NLRB v. Champa Linen Service Company

• Decision Date: 31 October 1963
• Docket Number: No. 7338.,7338.
• Citation: 324 F.2d 28
• Parties: NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. CHAMPA LINEN SERVICE COMPANY, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit

324 F.2d 28 (1963)

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. CHAMPA LINEN SERVICE COMPANY, Respondent.

No. 7338.

United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit.

October 31, 1963.

Elliott Moore, Washington, D. C. (Arnold Ordman, Dominick L. Manoli, Marcel Mallet-Prevost and Seymour Strongin, Washington, D. C., on the brief), for petitioner.

John K. Pickens, Washington, D. C. (Dawson, Griffin, Pickens & Riddell, Washington, D. C., of counsel, on the brief), for respondent.

Before LEWIS, HILL and SETH, Circuit Judges.

LEWIS, Circuit Judge.

The National Labor Relations Board seeks enforcement of its order requiring respondent to cease and desist from specified activities found by the Board to have constituted a violation of the employees' right to self organization protected under Sec. 8(a) (1) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended. The order includes the requirement of posting the customary notices and is premised upon a conclusion made by the trial examiner and adopted by the Board that respondent had engaged in the unlawful surveillance of and had interfered with the distribution of union literature during an organizational effort conducted by the complaining unions. Respondent resists enforcement upon claim that the record as a whole does not support the Board's action and that specific error is apparent in the trial examiner's finding of management responsibility for the conduct of two young sons of the general manager, in a limitation imposed upon counsel's right of cross examination, and, finally, in the Board's adoption of the trial examiner's report without giving proper consideration to the exceptions filed by respondent. There is no jurisdictional question.

On June 20, 1962, a joint effort was begun by representatives of Local 304, Dry Cleaning and Laundry Workers Union, and Local 905, Laundry, Linen and Dry Cleaning Drivers (Teamsters), to organize both the inside and outside employees at respondent's plant in Denver, Colorado. On that date, and on six subsequent days, union organizers distributed handbills to the employees at points on the public sidewalk in the vicinity of the plant entrances. A series of incidents occurred on these occasions which forms the basis of the Board's finding of a violation of Sec. 8(a) (1).

Witnesses for the Board testified that during the periods of handbilling management locked the front door of the plant, closed the garage doors, and physically blocked a door designated as the "employees' entrance." Such testimony, if credible, clearly leads to the inference that a deliberate effort was made to force the employees to use unusual methods of exit so as to divert them from areas of union handbilling. Board witnesses also recounted incidents where Jerold Zimmerman, the fifteen-year-old son of respondent's general manager and then an employee of the company, had grabbed handbills from employees saying, "Give me that handbill. I want that handbill. You don't want it." Jerold's grandfather, who was president of the company, was also described as taking a handbill from a truck driver saying, "Give me that handbill."

There can be no doubt but that the deliberate efforts of management to prevent its employees from receiving or keeping union handbills is coercive in nature and if substantiated by competent evidence is a proper basis for finding a violation of Sec. 8(a) (1). Respondent, however, presses the credibility of its own witnesses who denied outright the occurrence of certain incidents and urges that the explanations given by management of the closed doors, i. e., that one door was broken and that the garage doors were closed to prevent theft of valuable linens, constitute an...