National Labor Relations Board v. Columbian Enameling Stamping Co

• Decision Date: 27 February 1939
• Docket Number: No. 229,229
• Citation: 306 U.S. 292,83 L.Ed. 660,59 S.Ct. 501
• Parties: NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. COLUMBIAN ENAMELING & STAMPING CO., Inc
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

306 U.S. 292

59 S.Ct. 501

83 L.Ed. 660

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD

v COLUMBIAN ENAMELING & STAMPING CO., Inc.

No. 229.

Argued Jan. 11, 12. 1939.

Decided Feb. 27, 1939.

The Attorney General, and Mr. Robert B. Watts, of Washington, D.C., for petitioner.

Mr. Earl F. Reed, of Pittsburgh, Pa., for respondent Columbian Enameling & Stamping Co., Inc.

Mr. Paul R. Shafer, of Terre Haute, Ind., for respondents Harry Hiatt and others.

Mr. Justice STONE delivered the opinion of the Court.

This petition tests the validity of an order of the National Labor Relations Board of February 14, 1936, directing respondent to discharge from its service employees who were not employed by it on July 22, 1935; to reinstate, to the vacancies so created, those who were employed on that date and have not since received substantially equivalent employment elsewhere; and to desist from refusing to bargain collectively with Enameling and Stamping Mill Employees Union No. 19694 as the exclusive representative of respondent's production employees with respect to rates of pay, wages, hours, and other conditions of employment. Unless the finding of the Board that respondent had refused to bargain collectively with the Union on July 23, 1935, is sustained by the evidence, the order is invalid.

Pursuant to a charge lodged with it by the Union, the Board issued its complaint charging respondent with un- fair labor practices affecting interstate commerce within the meaning of § 8(1) and (5) of the National Labor Relations Act, 49 Stat. 449, 452, 29 U.S.C.A. § 158(1, 5). After hearing, the Board made findings which, so far as now relevant, may be summarized as follows: Respondent corporation is engaged at Terre Haute, Indiana, in the manufacture and sale in interstate commerce of metal utensils and other products. On July 14, 1934, respondent and the Union entered into a written contract for one year, terminable on thirty days' notice, prescribing various conditions of employment. It provided that no employee should be discriminated against by reason of membership or non-membership in, or affiliation or non-affiliation with any union or labor organization. It also provided for arbitration, before an arbitration committee, of disputes arising under the contract, and that 'There shall be no stoppage of work by either party to this contract, pending decision by the Committee of Arbitration'.

Between the date of the signing of the agreement, July 14, 1934, and March 23, 1935, respondent's officers held numerous meetings with representatives of the Union, usually the Union Scale Committee, for the consideration and adjustment of various demands of the Union. At a meeting on January 4, 1935, the committee presented a number of requests, among them the demand that respondent should discharge any employees who might be suspended by the Union. This and the other demands were rejected by respondent, and a later request that the demands of January 4th be arbitrated was likewise refused on the ground that they were not arbitrable under the agreement. The committee afterward presented new demands at other meetings and then at a meeting on March 11th renewed the demands of January 4th, which respondent again rejected. On March 17th the Union passed resolutions reciting grievances and demanding a closed shop, and on March 23d ordered a strike, when four hundred and fifty of respondent's five hundred employees left work. On March 30th respondent announced that its factory was closed indefinitely.

The strike was in effect July 5, 1935, when the National Labor Relations Act was approved, and continued until about July 23d, when respondent resumed operations at its plant. By August 19th it had received three thousand applications for employment and had reemployed one hundred and ninety of its production employees. By the end of the second week in September respondent had employed a full force. On July 23d two labor conciliators from the Department of Labor appeared in Terre Haute and were requested by the Union 'to try and open up negotiations with the respondent'. On that day the conciliators met and conferred with respondent's president, who agreed to meet them with the Scale Committee. Several days later he informed them that he would not meet with them or with the Scale Committee. Later respondent received, but did not answer, letters of the Union of September 20th and October 11th, asking for a meeting to settle the controversy between them.

The Board concluded that on July 23d the 'union represented a majority of the respondent's employees, that it sought to bargain with the respondent, that the respondent refused to so bargain, and that this constituted an unfair labor practice' within the meaning of § 8, subdivision (5) of the Act. It ordered respondent to discharge all of its production employees who were not employed by it on July 22, 1935, to reinstate its employees as of that date, and thereupon to desist from refusing to bargain with the Union as the exclusive representative of respondent's production employees.

Application by the Board for a decree enforcing its order was denied by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, 96 F.2d 948, on the ground that as the employees had struck before the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq., in violation of their contract not to strike and to submit differences to arbitration, they did not retain and were not entitled to protection of their status as employees under § 2(3) of the Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 152(3). We granted certiorari October 10, 1938, 305 U.S. 583, 59 S.Ct. 86, 83 L.Ed. —-, the questions presented with respect to the administration of the National Labor Relations Act being of public importance.

The Board's order is without support unless the date of the refusal to bargain collectively be fixed as on July 23, 1935. The evidence and findings leave no doubt that later, in September, respondent ignored the Union's request for collective bargaining, but as at that time respondent's factory had been reopened and was operating with a full complement of production employees, the refusal to bargain could afford no basis for an order by the Board directing, as of that date, the discharge of new employees and their replacement by strikers. Restoration of the strikers to their employment, by order of the Board, under § 10(c) of the Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 160(c), could as a practical matter be effected only if respondent had failed in its statutory duty to bargain collectively at some time after the approval of the National Labor Relations Act on July 5th, and before respondent had resumed normal operation of its factory. The date fixed by the Board was July 23d, when respondent reopened its factory, and the occasion was the personal interview on that day and a later telephone conversation of respondent's president with the conciliators from the Labor Department, who were not members or official representatives of the Union and who, so far as the testimony discloses, did not then appear to the president to be authorized to speak for the Union.

In appraising these transactions between the conciliators and respondent's president, it is important to bear in mind the nature and extent of the legal duty imposed upon the employer by the National Labor Relations Act. Section 8(5) declares that it is an 'unfair labor practice' for an employer 'To refuse to bargain collectively with the representatives of his employees', and §§ 2 and 10(c) give to the Board an extensive authority to order the employer to cease an unfair labor practice and to compel reinstatement of employees with back pay when employment has ceased in consequence of a labor dispute or unfair labor practice. See National Labor Relations Board v. Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co., 304 U.S. 333, 58 S.Ct. 904, 82 L.Ed. 1381. While the Act thus makes it the employer's duty to bargain with his employees, and failure to perform that duty entails serious consequences to him, it imposes no like duty on his employees. Since there must be at least two parties to a bargain and to any negotiations for a bargain, it follows that there can be no breach of the statutory duty by the employer—when he has not refused to receive communications from his employees—without some indication given to him by them or their representatives of their desire or willingness to bargain. In the normal course of transactions between them, willingness of the employees is evidenced by their request, invitation, or expressed desire to bargain, communicated to their employer.

However desirable may be the exhibition by the employer of a tolerant and conciliatory spirit in the settlement of labor disputes, we think it plain that the statute does not compel him to seek out his employees or request their participation in negotiations for purposes of collective bargaining, and that he may ignore or reject proposals for such bargaining which come from third persons not purporting to act with authority of his employees, without violation of law and without suffering the drastic consequences which violation may entail. To put the employer in default here the employees must at least have signified to respondent their desire to negotiate. Measured by this test the Board's conclusion that respondent refused to bargain with the Union is without support, for the reason that there is no evidence that the Union gave to the employer, through the conciliators or otherwise, any indication of its willingness to bargain or that respondent knew that they represented the Union. The employer cannot, under the statute, be charged with refusal of that which is not proffered.

During the eight months preceding the strike respondent had, upon request, entered into negotiations with the Union on some eleven different occasions. Such meetings, always with some known representatives of the Union, were customarily with the Union Scale Committee and on its written...