National Labor Relations Board v. East Texas Pulp & Paper Company

346 F.2d 686, 59 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2471, 1965 U.S. App. LEXIS 5315
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedJune 8, 1965
Docket21291
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 346 F.2d 686 (National Labor Relations Board v. East Texas Pulp & Paper Company) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
National Labor Relations Board v. East Texas Pulp & Paper Company, 346 F.2d 686, 59 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2471, 1965 U.S. App. LEXIS 5315 (5th Cir. 1965).

Opinion

HANNAY, District Judge:

This is a petition for enforcement of an NLRB order against Respondent. The Board found that Respondent violated Section 8(a) (1) by threats of reprisal, actual reprisals, and promises of benefit —all designed to induce former employees to withdraw contractual grievances and unfair labor practice charges filed against the Respondent. There is testimony to the effect that four of the employees were told by the plant manager, 0. Ray Brown, hereinafter referred to as Brown, that he would give them recommendations for employment elsewhere, since they had been laid off at his plant, only if they dropped their grievances, but would not do so otherwise. There is evidence that he had given such recommendations to two other employees after they had dropped their grievances and that he had actually withheld recommendations for two others as long as the grievances were pending. There is also testimony that the company president told an employee that he (the employee) should drop his grievance if he ever “wanted to work for East Texas or any other big company.” The Board found that such conduct interfered with the processing of grievances and that since the right to file and process grievances under a collective bargaining contract is guaranteed by section 7 of the Act, the Respondent's conduct violated 8 (a) (1).

Respondent contends that it did not refuse to give these former employees recommendations because of the filing of grievances, but solely because such recommendations could be used against Respondent in an arbitration proceeding arising from such grievances. The Trial Examiner found, and the Board agreed, that Respondent used the threat of “no recommendation” to induce the employees *688 to drop their grievances. This finding is supported by substantial evidence.

The Board also found that Respondent induced two of its former employees to withdraw unfair labor practice charges filed against it by threatening to discharge any employees who might be reinstated as the result of the Board proceedings, and threatening to interfere in the organizational rights of its employees. There is testimony that Brown told one employee that if he would take his name off the charge filed with the Board he (the employee) would be given a better job after the dispute “blew over.” There is also evidence that Brown stated that if any of the employees were reinstated as a result of the NLRB proceedings, the Company would go on firing them and that the employees so reinstated would be “dead ducks” as “big companies work together.” Brown also told one employee that there would be no union in the company’s plant other than the Pulp and Sulphite Union. The Board found the foregoing conduct induced two employees to remove their names from the unfair labor practice charges filed with the Board. This finding was based on substantial evidence.

The Respondent argues that they only discussed the merits of the charge with the employees and that they made no threats or promises incident thereto. The Board found to the contrary and there is substantial evidence to support the Board’s findings.

The major part of Respondent’s brief is devoted to an attack on the Trial Examiner’s evidentiary rulings and credibility determinations. Respondent alleges that the Trial Examiner’s rulings on evidence relevant to this proceeding and his findings as to the credibility of the witnesses were biased in favor of the employees and prejudicial to Respondent and denied Respondent a fair hearing and due process of law. The Respondent details a series of evidentiary rulings which it claims shows bias on the part of the Trial Examiner and points out that he determined to reject the testimony of Respondent’s executives to the extent that it is inconsistent with the testimony of the other witnesses. In his Intermediate Report the Trial Examiner defends this blanket discrediting of Respondent’s witnesses on the grounds that their recollection of events was less accurate because they sat in on so many meetings with employees that they could not remember exactly what transpired at the particular meetings in question and on the basis of inconsistent testimony. As to the evidentiary rulings the Board argues that such rulings were proper and that the excluded evidence (which Respondent says should have been admitted) is either irrelevant to the issues raised by the Board’s decision or inadmissible under rules of evidence. The Board contends that much of the evidence was designed to refute the General Counsel’s original theory of an 8(a) (4) violation and that since both the Trial Examiner and the Board rejected that theory, the exclusion of such evidence was not prejudicial to Respondent. The credibility questions and evidentiary rulings alone are not sufficient to show the Trial Examiner was so biased as to deny a fair hearing to Respondent. In that connection see opinion of Judge Wisdom in N. L. R. B. v. Dixie Gas, Inc., 5 Cir., 323 F.2d 433, on page 435:

“The Board accepted the Examiner’s credibility findings.

“The Supreme Court has recently reiterated the point that the Trial Examiner ‘sees the witnesses and hears them testify, while the Board and the reviewing court look only at cold records’. N. L. R. B. v. Walton Manufacturing Co., 1962, 369 U.S. 404, 82 S.Ct. 853, 7 L.Ed.2d 829.”

And on page 437 of 323 F.2d:

“Thus, in N. L. R. B. v. Pittsburgh S. S. Co., 1951, 337 U.S. 656, 69 S.Ct. 1283, 93 L.Ed. 1602, the Supreme Court upheld the Board against the contention that it showed bias to credit all of the general counsel’s witnesses and to discredit all of the respondent’s witnesses, but the Court excepted from the general rule of deference to credibility findings cred *689 ited testimony which ‘carries its own death wound’ and discredited testimony which ‘carries its own irrefutable truth’.” . (Emphasis added)

In N. L. R. B. v. Pittsburgh S. S. Co., 337 U.S. 656, at page 659, 69 S.Ct. 1283, page 1285, it was held:

“Thus, in the determination of litigated facts, the testimony of one who has been found unreliable as to one issue may properly be accorded little weight as to the next. Accordingly, total rejection of an opposed view cannot of itself impugn the integrity or competence of a trier of fact. The gist of the matter has been put well by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, speaking through Judge Hutcheson, in granting enforcement of an NLRB order:
‘The fact alone * * * of which Respondent makes so much, that Examiner and Board uniformly credited the Board’s witnesses and as uniformly discredited those of the Respondent, though the Board’s witnesses were few and the Respondent’s witnesses were many, would not furnish a basis for a finding by us that such a bias or partiality existed and therefore the hearings were unfair. Unless the credited evidence * * *

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346 F.2d 686, 59 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2471, 1965 U.S. App. LEXIS 5315, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/national-labor-relations-board-v-east-texas-pulp-paper-company-ca5-1965.