Kayser-Roth Hosiery Company, Inc. v. National Labor Relations Board, and Textile Workers Union of America, Afl-Cio, Intervenor

447 F.2d 396, 78 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2130, 1971 U.S. App. LEXIS 8282
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedAugust 31, 1971
Docket71-1010
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 447 F.2d 396 (Kayser-Roth Hosiery Company, Inc. v. National Labor Relations Board, and Textile Workers Union of America, Afl-Cio, Intervenor) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Kayser-Roth Hosiery Company, Inc. v. National Labor Relations Board, and Textile Workers Union of America, Afl-Cio, Intervenor, 447 F.2d 396, 78 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2130, 1971 U.S. App. LEXIS 8282 (6th Cir. 1971).

Opinion

JOHN W. PECK, Circuit Judge.

Petitioner Kayser-Roth Hosiery Company, Inc. (hereinafter “Company”) has filed this action pursuant to Section 10(f) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 151 et seq., for review of an order of the National Labor Relations Board (hereinafter “Board”) ruling that the Company violated Sections 8(a) (1), (a) (3) and (a) (5) of the Act. The Board has filed a cross-application with this Court for enforcement of the order and the charging party in the Board proceedings, the Textile Workers Union of America (hereinafter “Union”) has filed a brief as intervenor.

We are principally concerned with three findings of the Board against the Company. (1) That the Company wrongfully refused to reinstate 6 striking employees; (2) that it delayed the reinstatement of many of the strikers while employees hired during the strike were retained; and (3) that the Company refused to furnish the Union with a departmental seniority list after the strike in violation of the Act.

We must note at the outset that the Company has a history of resistence to collective bargaining and that we have already ruled in Kayser-Roth Hosiery Co. v. N.L.R.B., 430 F.2d 701 (6th Cir. 1970) that the Company was guilty of unfair labor practices by failing to bargain in good faith with the Union prior to the calling of the strike in question. All the events of the unfair labor practice strike occurred at the Company’s plant in Dayton, Tennessee, where it is engaged in the business of manufacturing and selling ladies’ hosiery and chil-drens’ socks.

The pertinent facts are as follows. The unfair labor practice strike began on May 6, 1968, and lasted until December 2, 1968. During this period, some of the striking employees engaged in considerable violence with many vehicles being overturned, many more being impeded when attempting to enter or leave the Company premises or being denied completely the right to enter or leave, and there were incidents of egg and rock throwing resulting in much property damage and personal injury. On the third day of the strike, an injunction was entered by the local Chancery Court of the State of Tennessee against further picket line violence. Nevertheless, the violence continued.

Meanwhile, the Company attempted to continue operations by retaining nonstriking employees and hiring new employees while the strike was in progress. During the first week in June, 1968, the Company began offering bus service to transport the non-striking employees to the plant. The strikers, however, succeeded in debilitating this service by jamming aboard the bus at various locations and riding it across the picket lines.

As an example of some of the violence which took place, the Plant Manager testified to an incident he witnessed in which a group of strikers overturned a car filled with ladies who had been working in the plant. He testified that while the ladies were attempting to escape, the participants hurled stones at the car, breaking windows. The women were eventually able to extricate themselves through the broken windshield and when the Plant Manager tried to assist them, he was prevented from doing so by strikers throwing stones at him.

Finally, on June 24, 1968, because of the violence committed during the strike, the plant was left vacant and did not resume production until some date in September, 1968. When the strike ended on December 2, 1968, the Company was faced with various problems of rehabilitating its machinery and equipment, and this prevented it from calling back immediately all of the strikers who wished to be reinstated to employment. *399 Only the first shift was working on December 2, and then later in December, the second shift began working. On February 10, 1969, the third shift commenced working. A total of 233 strikers had signed to be reinstated on December 2, but for some it took more than five months before they were called back to work.

Before turning to the merits of the Board’s findings and conclusions herein, we consider first an argument made by the Company that during the proceedings before the Trial Examiner, the Board’s Examiner unlawfully revoked subpoenas duces tecum which the Company had requested for the production of evidence in the possession of two Board agents who had investigated the cases for the General Counsel. The Company argues that in so doing, the Board suppressed evidence in its files which would have disproved the complaint against the Company.

The subpoenas in question called for the production of “all affidavits, written statements, or documentary evidence received by [the two Board agents] in investigation of” the cases involving the Company. Such requests are extremely broad on their face, and the Company makes no showing in its argument before us as to how it was prejudiced by denial of possession of the evidence. In view of the very lengthy and comprehensive record established before the Board concerning the events of the strike and the activities of the strikers, we can find no such prejudice, and accordingly, the Company’s argument must fail. See N.L.R.B. v. Vapor Blast Mfg. Co., 287 F.2d 402 (7th Cir. 1961); Raser Tanning Co. v. N.L.R.B., 276 F.2d 80 (6th Cir.1960).

We next consider the Board’s findings that 6 of the strikers were unjustly denied reinstatement by the Company. The original list of employees denied reinstatement by the Company totaled 26. However, the General Counsel challenged the denial of reinstatement as to only 18 of the strikers in the proceedings before the Trial Examiner. We reverse the Board’s order as to three of these employees, Helen Brady, Frances Miller Pendleton and Lucille Pendleton.

Central to our conclusion that their misconduct warranted the Company in denying reinstatement to them are the findings of the Trial Examiner that they were participants in boarding the Company bus. We do not think the Act protects strikers who engage in planned concerted activities to deny to an employer its right to transport non-striking employees across the picket line. Here this conduct contributed to effect a denial of the Company’s protected right to continue plant operations as effectively as if the employees had been physically blocked at the picket line. The Trial Examiner found that the strikers, by riding the bus, inhibited the Company’s use of the bus and accomplished this to the extent that for a period of time the Company discontinued using it. Employees wishing to work are entitled to unmolested ingress to and egress from the Company property and the Company, itself, has the right to make proper use of its property during a strike. N.L.R. B. v. Longview Furniture Co., 206 F.2d 274 (4th Cir.1953).

Helen Brady was also identified by the Plant Manager as telling him and a group of supervisory personnel that they could enter the plant but if anyone else tried to come in the strikers were going to “whip some —” The evidence further supported a finding that she was involved in incidents of blocking people on the picket line as they tried to enter the plant.

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447 F.2d 396, 78 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2130, 1971 U.S. App. LEXIS 8282, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/kayser-roth-hosiery-company-inc-v-national-labor-relations-board-and-ca6-1971.