Sarkes Tarzian, Inc. v. NLRB
| Decision Date | 06 April 1967 |
| Docket Number | No. 15757.,15757. |
| Citation | 374 F.2d 734 |
| Parties | SARKES TARZIAN, INC., Petitioner, v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Respondent. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
John F. McClure, Chicago, Ill., Joseph Alton Jenkins, Dallas, Tex., D. C. Duck, Douglas J. Hill, Cadick, Burns, Duck & Neighbours, Indianapolis, Ind., Joseph Alton Jenkins & Associates, Dallas, Tex., for petitioner.
Marcel Mallet-Prevost, Asst. Gen. Counsel, Charles N. Steele, Atty., Arnold Ordman, Gen. Counsel, Dominick L. Manoli, Associate Gen. Counsel, Allison W. Brown, Jr., Atty., N.L.R.B., Washington, D. C., for respondent.
Before CASTLE, SWYGERT, and CUMMINGS, Circuit Judges.
Sarkes Tarzian, Inc. petitions for review of an order of the National Labor Relations Board; the Board cross-petitions for enforcement of its order.1 The order resulted from the Board's findings that the company violated section 8(a) (1) and (3) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 158(a) (1) and (3), by certain conduct occurring both prior and subsequent to an employee representation election held at the company's plants in the Bloomington, Indiana area in January 1963.
The company manufactures electronic equipment, employing in excess of two thousand production and maintenance workers. During 1962 the union2 attempted to organize these employees. The union filed a representation petition in October 1962, and an election was held which the union lost. The union continued its organizational activities after the election. It also filed timely objections to the election results and charges of unfair labor practices against the company with the Board. The objections and charges were consolidated for hearing, but only the unfair labor practices found by the Board are before us in this review.3
The Board found that the company violated section 8(a) (1) by questioning employees about their membership in the union, by threatening employees with discharge and other reprisal for union activity, and by soliciting and encouraging employees to engage in surveillance of union activities and to participate in antiunion conduct. The Board also found that the company violated section 8(a) (3) as well as section 8(a) (1) by discharging employee Melville Wilber for his union membership and by refusing to rehire former employee Hattie Logie unless she accepted a job screening employment applicants concerning their union activities. The Board's order requires the company to desist from the unfair labor practices found and, affirmatively, to offer Wilber and Logie employment in their former (or substantially similar) jobs and to compensate them for wages lost because of the company's discriminatory conduct.
The company's principal attack upon the substantiality of the evidence to support the Board's findings is directed against the credibility resolutions of the Board's trial examiner. After considering the record as a whole we have concluded that it presents no exceptional circumstances which would make inapplicable the rule that the Board's action in crediting and discrediting witnesses will not ordinarily be disturbed on review. Our discussion of the evidence will be limited accordingly.
Violations of section 8(a) (1)
The Board's findings that the company committed several violations of section 8(a) (1) are fully supported by the record. A brief résumé of the company's course of conduct with respect to employees Leola Hostetter and Hattie Logie is sufficient to illustrate that the company engaged in proscribed activities in venting its hostility to union representation of its employees.
Leola Hostetter was active in an employee group opposing the union. She was asked by the plant manager to check a list of "group leaders" in the plant and to indicate those who were prounion and antiunion. Later, the company president's wife, who assumed an active role in management, told the plant manager that employees who were "disloyal" because of their union sympathies were not to be promoted to the position of group leader. Shortly before the election the company's general counsel asked Hostetter to listen to the conversation of the women employees in the restroom and to report back their feelings about the forthcoming election. Hostetter made many such reports to the general counsel and to Mrs. Tarzian, the president's wife. Mrs. Tarzian also requested Hostetter to give antiunion speeches at employee meetings arranged and conducted by the company's management. Hostetter made at least two such speeches. Finally, Hostetter was authorized to use materials from the company's supplies to make antiunion signs and badges. Just before the election the company's general counsel asked Hostetter to have some tags printed which read "Vote No" and to pass them out to the employees. Hostetter complied with the request and was later reimbursed by the general counsel for the printing charge.
Employee Hattie Logie was also enlisted in the company's campaign to defeat the union. Initially, Logie was a member of the union's organizing committee. After twice threatening Logie with discharge for absenteeism, her foreman suggested that the "company could do more for her than what the union was doing, and then the company would have no reason to fire her." Following this incident, Logie told an interviewer in the company's personnel office that she wanted to switch "from being for the union to being for the company." When this statement was repeated to the company president, Tarzian, he told Logie that he "would guard her night and day, if necessary, and he would spare no expense to guard her against the damn Communists." Thereafter, it was agreed that if Logie remained openly for the union but spied on its activities, the company would secure a job for her in Yakima, Washington, where she wanted to go. In addition, the company began making periodic payments to Logie, ranging from five to sixty dollars, which continued throughout the period of her collaboration with the company.
Logie's espionage activities, which began before the election, continued for approximately one year after the election. Under instructions...
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