National Labor Relations Board v. May Department Stores Co.

154 F.2d 533, 17 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 985, 1946 U.S. App. LEXIS 3941
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedApril 11, 1946
Docket13094
StatusPublished
Cited by40 cases

This text of 154 F.2d 533 (National Labor Relations Board v. May Department Stores Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth 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. May Department Stores Co., 154 F.2d 533, 17 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 985, 1946 U.S. App. LEXIS 3941 (8th Cir. 1946).

Opinion

JOHNSEN, Circuit Judge.

The National Labor Relations Board has petitioned for enforcement of its order, 59 N.L.R.B. 976, against May Department Stores Company, on unfair labor practices at the Company’s department store and warehouses in the city of St. Louis. 1 The Company asks that the order be set aside.

The Board found that the Company had been guilty of unfair labor practices under section 8(1) and (3) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 158(1) and (3), in that (a) it was maintaining in force an unreasonable no-solicitation rule prohibiting any employee from soliciting another to join any organization (and so a labor union), anywhere on the Company’s premises, at any time; (b) it had in 12 other specific respects 2 further interfered with, restrained or coerced its employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed to them under the Act; (c) it also had made a discriminatory application of its no-solicitation rule against employees who had solicited memberships for a C.I.O. 3 union (the union which filed the present charges) in that it had ignored similar violations of the rule by an employee who had made solicitations on behalf of a rival A. F. of L. 4 union; and finally (d) it had made improper lay-offs and discharges of 7 C.I.O. union members through its discriminatory application of the no-solicitation rule, and in addition had wrongfully laid off or discharged 4 other employees for having joined the union.

The Board ordered the Company to cease and desist from the found and all other unfair labor practices under the Act; to rescind its rule against solicitation insofar as it prohibited union solicitation off the selling floor during nonworking hours; to reinstate the 11 employees discriminatorily laid off or discharged, with back pay; and to post appropriate compliance notices.

The Company’s contentions, insofar as it is necessary to discuss them here, are *536 in substance (1) that the Board was not warranted in declaring the Company’s no-solicitation rule unreasonable and improper; (2) that the modification in the rule ordered by the Board is so vague and unworkable as to be invalid; (3) that there is no substantial evidence to support any of the Board’s findings of unfair labor practices; (4) that the proceedings before the Trial Examiner and, the Board’s adoption of them amounted to a denial of fair hearing and due process; and (5) that the - cease and desist order is in any event too broad.

On its first contention, the Company argues that the no-solicitation rule represented the considered judgment of management on the restrictions necessary to the efficient conduct of its business, arrived at and formulated long previously and not in connection with any question of employee-organization ; that the other department stores in S.t. Louis and such stores in other cities had similar no-solicitation rules; that labor itself had recognized such a rule .as being valid — an A. F. of L. union having accepted and bound itself by the rule in an agreement made with the Company covering a small number of craft employees in the St. Louis store, and the C. I.O. union here involved having similarly, in collective bargaining agreements with other department stores throughout the country, accepted and bound itself by such a rule; 5 and that the Board itself had theretofore upheld the validity of such a rule in Matter of Marshall Field & Company, 34 N.L.R.B. 1.

We cannot, however, declare these considerations determinative on the Board in its task of balancing the right of management to conduct its business with efficiency and discipline in our free-enterprise system and the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively in a furthering of national industrial peace. In dealing with the various situations arising under the Act, the Board manifestly is entitled to establish general guides and principles, subject only to the limitation of appropriateness to effectuate the Act’s purposes and of reasonableness in relation to all the rights involved. Cf. Wallace Corporation v. National Labor Relations Board, 323 U.S. 248, 253-255, 65 S.Ct. 238, 241, 89 L.Ed. 216. The Board has established such guides and principles in dealing with no-solicitation rules, and their appropriateness and reasonableness have been recognized by the Supreme Court in Republic Aviation Corporation v. National Labor Relations Board, 324 U.S. 793, 801-803, 65 S.Ct. 982, 987, 988, 89 L.Ed. 1372, 157 A.L.R. 1081.

These guides and principles have perhaps most comprehensively be'en stated by the Board in Matter of Peyton Packing Company, 49 N.L.R.B. 828, 843, 844, as follows: “The Act, of course, does not prevent an employer from making and enforcing reasonable rules covering the conduct of employees on company time. Working time is for work. It is therefore within the province of an employer to promulgate and enforce a rule prohibiting union solicitation during working hours. Such a rule must be presumed to be valid in the absence of evidence that it was. adopted for a discriminatory purpose. It is no less true that time outside working hours, whether before or after work, or during luncheon or rest periods, is an employee’s time to use as he wishes without unreasonable restraint, although the employee is on company property. It is. therefore not within the province of an employer to promulgate and enforce a rule prohibiting union solicitation by an employee outside of working hours, although on company property. Such a rule must he presumed to be an unreasonable impediment to self-organization and therefore discriminatory in the absence of evidence-that special circumstances make the rule necessary in order to maintain production or discipline.” See also Matter of United States Cartridge Company, 47 N.L.R.B. 896, 897, 898; Matter of Scullin Steel Company, 49 N.L.R.B. 405, 411; Matter of Republic Aviation Corporation, 51 N.L.R.B. 1186, 1187; Matter of LeTourneau Company of Georgia, 54 N.L.R.B. 1253, 1260.

For the Board to have tested the no-solicitation rule in this case on the basis of the presumptions and requirements of proof which it has - thus established was therefore neither improper nor unreasonable. And, on the record, we are required to hold that the Board was warranted in *537 declaring, 59 N.L.R.B. at page 981: “The respondent has adduced no convincing evidence that such a blanket injunction [no union solicitation on any part of the premises at any time] bears reasonable relation to the efficient operation of its business. However, we do see reasonable ground for prohibiting union solicitation at all times on the selling floor. Even though both the solicitor and the person being solicited are on their lunch hour, for example, the solicitation, if. carried on on the selling floor, where customers are normally present, might conceivably be disruptive of the respondent’s business.

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Bluebook (online)
154 F.2d 533, 17 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 985, 1946 U.S. App. LEXIS 3941, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/national-labor-relations-board-v-may-department-stores-co-ca8-1946.