proper, the normal relation and attitude of each to the other should be not one of mutual interest, interdependence and loyalty, but one of suspicion, distrust and even hatred. It must be conceded, too, that if the legislation in question was enacted under the influence of such views, every courteous and kindly gesture, every friendly and co-operative attitude, every considerate or generous act on the part of either toward the other ought to be regarded as hypocritical and deceitful, done with an ax to grind, and an overreaching purpose to deceive, and that the things found to have been done by the respondents in this case ought to be declared to have been done with the intent to subvert the rights of their employees in violation of the law.

The reports of the committees of Senate and House and the decision in the Greyhound Lines and the Clerks case, above quoted from, show, however, that the Congress, in enacting the Labor Relations Act, was not in sympathy with such views. The Act itself makes plain that it was not enacted to produce or encourage feelings or relations of hostility and enmity between employer and employee, but to assuage such feelings and change such relations. It makes plain, too, that it was enacted not to engender an atmosphere or climate of hate or ill will, or to prevent exchanges by employers and employees of courtesies and kindnesses essential to the maintenance of common human relations but to dispel such an atmosphere or climate and to encourage such exchanges.

Beginning with its preamble and continuing throughout its length, the act as a whole makes plain that its aim in part was to meet and prevent the mischiefs inherent in such views and to create and encourage contrary attitudes and relations, attitudes and relations appropriate, indeed necessary, for collective bargaining and the establishment and maintenance thereby of industrial efficiency and peace. The precise section in question here was not enacted to prohibit or penalize courteous and friendly, or even generous, actions on the part of employers. Its purpose was, and, if rightly interpreted and applied, its effect will be, to prevent what occurred and was properly condemned in the Clerks case. This was the giving by employers of lip service only, to the act by pretending to permit their employees to join or form an organization to represent them in collective bargaining, while the employers were actually forming the organization or taking it over themselves, with the result that they would have representation on both sides of the table, indeed would be dealing with themselves. In short, what the congress was striking at and intending to penalize was not the establishment and maintenance of friendly and cordial relations between employers and employees, but only the doing of the forbidden thing, trying by purchase or coercion to acquire for management a kept and dominated vote.

In further support of the view, that both the original Labor Relations Act and the Taft-Hartley Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 141 et seq., amending it, were intended as positive legislation, whose end was amity and cooperation instead of strife and discord, we quote from the recent opinion of the Supreme Court, in N. L. R. B. v. Local Union No. 1229, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, 346 U.S. 464, 74 S.Ct. 172, 176, affirming the finding of the Labor Board that the conduct of employees which was disloyal to their employers was "indefensible" and unlawful:

"* * * There is no more elemental cause for discharge of an employee than disloyalty to his employer. It is equally elemental that the Taft-Hartley Act seeks to strengthen, rather than to weaken, that cooperation, continuity of service and cordial contractual relation between employer and employee that is born of loyalty to their common enterprise.

"Congress, while safeguarding, in § 7,

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