Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. v. National Labor R. Board

• Decision Date: 12 August 1940
• Docket Number: No. 449-451.,449-451.
• Citation: 113 F.2d 698
• Parties: PITTSBURGH PLATE GLASS CO. et al. v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

113 F.2d 698 (1940)

PITTSBURGH PLATE GLASS CO. et al. v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD.¹

Nos. 449-451.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

July 23, 1940.

Rehearing Denied August 12, 1940.

J. W. McAfee, of St. Louis, Mo. (Igoe, Carroll, Keefe & McAfee, of St. Louis, Mo., and Leland Hazard and Joseph T. Owens, both of Kansas City, Mo., on the brief), for petitioner Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co.

Fred J. Hoffmeister, of St. Louis, Mo., for petitioner Crystal City Glass Workers' Union.

Laurence A. Knapp, Asst. Gen. Counsel, National Labor Relations Board, of Washington, D. C. (Charles Fahy, Gen. Counsel, National Labor Relations Board, Robert B. Watts, Associated Gen. Counsel, National Labor Relations Board, and Mortimer B. Wolf and Owsley Vose, Attys. National Labor Relations Board, all of Washington, D. C., on the brief), for respondent.

Before GARDNER and SANBORN, Circuit Judges, and COLLET, District Judge.

SANBORN, Circuit Judge.

The Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, a Pennsylvania corporation, and the Crystal City Glass Workers' Union, an unaffiliated labor organization of the employees of the Company at its plant in Crystal City, Missouri, have petitioned for a review of an order of the National Labor Relations Board, the effect of which order is to require the Company to recognize its production and maintenance employees (with certain exceptions) at its six flat glass plants as the appropriate unit for collective bargaining; to require the Company to bargain collectively with the Federation of Flat Glass Workers of America as the representative of all such employees; and to forbid the Company to bargain with the representative of its employees at its Crystal City plant.

The main question presented is whether the Board's determination that the designated employees at all of the flat glass plants of the Company constituted an appropriate unit for collective bargaining, is arbitrary and capricious and therefore void.

The petitioners contend that the Board, in selecting the employees at the Company's six flat glass plants as an appropriate bargaining unit, did so arbitrarily and in disregard of the wishes of some 1500 of the 1800 employees of the Company at Crystal City, Missouri; that the Board's reasons for determining that the employees at all of the plants of the Company were an appropriate unit for purposes of collective bargaining are specious and unsupported by evidence; that the Board excluded evidence as to the wishes of the employees at the Crystal City plant, in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; that the history of the collective bargaining which had been carried on within the unit designated did not justify the Board's decision; that its decision is inconsistent with its rulings in other cases; and that Section 9(b) of the National Labor Relations Act § 9(b), 49 Stat. 453; 29 U.S.C. § 159(b), 29 U.S.C. A. § 159(b) is an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power.

The Company is engaged in the manufacture, sale and distribution, among other things, of various types of flat glass and is a large employer of labor in connection therewith. It has, in all, six plants where such glass is made: two in Pennsylvania, and one in each of the following states: Ohio, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Missouri (the Crystal City plant). A majority of all of its employees in the flat glass division of its business and a majority of all of its employees in each of its flat glass plants, excluding the plant at Crystal City, belonged to the Federation of Flat Glass Workers of America, a labor union affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations. That union has been the representative of the flat glass workers in the plants, excepting those at Crystal City, for purposes of collective bargaining. The employees of the Crystal City plant had an independent labor organization known as the Crystal City Glass Workers' Union, which the Company had recognized as their bargaining representative. This was the situation when the Federation initiated, through the National Labor Relations Board, a proceeding which resulted in a determination by the Board that the Company should withdraw its recognition of the Crystal City Glass Workers' Union as the representative of its employees at Crystal City, on the ground that the union was Company-dominated and supported; a further proceeding which resulted in a determination by the Board that the appropriate unit for collective bargaining was the maintenance and production forces at all six glass plants of the Company, and that the Federation was the collective bargaining representative for all such employees in that unit; and a final proceeding which resulted in a determination by the Board that the Company, in refusing to accept the Board's determination as to the appropriate bargaining unit and in failing to recognize and bargain with the Federation as the representative of all employees in such unit, was guilty of an unfair labor practice.

The Crystal City plant is some 600 miles away from any other plant of the Company. The manufacturing methods employed in producing flat glass at that plant differ in some respects from those employed at other plants of the Company. The Crystal City plant has its own superintendent, who employs and discharges those who work in the plant. The business of the Company at that plant is subject to a large measure of local control. The various plants of the Company do not exchange employees. All employees are, however, those of the Company, are paid by it and are subject to its control; all are engaged in furtherance of the same general enterprise — the manufacture of flat glass — and all have been treated substantially alike so far as wages, hours and conditions of employment are concerned. The flat glass division of the Company is a combination of plants, rather than an aggregation of plants. The Board, under the facts and circumstances disclosed by the evidence, properly might have determined that the employees at the Crystal City plant were a homogeneous group whose wishes as to representation for the purposes of collective bargaining should be respected and who constituted an appropriate unit for collective bargaining; but we think that it was not compelled to do so.

It must be remembered that, within the limits of the jurisdiction conferred upon it, the power of a court or an administrative board to decide questions is not confined to deciding them correctly. Thompson v. Terminal Shares, 8 Cir., 89 F.2d 652, 655. A jury may decide incorrectly issues of fact, but if its verdict is within the evidence its mistakes of fact cannot be corrected on review. Elzig v. Gudwangen, 8 Cir., 91 F.2d 434, 444. And the determination by a legislative body of a debatable question which it has power to decide is not subject to judicial reexamination. United States v. Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144, 154, 58 S.Ct. 778, 82 L. Ed. 1234. The determination of certain matters was, under the National Labor Relations Act, entrusted by Congress to the National Labor Relations Board alone, and the courts were denied power to substitute their judgments with respect to such matters for those of the Board. National Labor Relations Board v. Waterman Steamship Co., 309 U.S. 206, 226, 60 S.Ct. 493, 84 L.Ed. 704. "A controversy like this always calls for fresh reminder that courts must not substitute their notions of expediency and fairness for those which have guided the agencies to whom the formulation and execution of policy have been entrusted." Railroad...