NLRB v. United Wire and Supply Corporation, 6023.

• Decision Date: 31 December 1962
• Docket Number: No. 6023.,6023.
• Citation: 312 F.2d 11
• Parties: NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. UNITED WIRE AND SUPPLY CORPORATION, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

312 F.2d 11 (1962)

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. UNITED WIRE AND SUPPLY CORPORATION, Respondent.

No. 6023.

United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.

December 31, 1962.

Joseph C. Thackery, Washington, D. C., Atty., with whom Stuart Rothman, Gen. Counsel, Dominick L. Manoli, Assoc. Gen. Counsel, Marcel Mallet-Prevost, Asst. Gen. Counsel, and Melvin Pollack, Atty., were on brief, for petitioner.

John Gorham, Providence, R. I., with whom Sayles Gorham and Gorham & Gorham, Providence, R. I., were on brief, for respondent.

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

WOODBURY, Chief Judge.

Acting upon a complaint based upon a charge filed by United Steelworkers of America AFL-CIO, a trial examiner for the National Labor Relations Board, following routine procedures under § 10(b) of the Act, filed an intermediate report in which, after discussing the evidence at length, he came to the conclusion that the respondent had engaged and was engaging in unfair labor practices within the meaning of § 8(a) (1) of the Act by interfering with, restraining and coercing its employees in the exercise of their rights under § 7 of the Act. Specifically the trial examiner found that the respondent through its supervisory personnel had kept certain employees under surveillance for their union activities and had created and meant to create the "impression" among its employees that their union activities were under surveillance, that it had prevented its employees from engaging in union solicitation or discussion on its premises during their free or non-working time, i. e. during lunch time, that it had interrogated employees as to their union activities and threatened certain of them with reprisals therefor and that it had limited or discontinued the normal duties of certain employees because of their union activities or sympathies.¹ The Board adopted the above findings of the trial examiner, affirmed his rulings, and entered the order which it asks this court to enforce directing respondent to cease and desist from the unfair labor practices found and to post a notice to that effect in its plant. The only part of the order which invites our consideration is the part which requires the respondent to cease and desist from creating the "impression" of keeping its employees' union activities under surveillance.

Aside from its challenge to the portion of the Board's order referred to above, the respondent's contentions are that the Board's findings are not supported by substantial evidence in the record considered as a whole and that the Board erred in failing specifically to dismiss an allegation in General Counsel's complaint which the trial examiner found was not supported by the evidence.

It is true, as the respondent contends and the trial examiner conceded, that all of the respondent's supervisory personnel from top to bottom had risen from the ranks and had worked for years in close association with rank and file employees so that naturally there was a close relationship between all ranks and a natural tendency to a freer interchange of views, news, information and ideas than would exist in a plant where there was a more sharp and distinct line of separation between supervisory and production employees. And it is also true that the respondent had a long standing practice of giving complete and detailed information to its production employees with respect to company matters which might affect their interest and that no such employee had ever been discharged for union activities. Indeed, it appears that for years the respondent company had functioned internally on a friendly and informal basis, that sharp distinctions in rank had never been drawn, that some five or six years before the events under consideration the Union had lost a Board election by a substantial margin and that only some ten or a dozen employees out of about 600 were active advocates of unionization when the acts charged by the Union occurred. Viewed against this background the acts found by the Board to have constituted unfair labor practices might well seem trivial or ambiguous. However, the respondent's chief executive, in numerous bulletins distributed to employees and in notices posted on the plant marquee and on its bulletin board, expressed strong anti-union sentiment and heaped opprobrium upon local officials of the Union, calling them "outside agitators" and upon pro-union employees, calling them...