Holman v. Industrial Stamping and Manufacturing Co.

142 F. Supp. 215, 38 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2343, 1956 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3090
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Michigan
DecidedJune 29, 1956
Docket15068
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 142 F. Supp. 215 (Holman v. Industrial Stamping and Manufacturing Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Michigan primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Holman v. Industrial Stamping and Manufacturing Co., 142 F. Supp. 215, 38 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2343, 1956 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3090 (E.D. Mich. 1956).

Opinion

LEVIN, District Judge.

This action arises out of a labor-management dispute. Plaintiffs allege that defendants are depriving them of vested seniority rights and are discriminating against them as to these rights and other conditions of employment. The employer defendant filed a motion for summary judgment. The other defendants, hereinafter described, filed a motion to dismiss. Both motions are grounded upon the assertion that this. Court is without jurisdiction.

The allegations in this proceeding are practically the same as those in Holman v. Industrial Stamping & Mfg. Co., 1955, 344 Mich. 235, 74 N.W.2d 322, a suit dismissed by the Supreme Court of Michigan on jurisdictional grounds. Plaintiffs-now assert that their grievances may be adjudicated in the United States District. Court.

A summary of the facts alleged in the plaintiffs’ amended complaint and in the *217 defendants’ accompanying affidavits and other supporting papers follows:

Defendant, Industrial Stamping and Manufacturing Company, is a division of the Vinco Corporation and in the business of stamping and plating automobile parts. From May 1952 to September 1954 Industrial operated two plants in Detroit, Michigan — a stamping plant on Epworth Boulevard and a plating plant on Beaufait Street. The employees at the Epworth plant were members of Local 174, UAW-CIO arid those at the .Beaufait plant were members of Local 1, Metal Polishers, AFL. Both unions had collective bargaining agreements with Industrial which, in the absence of objections thereto, were automatically renewed from year to year.

On September 24, 1954 Industrial purchased from the Parker-Wolverine Division of the Udylite Corporation, one of its competitors, a plant on East Grand Boulevard, Detroit. This purchase included the land, buildings, machinery and inventory of the Boulevard plant, but Industrial did not assume any obligation with respect to the employment of the ■employees of the Boulevard plant. The Boulevard stamping employees were members of The Educational Society of America, (MESA). The Boulevard polishing and plating employees were members of Local 189, UAW-CIO. Local 6, MESA, its president, George White, and its secretary, Matt E. Smith, are the ■other defendants in this action.

When this sale was consummated, Parker-Wolverine discharged all its Boulevard plant employees, but advised •them that Industrial would rehire most of them. On or about September 27, 1954 Industrial did hire, upon individual application, all of Parker-Wolverine’s Boulevard employees who were employed on September 24, 1954. Industrial intended to merge all its manufacturing operations into the Boulevard plant by transferring employees and equipment from the Epworth and Beaufait plants.

On September 27, 1954 Industrial filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board asking that its employees be considered as orie unit for collective bargaining purposes and that an election be held to determine the collective bargaining representative of this unit. Locals 174 and 189, UAW-CIO filed similar petitions. The MESA and Local 1, Metal Polishers, AFL intervened in the Labor Board’s proceedings and objected to these petitions on the grourid that their existing contracts with Parker-Wolverine were a bar to a new election. On March 21, 1955 the Labor Board issued a “Decision and Direction of Election” overruling this objection because the merged plants represented a new operation and ordered an immediate election. The MESA won the subsequent representation election and was duly certified by the Labor Board as the sole collective bargaining representative of Industrial’s employees.

Thereafter, Local 6, MESA, began negotiating a collective bargaining agreement covering the terms of the employment of all the employees in the three-plant unit with particular emphasis on the adjustment of the seniority rights between Industrial’s original Epworth and Beaufait plant employees and the former Parker-Wolverine employees. During the course of these negotiations, Industrial laid off some of its employees because of production cutbacks. In doing so, Industrial followed a system of seniority apparently approved by the MESA which resulted in laying off both original Epworth-Beaufait employees and former Parker-Wolverine employees.

The original Epworth-Beaufait employees objected to this system claiming that their seniority with Industrial predated that of the former Parker-Wolverine employees; that the former Parker-Wolverine employees were “new employees” who did not become employees of Industrial until September 27, 1954. There were also other job classification adjustments which the Epworth-Beaufait employees claimed were to their detriment.

Subsequently, a group of the Epworth-Beaufait employees, who are the plaintiffs in this suit and who purport to rep *218 resent two hundred and twenty-three of the original Epwerth-Beaufait employees and “any other employees of the said company similarly situated,” filed unfair labor charges with the Detroit Regional Office of the National Labor Relations Board, alleging facts similar to those alleged in this action. Before the Regional Office took action on these charges, plaintiffs filed the complaint in the Circuit Court for the County of Wayne, Michigan, which on appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Court of Michigan. Holman v. Industrial Stamping & Mfg. Co., 1955, 344 Mich. 235, 74 N.W.2d 322.

During the pendency of the appeal in the Supreme Court of Michigan, the acting regional director of the Detroit Office of the National Labor Relations Board decided to refuse to issue a complaint against defendants on the ground that their acts did not constitute unfair labor practices within the meaning of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, 49 Stat. 449, 29 U.S.C.A. §§ 151-166, as amended by the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, 61 Stat. 136, 29 U.S. C.A. §§ 141-197. The acting regional director advised plaintiffs that they had the right to appeal, within ten days of receipt of his letter of refusal, to the Labor Board’s General Counsel in Washington, D. C. Plaintiffs did not appeal and are now seeking relief in this Court.

Plaintiffs’ allegation as to discrimination is based on their claim to certain seniority rights by virtue of collective bargaining agreements which were negotiated by Local 174, UAW-CIO and Local 1, Metal Polishers, Buffers, Platers and Helpers, AFL, prior to the designation of the MESA as plaintiffs’ collective bargaining representative, and which plaintiffs claim were automatically renewed and are still in effect.

Congress has vested jurisdiction to determine which activities are unfair labor practices within the meaning of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, in the National Labor Relations Board and not in the United States District Courts. Amazon Cotton Mill Co. v. Textile Workers Union of America, 4 Cir., 1948, 167 F.2d 183.

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142 F. Supp. 215, 38 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2343, 1956 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3090, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/holman-v-industrial-stamping-and-manufacturing-co-mied-1956.