National Labor Relations Bd. v. Moench Tanning Co., 229.

• Decision Date: 17 July 1941
• Docket Number: No. 229.,229.
• Citation: 121 F.2d 951
• Parties: NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. MOENCH TANNING CO., Inc.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

121 F.2d 951 (1941)

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. MOENCH TANNING CO., Inc.

No. 229.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

July 17, 1941.

David Shaw, of Washington, D. C., for petitioner.

Kevin Killeen, of Buffalo, N. Y., for Moench Tanning Co., Inc.

Frederic Weyand, of Gowanda, N. Y., for Tancraft Workers of Gowanda.

Sidney Elliott Cohn, of New York City, for Leather Workers Union of Gowanda, Local 44, Intervenor.

Robert B. Watts, General Counsel, Laurence A. Knapp, Associate General Counsel, Ernest A. Gross, Assistant General

Counsel, Owsley Vose, and Edward J. Creswell, all of Washington, D. C., for National Labor Relations Board.

Before L. HAND, AUGUSTUS N. HAND, and CHASE, Circuit Judges.

L. HAND, Circuit Judge.

This case comes up upon a petition of the National Labor Relations Board for an order of this court to enforce an order of the Board against the respondent, a wholly owned subsidiary corporation of the Brown Shoe Company, Inc., of St. Louis, Missouri. The respondent is a tannery, doing business in the little village of Gowanda, New York, which ordinarily employs between 500 and 600 people. The order of the Board enjoined it from refusing to bargain collectively with a local of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and from "dominating or interfering with the administration" of an unaffiliated union of its employees, known as the "Tancraft Workers of Gowanda," or from "performing any contracts for working conditions to which that union was a party." It also forbade generally the violation of § 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 157, in the precise terms of that section. As affirmative relief, it directed the respondent to bargain with the C. I. O. local and to withdraw all recognition from the unaffiliated union and disestablish it; it concluded with the usual requirement that notices of conformity with its provisions should be posted. The Board found in substance the following facts.

Until July, 1937, the respondent's employees were altogether unorganized. After the refusal of their demand for an increase of wages, about twenty-five employees in the "rolling room" began to agitate for the formation of a union. One, Powell, who was in charge of all the "labor policies" of the respondent and visited its plant every two or three weeks, upon learning during one of these visits that the employees proposed to organize a union, told them that the respondent would negotiate with it, but he suggested that they should keep it a local organization and "not pay money to outside unions" which had caused so much trouble "down East." At a later meeting, Powell and Moench, the respondent's president and one of its superintendents, and Keister, another superintendent, met the new officers of the union, and Powell again advised them to keep it local, arguing that unaffiliated unions had been successful whereas affiliated had not, and giving as one instance a C. I. O. affiliate where the men were then out of work. The union officers asked him to treat with their union as the only bargaining representative for the plant, but he refused to recognize them as representing more than their members, on the ground that the law forbade his bargaining with a single union of employees, or even learning the names of its members. In August, Bates, the union president, again pressed his demand for recognition of the union as the only representative, and Powell again refused; by that time 500 of the 550 or 560 employees had become members. In September, Powell met the officers of the union and submitted to them a revision of a working agreement prepared by them during the summer; they agreed to his changes but he then refused to sign it, though he promised orally to pay time and one-third for work in excess of 40 hours a week. Later, when the union complained that this stipulation had been violated in the case of the "pack pullers," Moench and Keister declared that they did not remember that any such wage had been agreed upon; and while Powell did not do that, he refused to pay the overtime because he said that the "pack pullers" were slacking their work "because of the union." Furthermore, when the union offered to prove the contrary, he refused to hear them. In September certain C. I. O. representatives came to the plant to affiliate the local union, and Moench called Bates to his office where Powell questioned him about what took place at the meetings. Shortly thereafter, Mayer, an employee who had at least some "supervisory" powers, urged Bates to quit the union and promised him a steady job if he did. (Mayer from then on was active and open in his hostility; so much so, indeed, that in March, 1938, the respondent's officers compelled him to stop.)

In spite of these efforts the union did so affiliate in October, 1937, by a vote of about three to one; and thereafter it continued fruitless negotiations with the respondent's officers, until the plant was shut down on January 10, 1938. The Board has not found that the shutdown had any relation to the affilation of the union with...