NLRB v. Fleetwood Trailer Co.

• Decision Date: 08 September 1966
• Docket Number: No. 20511.,20511.
• Citation: 366 F.2d 126
• Parties: NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. FLEETWOOD TRAILER CO., Inc., Respondent.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

366 F.2d 126 (1966)

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. FLEETWOOD TRAILER CO., Inc., Respondent.

No. 20511.

United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.

September 8, 1966.

Arnold Ordman, Gen. Counsel, Dominick L. Manoli, Assoc. Gen. Counsel, Marcel Mallet-Prevost, Asst. Gen. Counsel, Elliott Moore, Daniel Harrington, Attys., N.L.R.B., Washington, D. C., for petitioner.

Hugh J. Scallon, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Santa Ana, Cal., for respondent.

Before POPE, BARNES and ELY, Circuit Judges.

BARNES, Circuit Judge:

This is a petition for the enforcement of an order of the National Labor Relations Board. It had jurisdiction of the unfair labor practice complaint alleged in this case pursuant to 29 U.S.C. § 160 (a) (b). This court has jurisdiction of this petition pursuant to 29 U.S.C. § 160(e).

Respondent is engaged in the manufacture of house trailers at Riverside, California. Respondent's employees are represented by the San Bernardino-Riverside Counties District Council of Carpenters, United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, AFL-CIO. At the beginning of August 1964, respondent employed approximately one hundred and ten persons and was producing twenty mobile homes per week.

In late 1964 respondent was engaged in negotiations for a collective bargaining agreement with the union. On August 6, 1964, a number of respondent's production workers went on strike in support of their contract demands. Approximately one-half of respondent's employees either did not go on strike, or crossed the picket lines to return to work within a few days. Respondent immediately began to hire replacements for those who did strike and by August 18, 1964 had hired twenty-one new employees.

On August 18, 1964, the union agreed to end the strike and to accept respondent's last contract offer. The parties agreed that the strikers would not be put on a preferential hiring list but would be considered on a nondiscriminatory basis if they applied for employment. At the conclusion of the strike respondent did not return to its full pre-strike production force but determined to continue production with the crew of seventy-one which it had at the end of the strike. The six employees or former employees who are the complaining parties in these proceedings applied for employment on August 20, 1964. Between October 8 and October 16, 1964, respondent hired six new employees and passed over the strikers in doing so. The strikers were not rehired until December 1964.

On September 10, 1964 (before any hiring or any "passing over"), the complaining former employees filed a complaint with the NLRB. An amended complaint was filed in November 1964. Hearings were had before Trial Examiner Wallace E. Royster on February 17, 1965, and on April 16, 1965 the trial examiner filed his decision. In it he found that respondent had committed an unfair labor practice by treating its former employees as applicants for new employment without any employee status, in violation of section 8(a) (1) and (3) of the National Labor Relations Act. On June 24, 1965, a three member panel of the NLRB (Fanning, Brown, Jenkins) adopted the decision and recommendations of the trial examiner. This petition by the NLRB for enforcement of its order followed.

We first note that it is undisputed that there was in this case no conscious intent on the part of the employer to discriminate. The trial examiner so found, and the Board affirmed. With this in mind, we turn to specific facts.

The main issue at dispute in these proceedings is whether or not the complaining strikers had been replaced or their jobs absorbed while they were on strike. If their jobs had not been filled or eliminated due to a decrease in production, the strikers were entitled to be treated as employees and to be given preference over other job applicants.

Section 8(a) (1) and (3) of the NLRA which respondent is alleged to have violated in hiring new applicants before rehiring the six complaining strikers provides:

"§ 8. Unfair Labor Practices.

(a) It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer —

(1) to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 7;

* * * * * *

(3) by discrimination in regard to hire or tenure of employment or any term or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization: * * *"

The leading case interpreting this section held that the employer has a duty to reinstate those strikers who had not not been permanently replaced, but need not remove replacements to reinstate the strikers. N. L. R. B. v. Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co., 304 U.S. 333, 58 S.Ct. 904, 82 L.Ed. 1381 (1938).

The disagreement in the present proceedings centers on whether the jobs of the six complaining strikers had been filled so as to remove the requirement on respondent to rehire them on a preferential basis. Respondent contends that it cut back its labor force and production plans during and following the strike, and that as a result, the jobs of the strikers were either abolished or absorbed by other employees; and that such abolition or absorption amounts to replacement. Petitioner, on the other hand, contends that respondent intended to return to pre-strike production levels as soon as possible and that an employee who has been laid off retains his status as an employee and his right to preferential rehiring as long as he has a reasonable expectation of recall within the foreseeable future.

Respondent's contention that the abolition or absorption of a job is equivalent to replacement is a correct statement of the law. Atlas Storage Division, 112 NLRB 1175 (1955), enforced sub nom. Chauffeurs, Team. & H., etc. v. N. L. R. B., 233 F.2d 233 (7th Cir. 1956). It remains to be seen whether respondent's factual view of the case, or that of petitioner, is supportable. But before passing to an examination of that question, we first desire to deal with petitioner's legal contention that an employee who has been laid off retains his status as an employee and his right to preferential rehiring as long as he has a reasonable expectation of recall to work within the foreseeable future. In support of this position petitioner cites Servel, Inc., 65 NLRB 1067 (1946); Hubbard & Co., 45 NLRB 1 (1942); Drayer-Hanson Incorporated, 86 NLRB 111 (1949); Glenn I. Martin Co., 74 NLRB 546 (1947); General Motors Corp., 113 NLRB 876 (1955); Lima Hamilton Corp., 87 NLRB 455 (1949). All of these cases deal with the question of whether employees who had been laid off, but who (it was contended) would probably be recalled in the foreseeable future, should be permitted to vote in a representation election. To our knowledge the National Labor Relations Board has never applied this "reasonable expectation of recall within the foreseeable future" as a test to determine whether or not a striker has been replaced. And we are not inclined to do so. Many of these cases make it clear that the policy is based on the theory that employees who are quite certain to be recalled should be given a voice in selecting the bargaining agent who will represent them. Such an element does not here exist. An examination of the facts of the individual case seems preferable where the question is one of whether an employer has committed an unfair labor practice.

Turning to the factual merits of respondent's contention that the jobs of the complaining strikers had been absorbed or abolished as a result of reduced production following the strike, we are met at the outset with the existence of a Board decision laying down the rule that the question of whether or not a striker has been replaced is to be determined on the date on which the striker makes his offer to return to work. Brown and Root, Inc., etc., 132 NLRB 486, 493 (1961). The trial examiner referred to this case and held that it was not controlling, without discussing why it was not controlling. (CT 13.) We cannot agree with the trial examiner. We find it difficult to approve the Board's cavalier use of precedent when it desires to follow it, and the disregard of it when it wishes to achieve a different result. On the basis of the Board's own policy as stated in Brown and Root, supra, we hold that whether or not a vacancy exists must be determined at the time the strikers apply for work after the strike.

Tested by this standard the record in these proceedings is devoid of any evidence to establish that the jobs of the six complaining strikers were still available on August 20, 1964, when they applied for reinstatement. The respondent had made a decision during the strike to curtail production. The work force at the end of the strike numbered seventy-one employees, and despite the testimony of the administrative vice-president of respondent that the longest it would take to secure any supplies would be thirty days (CT 73), respondent did not hire any additional employees until October 8, 1964, at a point when its labor force had fallen to sixty-eight employees — three less than at the end of the strike on August 18.

Petitioner's only support for its argument that the jobs had not been filled, abolished, or absorbed with responses by officers of respondent to questions of the representative of the General Counsel to the effect that respondent intended "at sometime in the future" to increase production to twenty units per week:

"Q But it was your intention to go back to twenty a week at some future time?

"A Yes." (RT 72.)

"Q And you did intend at all times to get production as quick as possible up to 20 trailers a week?

"A Correct." (RT 111.)

But such an intent directed to the future is not determinative of the question of whether or not the jobs had been abolished, tested as of the date when the strikers applied for work, two days after the strike ended. Whatever its intent, respondent did not increase its work force until two months after the strike ended, and did not attain the...