J. P. Stevens & Co., Inc. v. National Labor Relations Board, Textile Workers Union of America, Afl-Cio v. National Labor Relations Board

388 F.2d 892, 67 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2145, 1967 U.S. App. LEXIS 4134
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
DecidedDecember 18, 1967
Docket11867_1
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 388 F.2d 892 (J. P. Stevens & Co., Inc. v. National Labor Relations Board, Textile Workers Union of America, Afl-Cio v. National Labor Relations Board) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
J. P. Stevens & Co., Inc. v. National Labor Relations Board, Textile Workers Union of America, Afl-Cio v. National Labor Relations Board, 388 F.2d 892, 67 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2145, 1967 U.S. App. LEXIS 4134 (4th Cir. 1967).

Opinion

ALBERT V. BRYAN, Circuit Judge:

The Textile Workers Union of America, AFL-CIO, the charging party before the National Labor Relations Board, seeks to intervene in cases Nos. 11,715, 11,718, together with No. 11,867, and moves for their transfer to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. We allow the interventions but deny the transfers.

Previously we have granted transfers in similar instances between the present parties, and a recital of the history of the present and past cases is helpful to an understanding of this case.

1. On August 31, 1967, the Board issued its decision and order in No. 11-CA-2697, et seq., 167 NLRB No. 24, now our No. 11,715 (Stevens III) 1 . It found that Stevens had engaged in various unfair labor practices and ordered the company to cease and desist therefrom and to take certain affirmative action. The Board also determined that the company did not engage in the other unfair labor practices, alleged in the union’s complaint, and accordingly ordered dismissal of them. In addition, the Board refused to issue a bargaining order as requested by the union. Also denied was the union’s request that the Board direct the company to grant the union access to the company’s parking lots, and the opportunity to reply to any antiunion speech the company may deliver to its employees, while assembled on company time and premises, during a 1-year period.

On September 1, 1967, the company filed a Petition for Review of the Board’s foregoing order of August 31, 1967 in this court as our No. 11,715 (Stevens III). On September 5, 1967, the union also filed a Petition for Review of the same Board order of August 31, 1967 in the Second Circuit, there designated as No. 31,666. The latter petition, deriving from the same order as is covered in No. 11,715, is docketed in this court as No. 11,867. Because of its origin, that proceeding is now included as a part of Stevens III. 2

2. An additional unfair labor practice proceeding, stemming from the same union campaign as generated the dispute just mentioned, resulted in another Board order also of August 31, 1967 against the company in ll-CA-3101, et seq., 167 NLRB No. 38 (Stevens IV). On September 5, 1967 the company filed a Petition for Review of that order in this court, our No. 11,718. No petition in that case has been filed by the union in the Second Circuit as the union has suffered no substantial aggrievement as a result of the Board’s order. The union, however, petitions to intervene and to file motion to transfer in 11,718.

*894 3. As the unfair labor practices occurred within this judicial circuit, we have jurisdiction to review the Board’s orders in Nos. 11,715, 11,867 and 11,718 (Stevens III and IV) under Section 10(f) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 160(f). Further, since not only the company but also the union “transacts business” within the Second Circuit, the Court of Appeals there also has jurisdiction under Section 10(f) to review these orders.

4. In its motions to transfer all these cases to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the union points out that these cases (Stevens III and IV) represent the third and fourth of a series and are, in effect, a continuation of prior Board proceedings against the company. In each of the two earlier cases (Stevens I and II) the company filed a Petition for Review in this court and the union filed such a petition in the Second Circuit. In Stevens I this court, on the motion of the union, transferred the proceedings (our Nos. 10,555 and 10,556) to the Second Circuit on the ground that the union’s petition was first filed there. The Second Circuit thereafter denied the company’s motion to retransfer the proceedings to this court; it rejected the company’s contention that this court was the more appropriate one to hear the matter. Subsequently, the Second Circuit enforced with certain modifications, the Board’s order in Stevens I. With regard to its earlier refusal to retransfer the proceeding, the Court remarked in J. P. Stevens & Co. v. NLRB, 380 F.2d 292, 303, fn. 16:

“We wish to make two things clear: (1) Now that we have completed a thorough review of the record, we are by no means sure that our earlier refusal to transfer was correct. The Company sought, inter alia, review of 71 discharges and an order extensively affecting it; the Union sought review of 6 discharges. All the discharges occurred in North and South Carolina, and the impact of the order, about which serious questions of policy are raised * * * will be directly felt in those states. The Board itself informed this court that it was in a ‘quandary’ as to the circuit in which to proceed; and (2), in any event, our prior order is not controlling with regard to the proper forum to review the further Board orders, actual or potential, referred to above.”

5. In the second case in this earlier series, our 11,246 (Stevens II) the company’s petition was filed here shortly before the union’s was lodged in the Second Circuit. The union urged us to transfer the cause to the Second Circuit, pointing out that the events at issue in Stevens II, like those in Stevens I, grew out of the union’s organizing campaign instituted in early 1963 at the company’s mills in North and South Carolina; that most of the plant locations in which the events occurred in Stevens II were the site of the events in Stevens I; that many of the supervisors and employees involved in Stevens II had also been involved in Stevens I; that some of the dischargees in Stevens II had been witnesses in Stevens I; that the nature of many of the violations was ° the same in the two cases; and, that the fact pattern in Stevens II was directly bound up with Stevens I. Granting the union’s motion, this court on April 10, 1967 transferred the proceedings, our No. 11,246, in Stevens II to the Second Circuit, noting that the case “involves the same background facts as the one heretofore transferred to the Second Circuit and, although review of a different Board order is requested, relates to a continuation of the controversy involved in the earlier case,” (our Nos. 10,555 and 10,556). Stevens II is now before the Second Circuit and was argued on October 10, 1967. In refusing to retransfer Stevens II to us, the Court observed: “[T]his does not imply that we will take a similar view with respect to any petitions not yet filed in this Court for enforcement or review of any further orders that may be made with respect to any alleged unfair labor practices of J. P. Stevens & Co. in the Fourth Circuit.”

6. In the instant motions for transfer of Nos. 11,715, 11,867 (Stevens III) and No. 11,718 (Stevens IV) the union re *895 iterates the contentions it advanced when it successfully moved this court to transfer Stevens II to the Second Circuit. The company, on the other hand, calls the court’s attention to the fact that it had first initiated the instant proceeding in this court, that it has 43 plants and 28,000 employees in North and South Carolina and that the NLRB hearings were conducted in that area. It was also pointed out that different trial examiners handled each of the recent Board decisions, our Nos.

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388 F.2d 892, 67 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2145, 1967 U.S. App. LEXIS 4134, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/j-p-stevens-co-inc-v-national-labor-relations-board-textile-ca4-1967.