Local 346 International Leather Goods Union v. Compton

292 F.2d 313
CourtCourt of Appeals for the First Circuit
DecidedJuly 19, 1961
DocketNos. 5717, 5718
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 292 F.2d 313 (Local 346 International Leather Goods Union v. Compton) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the First Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Local 346 International Leather Goods Union v. Compton, 292 F.2d 313 (1st Cir. 1961).

Opinion

WOODBURY, Chief Judge.

This is an appeal from an order of the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico entered on petition of the local Regional Director of the National Labor Relations Board enjoining and restraining the respondents-appellants, an international union and its local affiliate, from picketing the plants of Baronet of Puerto Rico, Inc., and Esco Corp. in Vega Baja and Morovis, Puerto Rico, pending final disposition by the Board of a charge filed with it by the corporations alleging that the respondent-appellant unions are and have been engaging in acts and conduct in violation of § 8(b) (7) (C) of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, as amended by § 704 of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, 73 Stat. 544; 29 U.S.C.A. § 158(b) (7) (C), quoted in the margin.1 The basic question presented is whether the evidence supports the District Court’s conclusion that picketing at the corporations’ plants in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, in April and May, 1960, was in violation of § 8(b) (7) of the Act, that is, whether on the evidence it could properly be found that “an object” of that picketing was “forcing or requiring” the corporations to recognize or their employees to “accept or select” the respondent-unions as the collective bargaining representative oí the employees.

The facts in chronological order as found by the court below, as conceded by the parties, and as established by clear, convincing and for the most part uncontradicted evidence, are as follows:

Baronet of Puerto Rico, Inc., and Esco Corp., have adjoining plants in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, where they engage in the business of manufacturing small leather goods. Esco has a similar plant in Morovis about twenty miles away. Although separately incorporated, Baronet and Esco are commonly owned, managed and controlled and have the same labor policy. Concededly they constitute a single employer for the purposes of the Act and therefore can appropriately and conveniently be referred to hereinafter in the singular as the employer. The same interests are also engaged in the same line of business in Reading, Pennsylvania, under the name of Baronet Leather Goods Corporation.

For some time prior to April, 1960, the appellant International Union had been seeking recognition as the bargaining representative of the workers at the Reading, Pennsylvania, plant, and during that month it extended its activities to the employer’s plants in Puerto Rico. On April 18 International’s president [315]*315sent one Carlton Steger to Puerto Rico to represent the Union and to assist two Puerto Ricans, Dionisia Carillo and Eulalio Marcano, who had recently been appointed to the Union’s staff. Steger described his function in Puerto Rico visa-vis the two new local staff members as; “ * * * to help them to prepare organizational activities in numerous shops in Puerto Rico” falling within the jurisdiction of the Union, specifically including those of the employer and “to acquaint them with organizational methods and techniques, to spend some time with them and to teach them what was expected of them as organizers of our Union.” A day or two after Steger’s arrival in Puerto Rico he went to Vega Baja with the two new members of the Union’s staff to meet the employer’s workers in the highway outside the plants before and after work and at the noon hour and to distribute union circulars and membership cards. Apparently at about this time the local affiliate Union was organized.

On Thursday, April 21, two events of significance occurred, one in Reading, Pennsylvania, and the other in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. On that day the International Union distributed handbills at the employer’s Reading plant announcing that it had established a permanent office in Puerto Rico, that its organizing staff was “now concentrating its efforts on your sister shops in Vega Baja and Morovis,” that “International organizer Carlton Steger has been assigned to Puerto Rico to assist in coordinating our campaign to Unionize the Baronet empire,” and: “The Union does not intend to permit Baronet to continue to play one shop against each other. We intend to negotiate decent contracts for all three plants in Reading, Vega Baja and Morovis, so that all workers are protected and to stop any further possibility of closing here — there—or anywhere!”2 And in the evening of the same day, Thursday, April 21, the Union held an organizational meeting of the employer’s workers in Vega Baja.

On the next day, Friday, April 22, the Union distributed leaflets at the employer’s Morovis plant captioned in translation from Spanish: “Become Union Members Now,” to which were attached applications for membership in appellant International Union. Also on April 22 the employer laid off 33 women employees in Vega Baja, ostensibly for lack of work, but, according to a charge subsequently filed by the Unions, in reprisal for attending the union meeting the night before.

The next significant date is the following Tuesday, April 26, when picketing began at the employer’s plants in Vega Baja. Some of the signs carried by the pickets protested the layoffs which had occurred the previous Friday. Other signs, however, read: “Demandamos Reconocimiento de la Union” and “Solicitamos El Reconocimiento de la Union” in translation: “We Demand Recognition of the Union and We Request Recognition of the Union.” These latter signs were carried by the pickets for at least a day or two, perhaps until April 29 when Steger, who with Mr. Marcano had been in daily attendance at the scene of the strike showing the sign carriers how to picket, ordered them removed.3 On April [316]*31629 persons identified with the strike in Vega Baja distributed leaflets at the employer’s Morovis plant entitled in translation “Baronet Staggers,” extolling the advantage of unionization and urging membership in the International Union.

On Monday, May 2, the Unions by their own admission openly assumed control and guidance of the strike but assert that they did so only for the purpose of supporting the strikers demand for reinstatement of the 33 women laid off on April 22. On that day signs ordered by Steger on April 30 appeared on the picket line bearing the legend in translation: “International Leather Goods Union AFL-CIO Backs This Strike.”

On May 4, Senator Hipólito Marcano, billed in advance in a leaflet over the names of Steger and Marcano as a “workers’ attorney,” and President of the AFL-CIO in Puerto Rico and Senator of Puerto Rico, spoke to strikers in front of the employer’s Vega Baja plants. The leaflet giving notice of his speech announced in capital letters that Senator Marcano would explain to the workers at both plants “what the union means and the rights granted to strikers by the federal and state laws,” and in smaller print: “We are winning the strike. No fellow worker is to be afraid in this great fight for the benefit of us all. Our Union as well as the organized labor movement in Puerto Rico of AFL-CIO is giving you 100% backing.”

There is credible evidence that from the beginning the picketing was accompanied by some disturbance, noise and confusion and that on more than one occasion truck drivers employed by third persons were deterred by mass picketing, perhaps for fear of violence but that is not entirely clear, from making deliveries to the employer’s Vega Baja plants.

On May 5 violence broke out.

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Bluebook (online)
292 F.2d 313, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/local-346-international-leather-goods-union-v-compton-ca1-1961.