NLRB v. Davidson Rubber Company

• Decision Date: 13 July 1962
• Docket Number: No. 5948.,5948.
• Citation: 305 F.2d 166
• Parties: NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. DAVIDSON RUBBER COMPANY, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

305 F.2d 166 (1962)

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. DAVIDSON RUBBER COMPANY, Respondent.

No. 5948.

United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.

July 13, 1962.

James C. Paras, Attorney, Washington, D. C., with whom Stuart Rothman, General Counsel, Dominick L. Manoli, Associate General Counsel, Marcel Mallet-Prevost, Assistant General Counsel, and Robert Sewell, Attorney, Washington, D. C., were on brief, for petitioner.

Julius Kirle, Boston, Mass., for respondent.

Before WOODBURY, Chief Judge, and HARTIGAN and ALDRICH, Circuit Judges.

HARTIGAN, Circuit Judge.

This is a petition by the National Labor Relations Board for enforcement of its order issued on November 7, 1961, against respondent Davidson Rubber Company, based on the Board's findings that respondent had violated Section 8 (a) (3) and (1) of the Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 158(a) (1, 3) by discharging an employee because of participation in union activities and had violated Section 8(a) (1) of the Act by surveying a union meeting and interrogating employees about letters which the employees had received from the union. The Board's order requires respondent to cease and desist from the violations found and from in any manner interfering with its employees' statutory rights. The order also directs the respondent to reinstate the discharged employee with back pay and to post appropriate notices.

The facts giving rise to the Board's decision and order are as follows. The Davidson Rubber Company, a Massachusetts corporation, (hereinafter called the "Company") is engaged in the manufacture of foam rubber products, including arm rests for automobiles, at its two plants in Dover, New Hampshire. It employs approximately 200 workers. In December, 1960 the United Rubber, Cork, Linoleum and Plastic Workers of America, AFL-CIO, (hereinafter called the "Union") began organizational activities among the Company's employees. It appears that a certain Doris Griffin, a Davidson employee, was a conspicuous and active union advocate during the early stages of the organizational efforts. According to the testimony of William H. Stapleton, a union field representative, Miss Griffin was the union's "key person" in the plant.

The record indicates that in addition to generally "talking up" the advantages of union membership among the employees of the Company, she distributed union membership application cards in the lunch room during her break period. On January 27, 1961, approximately ten minutes before the close of the working day, Miss Griffin was told by her supervisor that she would have to be "let go." This discharge forms the basis of the asserted Section 8(a) (3) and (1) violation.

The alleged violations of Section 8(a) (1) stem from the following incidents. On January 17, 1961, a union meeting was held at the home of Patricia March, a former Davidson employee who had been previously discharged by the Company. Stapleton and several union supporters, including Doris Griffin, were present at this meeting. The house adjacent to the March residence is occupied by a Robert Knight, a Company supervisor. A common driveway, approximately ten feet in width, separates the two houses. During the union meeting Knight was seen observing the activities in the March residence from his home. The Board found this to be improper surveillance.

On or about February 17, 1961 union literature and application cards were mailed to the employees at their homes. On the following day the head of the Company's urethane department, George C. Exas, approached employee Armand A. Croteau at his machine and inquired as to whether Croteau had received the union letter and card. When Croteau said that he had, Exas directed him to "pass it in." Exas had already collected several union letters and the record indicates that he ultimately obtained 1015 letters from employees. Croteau did not have the letter with him. Thereupon Exas asked that he bring it in the following day. The next day Croteau brought his letter, but without the envelope in which it came. Upon Exas' request, Croteau signed his name on the back of the letter and gave it to Exas. This incident generated the "coercion" phase of the Section 8(a) (1) violation.

We shall consider these alleged violations seriatim. Doris Griffin worked for the Company from July 27, 1960, until her discharge on January 27, 1961. She was initially hired as a quality control inspector in the urethane department and performed this function for the first five or six weeks of her employ. Following this assignment she was given a number of other tasks by the Company including the training of new inspectors. Around the middle of January she returned to her original job as an inspector on one of the automobile arm rest production lines. Miss Griffin was the last of nine employees along the line and it was her duty "to see that the arm rests were properly cleaned, inspected and packed." Another employee was responsible for the initial cleaning of the arm rests, but Miss Griffin possessed cleaning supplies in the event that the arm rests required further cleaning.

During the seven months of her employment she had never been reprimanded or critized by her supervisor in any manner. On the contrary, she testified that she had been complimented on her work by department head Exas. The Company's personnel manager, Floyd McDowell, testified that there was nothing in Miss Griffin's employment records which reflected adversely on the caliber of her work.¹ During the course of her employment her pay had advanced from $1.18 to $1.42 an hour by means of the Company's program for periodic pay raises. The record indicates that she almost invariably met or exceeded her production quotas and, on occasion, received additional incentive pay for this performance.

The Company's seniority policy, as articulated in its Employees' Manual, is to lay off employees "according to their plantwide seniority in their classification, except in unusually extenuating circumstances or when their skill or ability is not equal to that of junior employees." According to the manual and established company practice, inspectors had the additional right to "exercise" their seniority in the general factory classification by "bumping" general factory employees with less seniority. At the time that Miss Griffin was discharged the Company retained three inspectors and some 75 to 100 factory employees, all of whom had less seniority than she had. Under Company policy, these junior employees should have been laid off first.²

The credited testimony³ regarding the circumstances surrounding Miss Griffin's discharge shows the following. On Friday, January 27, 1961, at about 4:50 in the afternoon, her supervisor, Leonard Hamilton, informed her that he would "have to let her go." When she inquired as to the reason for the discharge, Hamilton said he did not know, that he was only instructed to tell her that she was "let go." Miss Griffin pointed out that there were other inspectors with less seniority than her, but Hamilton was still unable to give her any specific reason for her layoff.

On January 30, the Monday following her layoff, Miss Griffin telephoned McDowell, the personnel manager, inquiring as to the cause of her discharge...