NLRB v. International Shoe Corp. of Puerto Rico, 6599 Supp.

• Decision Date: 11 March 1970
• Docket Number: No. 6599 Supp.,6599 Supp.
• Citation: 423 F.2d 503
• Parties: NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. INTERNATIONAL SHOE CORPORATION OF PUERTO RICO, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

423 F.2d 503 (1970)

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. INTERNATIONAL SHOE CORPORATION OF PUERTO RICO, Respondent.

No. 6599 Supp.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

March 11, 1970.

Joseph C. Thackery, Atty., with whom Arnold Ordman, Gen. Counsel, Dominick L. Manoli, Associate Gen. Counsel, Marcel Mallet-Prevost, Asst. Gen. Counsel, and Paul Elkind, Attorney, were on brief, for petitioner.

Juan F. Doval, Hato Rey, P. R., with whom George L. Weasler, Santurce, P. R., and Baragano, Trias, Saldana & Francis, Hato Rey, P. R., were on brief, for respondent.

Before ALDRICH, Chief Judge, McENTEE and COFFIN, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM.

This is a petition brought by the National Labor Relations Board against the International Shoe Corporation of Puerto Rico seeking an adjudication that the Corporation and its President be held in contempt of this court's judgment of March 8, 1966. N.L.R.B. v. International Shoe Corporation of Puerto Rico, 357 F.2d 330 (1st Cir. 1966). That judgment, enforcing the Board's order, based upon a premature cessation of bargaining in 1964, required the Corporation to bargain in good faith with Sindicato Obrero Insular (Union or S.O.I.), the certified bargaining representative of employees at the Corporation's Manati plant.

The Board's petition for adjudication in contempt was filed on March 15, 1968, and a Special Master was appointed to take evidence and submit proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law. He concluded that "The totality of respondent's conduct since March 8, 1966, compels the conclusion that respondent has engaged in fruitless discussions with no sincere attempt to arrive at a collective bargaining agreement, in defiance of this Court's decree."

The Special Master's recommendation that respondent corporation be adjudged in civil contempt and his proposed conclusions of law and findings of fact are abundantly supported by clear and convincing evidence. Rarely does a case in this half of the twentieth century reveal such a persistent, resourceful, and blatant course of anti-bargaining conduct on the part of a company and its chief executive officer as this.

The conduct included in part simple unavailability of the Company's key decision maker for substantial periods of time; the submission of a proposed contract of farcical flimsiness; reintroduction of provisions in new proposals which the Company had earlier agreed to eliminate; the offer of money, office, and help in organizing other companies in an effort to buy off the Union's negotiator; the attempt to induce this negotiator to form an independent union; the attempt to bring about the affiliation of S.O.I. with another union, which had previously offered the Company "a very easy contract"; pressure on the Union to change negotiators, substituting an old friend of the President, whom the President said he was giving $8000 for a contract with a no-strike clause; the termination of negotiations with S.O.I. because of the filing of another union for certification, with a simultaneous refusal to bargain with the other union because of the court decree ordering the Company to bargain with S.O.I.; and, at a late date, conditioning final resolution of the contract negotiations on S.O.I.'s withdrawing its charges which had led to the present civil contempt proceeding.

While this conduct, spread over a two year period following our judgment, is far from ambiguous, any possible doubt of the intent of the Company and its President evaporates in the wake of a number of statements whose only merit is candor. Counsel for the Company requested, at the outset of negotiations, an "easy contract" because of the weak position of the Union. At a later date, he stated, in response to a Union spokesman's comment that the Company was disobeying our judgment, that the parties "could be negotiating in good faith for a lifetime". These statements obviously reflected accurately the dim view taken by his client both...