National Labor Relations Board v. Reynolds Corporation, 11422.
| Decision Date | 27 May 1946 |
| Docket Number | No. 11422.,11422. |
| Parties | NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. REYNOLDS CORPORATION. REYNOLDS CORPORATION v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
A. Norman Somers, Asst. Gen. Counsel, National Labor Relations Board, and Malcolm F. Halliday, Associate Gen. Counsel, N.L.R.B., both of Washington, D. C., and Paul E. Kuelthau, Regional Atty., N.L. R.B., of Atlanta, Ga., for petitioner.
Elmer M. Cunningham and Walter L. Rice, both of Richmond, Va., for respondent.
Before SIBLEY, HUTCHESON, and WALLER, Circuit Judges.
The National Labor Relations Board has petitioned for a decree enforcing and the Reynolds Corporation asks for one setting aside or modifying an order of the Board dated May 26, 1945, which requires that the Corporation cease and desist from interfering with labor organizations and the bargaining rights of its employees, and take affirmative action by withholding recognition of Workers Welfare Association and the Grievance Committee, by reinstating two discharged employees and making whole as to lost wages them and three others, and by posting for sixty days a prescribed promissory notice in the Navy Ordnance Plant at Milledgeville, Georgia, where during 1944 the wrongful labor practices are found to have occurred.
Besides contentions usual in such cases two are made which seem new. The first is that, since the Board found the Reynolds Corporation was engaged at Milledgeville in the manufacture of ordnance for the United States Government under a contract with the Navy Department, the plant, facilities, equipment, raw materials and finished products being at all times the property of the Navy Department and the Corporation "being compensated by the Navy Department on a cost-plus-fixed-fee basis", the Board has no jurisdiction, or at most a limited jurisdiction to be exercised in a way different from the ordinary. The Board, we take it, did not rest its finding that labor disturbance at this plant would substantially "affect commerce" on the idea that the making and transporting by and for the United States of ammunition to be at once used by the Navy in the prosecution of a war dangerous to the very life of the government is commerce. The prosecution of war rises in nature and importance above mere commerce, and things which interfere with the war effort may more appropriately be dealt with by agencies of the government other than the Board. The Board considered that the commerce which might be affected was the importation of the raw material for making the ammunition. This, however, was imported in the name of and bought with the money of the United States, and as its property, and the question is whether, under these peculiar circumstances, this is the commerce which the Board is commissioned to protect, or whether its commercial aspect is not swallowed up in the war effort which is not commerce. Jurisdiction of the Board is further questioned on the ground that in the statutes authorizing the building and operation of the emergency war plants like that at Milledgeville, it was provided that contracts and arrangements might be made by the Army and Navy Departments without respect to existing laws; and that these Departments in 1942, after conference with the heads of the largest labor unions of the country, including the president of the Union here mainly involved, had formally announced and published a labor policy under which such plants would be operated by contractors, a copy of which was given the Reynolds Corporation and also filed with the Board; and by this document much control over labor conditions in the plants was retained, and in Paragraphs 2 and 3 a control over recognition of an employees' bargaining agent was expressly reserved, and provision for handling grievances and disputes pending the determination of such bargaining agent under approval of the representative of the Army or Navy in charge of operations of the plant was expressly reserved; and by paragraph 8 was also reserved approval of all pay roll costs and proposed wage scales at the plants. The Navy, it is contended, had its representative at the Milledgeville Ordnance Plant, and he originated and participated in some of the things which have been condemned by the Board. It is argued that under the contract made with the Reynolds Corporation to operate this plant, and the reservations as to control of labor matters, the Corporation was the employer of the labor in only a technical sense, and the United States was the substantial employer, solely interested in the plant and its product, paying all bills, present and directing operations, and that by the express words of the National Labor Relations Act its provisions do not apply to the United States as an employer. 29 U.S.C.A. §...
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National Labor Relations Bd. v. Reynolds Corp., 11422.
...for us to pass upon the question of jurisdiction. 1 For fuller information see our former decision in this case: N.L.R.B. v. Reynolds Corporation, 5 Cir., 155 F.2d 679. ...