National Labor Relations Board v. Thompson Products, 10383.

• Decision Date: 24 March 1944
• Docket Number: No. 10383.,10383.
• Citation: 141 F.2d 794
• Parties: NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. THOMPSON PRODUCTS, Inc.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

141 F.2d 794 (1944)

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. THOMPSON PRODUCTS, Inc.

No. 10383.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

March 24, 1944.

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Howard Lichtenstein, Associate Gen. Counsel, Joseph B. Robison, and Isadore Greenberg, all of Washington, D. C., and Daniel J. Harrington, of Los Angeles, Cal., for petitioner.

Paul R. Watkins, Richard W. Lund, and Austin H. Peck, Jr., all of Los Angeles, Cal., for respondent.

Before WILBUR and STEPHENS, Circuit Judges, and McCORMICK, District Judge.

STEPHENS, Circuit Judge.

The National Labor Relations Board petitions for the enforcement of its order that respondent cease and desist from engaging in certain unfair labor practices and that it take certain affirmative action. Respondent prays that the order of the Board be set aside.

The proceedings involve a plant in Bell, California, purchased in 1937 by respondent, an Ohio corporation. The plant produces aircraft parts. The majority of its steel, the principal material used in its products, is purchased in the United States outside California, and a majority of its sales are made to customers outside California. The jurisdiction of the Board to entertain the proceeding is shown by the evidence that interstate commerce is affected, and the point is not disputed by respondent.

Upon charges made in 1942 by United Automobile, Aircraft and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, an affiliate of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the Board issued a complaint against respondent. The gravamen of the complaint was the respondent's alleged domination of a company union formed in 1937 and called the Pacific Motor Parts Workers Alliance, hereinafter called the Alliance. The Board determined that respondent had dominated and interfered with the formation and administration of the Alliance, had rendered support to it, and by these and other specified acts, had interfered with, restrained, and coerced its employees in the exercise of rights guaranteed by § 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 157, and consequently had violated § 8(1) and (2) of the Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 158(1) and (2). The Board ordered respondent to cease and desist from engaging in the unfair labor practices found, to withdraw all recognition from and completely disestablish the Alliance, and to post appropriate notices. The order was dated December 31, 1942.

The findings of fact of the trial examiner, as adopted by the Board, are briefly set forth. Respondent purchased its plant in Bell, California, as a going concern from Jadson Motor Products Company in April, 1937. At the time no labor union represented the production employees. In June of 1937 one of those employees, Lewis A. Porter, was asked by one of the management group to join the C. I. O. affiliate. Porter joined, was given money for his dues, and reported back the number of respondent's employees attending the union meetings. In July respondent's personnel director, Raymond S. Livingstone, visited the California plant and through the local Assistant Works Manager, Victor Kangas, requested Porter to aid in starting an inside union. Through him it was hoped that several employees would come to the management, would ask for an inside union, and would demand more pay and better working conditions. Kangas ordered application cards for the union, and Porter obtained them from the printer. The meeting between management and employees was accomplished through the agency of Porter, who was rewarded for his activities. Thereafter, application cards were passed out by the employees and organizational meetings held. Porter, at the instance of Livingstone, delivered a paper suggesting items for a management-labor agreement to a local attorney who was later retained by the Alliance to draft its constitution and bylaws.

On August 12, 1937, respondent entered into a written agreement with the Alliance as exclusive bargaining agent for its employees in the California plant. After periodic renewals a contract was formed containing an automatic renewal clause.

For a time meetings of the executive council of the Alliance were held, memberships solicited, and dues collected in the plant during working hours without objection from the management.

Two Alliance officers raised a question as to the status in the plant of certain employees. The personnel director thereupon posted a notice to the effect that the listed men would be asked to resign from the Alliance because they were supervisory employees. Three men held executive positions in the Alliance after assuming supervisory duties. There was evidence of a few anti-C. I. O. remarks made by both management representatives and supervisory employees.

Respondent argues forcefully that the petition for enforcement must be denied because the proceeding is outlawed by the National Labor Relations Board Appropriation Act, 1944, Title IV, Labor-Federal Security Appropriation Act, 1944, Pub. 135, Ch. 221, 78th Cong. 1st Sess., H. R. 2935, 57 Stat. 515, approved July 12, 1943.

In appropriating funds for the Board for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1944, Congress provided: "* * * No part of the funds appropriated in this title shall be used in any way in connection with a complaint case arising over an agreement between management and labor which has been in existence for three months or longer without complaint being filed: Provided, That, hereafter, notice of such agreement shall have been posted in the plant affected for said period of three months, said notice containing information as to the location at an accessible place of such agreement where said agreement shall be open for inspection by any interested person." Respondent points out that its agreement with the Alliance was first entered into August 12, 1937, a few days after the Alliance was organized, and that no charge questioning the labor relations in its California plant was filed until 1942 after a lapse of almost five years. It concludes that the instant case falls squarely within the terms of the quoted language.

That Congress can amend substantive legislation by provisions in an appropriation bill is not questioned. United States v. Dickerson, 310 U.S. 554, 555, 60 S.Ct. 1034, 84 L.Ed. 1356. The problem is whether the National Labor Relations Act actually was so amended. The language added to the Board's appropriation bill for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1944, contains no words necessitating an amendatory construction, and neither does the language used in the bill preclude this construction. Therefore, we must look to the intent of Congress through the expressions of Congressmen and Senators in their consideration of the bill for a proper solution of the problem.¹

The debates on the floor of Congress reveal that the purpose to be achieved by the rider was the stabilization of labor conditions, particularly the elimination of jurisdictional disputes between unions (89 Cong.Rec. 6648, 6650, 7103). The Congressman who introduced the rider referred to remarked: "The committee feels that we can relieve this Board of some of its duties and responsibilities by placing a limitation on the appropriation which would relieve the Board of the necessity of having to consider complaint cases arising on agreements between management and labor where the agreements have been in existence for 3 months or longer" (89 Cong.Rec. 6046).

In the Senate the proviso was in charge of Senator McCarran, who during the first discussions in the Senate stated in open debate: "Let me say to the Senator that the object of the committee is to work out a comprehensive provision if it can be worked out. * * * but we do not in an appropriation bill propose to amend or alter or nullify a legislative act which has been passed by Congress and which had received Executive approval" (89 Cong.Rec. 6650). Answering the statement of another, Senator McCarran commented: "So far as the stabilization of labor conditions in the country at the present time is concerned, I think I speak for the entire committee when I say that we are in favor of doing anything and everything reasonable to stabilize conditions. But we cannot say to the Senator, and I will not say to him that we will go so far in dealing with the subject as to set aside an existing statute" (89 Cong.Rec. 6650).²

The matter went to conference, and thereafter the rider was presented in its final form. In connection with its consideration in the House Congressman Hare, who introduced the rider as an amendment to the appropriation bill, observed: "* * * There is no attempt to amend the National Labor Relations Act. This is only an attempt to have orderly procedure and orderly conduct * * *" (89 Cong. Rec. 7024). It was suggested that, since the real aim was to achieve the intervention of a reasonable length of time between employees' elections for a union to represent them, why not write into the enactment a definite time limitation. Mr. Hare answered: "This is an appropriation bill, and that would be legislation, which would be subject to a point of order. We are trying to accomplish the same thing by a limitation on the appropriation which is parliamentary procedure" (89 Cong.Rec. 7025).

Subsequently, in the Senate the meaning of the rider was clearly expressed by Senator McCarran: "* * * In other words, the National Labor Relations Board may not file complaint case after complaint case and keep a plant in turmoil when it has had notice of an election and an agreement under...