XI. PUBLICATIONS DIVISION A. PUBLIC RELATIONS PROBLEMS Employers engaged in interstate business, together with their employees, are the persons affected by the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act. It was important at the start that the act, and the methods adopted by the Board to administer it, be well known to both. Labor's cooperation in giving the act a chance to prove its worth could be taken for granted, since the statute was passed specifically to support workers in the exercise of rights long acknowledged, yet long frustrated by the practices of many employers. It could not be expected that industry would welcome the act with open arms. Time and patience are required to make the collective bargaining relationship between an employer and his organized workers fruitful for both. The employer must give up cherished habits of dictating terms of employment before he can expect his employees to take a reasonable and thoughtful attitude toward mutuality of interest in the enterprise in which they are both engaged. And, because some employers gain temporary advantage by suppressing organization among their workers and cutting wages, it is also true that no employer can have full enjoyment of that stability which working agreements provide until the majority of his competitor employers give acceptance to the procedure of collective bargaining. The act, then, called upon industry to display a degree of longrange statesmanship. The Seventy-third Congress spoke the public mind when it declared in favor of equality of bargaining power between employers and employees. But to make that equality a reality, instead of a pious declaration of principle, Congress wrote into the act a means of eliminating practices by which industry in the past has deliberately frustrated collective bargaining. However, floods of expensive propaganda were poured out to defeat the National Labor Relations Act when it was proposed in 1934, and again in 1935 when Congress finally adopted the present act. Most active in the movement was the National Association of Manufacturers, which urged opposition to the act in tens of thousands of printed circulars, advising that the law was unconstitutional and stating that its aims were inimical to industry. In the category of obstructionists may also be placed the Liberty League, an association of advocates for industry, which also took it upon itself to declare the act unconstitutional, and made available a sample brief which later found Nation-wide use by less experienced lawyers grateful for this technical reinforcement. In their professional capacity a few legal advisers to the Manufacturer's Association and to the Liberty League actually did the thinking on this important legislation for the Nation's most representative employer group. Yet their advice failed completely to explore whether it might not be wise to encourage worker organizations, to the end that employer-employee relations might be placed on a known contractual basis. On the contrary, this very probable avenue to the solution of industrial disputes-costing the Nation hundreds of millions a year-was completely shelved in favor of a virtual incitation. to industry to defy the act. The situation was ironical in that industry generally concedes the worth of collective bargaining as an abstract conception. In fact, while showing utmost reluctance to being subjected to Board inquiries, no important industrialist has as yet admitted that he has employed the unfair labor practices which Congress found were likely to frustrate collective bargaining. B. BOARD POLICY IN ITS PUBLIC RELATIONS A quasi-judicial agency, beginning operations in an atmosphere of hostility from a powerful economic group has unique problems in its public relationships. Anxious as it may be that its aims be understood, it cannot with propriety plead its cases in the newspapers, nor even answer the challenges of its opponents. In the long run it must entrust its good name to a record of diligent administration of the law. In facing this problem the Board had some guidance from the former National Labor Relations Board's experience with it. Before accepting its first case, the new Board adopted these points of public relations policy: Since a charge of unfair labor practice represents an unsupported allegation, it would be unfair to the employer to pubÎicize it. If investigation finds evidence to support the charges, the Board may make its complaint public. Hearings shall be public. Decisions of the Board will necessarily be too lengthy and too technical for general distribution. The findings of fact and conclusions will therefore need to be digested for public release. The recommendations of a trial examiner may be made public if filed as an intermediate report with the Board. The above covers all the stages in the conduct of a Board case. It will be noticed that during the investigation period the Board's agents refrain from trying the case in the newspapers. No merit attaches to this continence, for a contrary action would violate the Board's position as a fact-finding, impartial body. Moreover, the results have been good-664 of the 1,068 cases filed with the Board and its regional offices (through June 30, 1936) have been closed during this first stage before formal action was taken. In six additional cases, the intermediate report found no violation. While it is no more than fair to employers to withhold publicity about labor disputes during the time the Board's agents are checking the truth of charges, this lack of newspaper coverage obviously has kept the public in ignorance of how effectively the Board has served the community by preventing disputes from developing into strikes. Of such valuable negotiation the public hears little. What it does who firmly oppose the holding of elections and fact-finding hearings by the Board. Most news articles and comment on the Board have related to cases where employers challenge the Board's jurisdiction and fight its activities at every turn. While freely admitting the right of industry to seek a legal clarification of its position under the act, the effect on public opinion of industry's widespread intransigeance has been to create the impression that the Board's activities are characteristically punitive, rather than leading constructively toward industrial peace. No agency primarily concerned with forbidding can entirely escape the appearance of being a negative instrument. In its first years the Federal Trade Commission (established to forbid unfair trade practices) suffered a like characterization and was subjected to like attacks. C. ACTIVITIES OF PUBLICATIONS DIVISION In facing its public-relations problems the Board has resisted the temptation to answer the clamor raised against the act, and has confined itself solely to the distribution of facts about its operations. A publications division has served as a channel of all information. This has relieved the Board members and attorneys from interruption and has placed responsibility for material given out into the hands of one person. The principal sources of inquiry about the Board's activities are: Newspapers, labor organizations, industry (to some extent), other Government agencies, legislators, research workers, students, libraries, trade journals, etc. The status of Board cases, the contents of the examiner's reports, the texts of Board decisions, and the course of litigation cases, are the subjects of constant inquiry by telephone and personal interview. The director of publications prepares for mimeograph release the following type of information: Digests of Board decisions. Digests of Board orders for election. Announcements of consent elections to be held, and, later, their results. Digests of complaints (in important cases). A pamphlet, the National Labor Relations Board and Its Work has been prepared in order to satisfy many requests for a concise handling of the subject. A mailing list is maintained for those who request regular receipt of material issued, including the monthly summary of Board activities. No names are placed on the list except by such specific request. Under these circumstances the list, on July 1, 1936, was as follows: Receiving releases (includes newspapers, labor organizations, trade journals, students, etc.). 835 Regional offices_. 21 Receiving decisions (includes some on the general mailing list plus lawyers, industries, etc.) – 290 Total____ 1, 146 At intervals the list is checked to cull out those who fail to reply affirmatively to a letter asking whether the material is still wanted. XII. PRINCIPLES ESTABLISHED The principles established by the Board in its decisions have been developed in a great variety of situations, and, once developed, have been used for the development of new principles as new situations have been presented to the Board. In this chapter, an attempt has been made to set forth all of the important principles which the Board has enunciated in the different types of cases.1 For convenience, this chapter has been divided into seven sections: A. Interference, restraint, and coercion in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 7 of the act: This section deals with cases arising under section 8, subdivision (1), of the act. B. Discrimination for the purpose of encouraging or discouraging membership in a labor organization: This section deals with cases arising under section 8, subdivision (3), of the act. C. Collective bargaining: This section deals with cases arising under section 8, subdivision (5), of the act. D. Domination and interference with the formation or administration of a labor organization and contribution of financial or other support to it: This section deals with cases arising under section 8, subdivision (2), of the act. E. Investigation and certification of representatives: This section deals with proceedings arising under section 9 (c) of the act. Such proceedings normally include the taking of secret ballots to determine representatives for the purpose of collective bargaining. F. The unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining: This section is devoted to a discussion of the principles developed by the Board pursuant to its power under section 9 (b) of the act. The question of the appropriate unit is an issue in cases arising both under section 8, subdivision (5), and section 9 (c) of the act. G. Administrative remedies: This section deals with the remedies which the Board has applied, pursuant to section 10 (c) of the act, in cases in which it has found that employers have engaged in unfair labor practices. A. INTERFERENCE, RESTRAINT, AND COERCION IN THE EXERCISE OF THE RIGHTS GUARANTEED IN SECTION 7 OF THE ACT Section 7 of the act provides that Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in concerted activities, for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection. 1 For a complete index to the decisions, the reader is referred to the index to the published volume of decisions of the Board to July 1, 1936. In this chapter, this volume is cited as "1 N. L. R. B.", even though the first volume of the published decisions of the old National Labor Relations Board has, in the past, been similarly cited. The name of a case is cited in full the first time it is discussed in the body of each section of this chapter. Section 8, subdivision (1), of the act makes it an unfair labor practice for an employer to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 7. Anyone familiar with the history of the efforts of American workers to organize in unions of their own choice knows that the tactics used by employers to bar effective organization takes many forms. The cases decided by the Board merely confirm this. At the outset it should be explained that the Board has held that a violation by an employer of any of the other four subdivisions of section 8 of the act is, by the same token, a violation of section 8, subdivision (1). Such a conclusion is too obvious to require explanation. In fact, almost all of the cases in which the Board has found a violation of section 8, subdivision (1), are cases in which the principal offense charged fell within some other subdivision of section 8. The explanation for this is, apparently, that even though an employer may be engaging in antiunion activities in violation of section 8, subdivision (1), unions do not seek protection of the act until such activities take such drastic form as bring them within the provisions of some other subdivision, as, for example, the discriminatory discharge of union members (which comes within subdivision (3)), the domination of or interference with the formation or administration of a labor organization (which comes within subdivision (2)), or a refusal to bargain collectively (which comes within subdivision (5)). Consequently, in reading this section it should be borne in mind that in almost all of the cases discussed the activities of the employers went beyond those set forth, resulting in violations of other subdivisions of section 8 of the act, and are therefore also discussed in other sections of this chapter. However, they are set forth here because the Board has also held that they constitute violations of section 8, subdivision (1), and because they involve elements which cannot be discussed appropriately in the other sections. In view of the attention attracted by the activity of the La Follette subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor,1 it is not inappropriate to begin the discussion of interference with the right to organize with cases wherein the evidence disclosed that the employer engaged in some form of espionage. Because of the notoriety being given to the activities of the professional labor spy, it may be forgotten that an employer who wishes to spy on the union activities of his employees does not always hire outside detectives to do so. The Board's cases show that frequently employers and officials of corporations are not above engaging personally in the crasser and more primitive forms of this activity. (Matter of Friedman-Harry Marks Clothing Company, Inc., and Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, where the president and superintendent of the company secretly observed two union meetings to see who attended; Matter of Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines, Inc., Greyhound Management Company, Corporations, and Local Division No. 1063 of the Amalgamated Association of Street, Electri 2 |