National Labor Relations Board v. Quality Art Novelty Co.

127 F.2d 903, 10 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 655, 1942 U.S. App. LEXIS 4019
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Second Circuit
DecidedMay 22, 1942
DocketNo. 198
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 127 F.2d 903 (National Labor Relations Board v. Quality Art Novelty Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Second 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. Quality Art Novelty Co., 127 F.2d 903, 10 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 655, 1942 U.S. App. LEXIS 4019 (2d Cir. 1942).

Opinion

CHASE, Circuit Judge.

The National Labor Relations Board, after hearings before a trial examiner and due consideration of his report, issued its order which it now seeks to have enforced against the respondent under the provisions of § 10(e) of the National Labor Relations Act. 29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq. It found that the respondent had engaged in unfair labor practices in violation of § 8(1), (2), and (3) of the Act. The order required the respondent to cease and desist (a) from dominating, interfering with the administration of, or contributing to the support of, a so-called company union or any other labor organization of its employees; (b) from discouraging membership in a named local union affiliated then with the Committee for Industrial Organization and now with the Congress of Industrial Organizations or any other labor organization of its employees by discriminating in regard to their hire and tenure of employment; (c) from giving effect to a contract it had made with the so-called company union regarding terms and conditions of employment and (d) from preventing or attempting to prevent the enjoyment by its employees of the rights as to collective bargaining et cetera which are guaranteed by § 7 of the Act. The order also required the respondent to offer full and immediate reinstatement to five discharged employees to their former positions or to substantially similar ones without prejudice to their seniority, or other, rights and to make them whole for loss of pay; to disestablish the so-called company union and to post the usual notices.

The union so ordered disestablished is the Quality Art Shop Union which was granted leave to intervene in this proceeding and has appeared and been heard in the hearings before the trial examiner, before the Board and in this Court. The jurisdiction of the Board is unquestioned and, as too often happens in proceedings like these in this Court, both the respondent and the intervenor rely in fact, though not in theory, upon the supposition that if it can be pointed out that the Board gave undue weight to certain evidence and failed to give adequate weight to other evidence the resulting unfairness in the order may be corrected by us. The National Labor Relations Act denies to us the right to weigh the evidence or to pass upon the credibility of witnesses. The scope of our review of the findings as findings of fact is limited to determining merely whether or not there is some substantial evidence to support them. N. L. R. B. v. Waterman S. S. Corp., 309 U.S. 206, 60 S.Ct. 493, 84 L.Ed. 704. If there is, we must accept those findings and give them full effect under the law. In this instance all of the material findings on which the order of the Board is based are supported by testimony given by at least one witness and in the main by one or both of two witnesses named Ruderman and Goldstein. That both of these witnesses were active in support of an unsuccessful attempt by the C. I. O. to organize the respondent's employees and that both testified with whatever bias and prejudice were so engendered can be none of our concern. The record shows adequately that they might have known what they testified to be the facts and therefore whether they did or not and whether they tesified in accordance with facts known to them was for the Board. That such evidence, believed by the trier of the facts, was substantial admits of no doubt.

The facts so proved, found and accepted by us are in all essential respects as follows :

The respondent, Quality Art Novelty Co. Inc., is a New York corporation engaged in the manufacture and sale of novelty [905]*905greeting cards with its factory and principal office at Long Island City, N. Y., where it is engaged in interstate commerce. United Paper Workers, L. I. U. No. 292 is the labor organization, affiliated at the time here material, with the Committee for Industrial Organization, which admitted the respondent’s employees to membership and whose attempts to obtain members led to the labor trouble on which the complaint in this proceeding was based. Quality Art Shop Union, the intervenor, is an unaffiliated labor organization with a membership limited to the employees of the respondent.

The president of the respondent was Louis Katz, the vice-president was his brother Phil Katz, and the foreman of the shipping department was another brother Joe Katz. In the fall of 1937, when some of the employees in the respondent’s stock and shipping departments were advocating the organization of the respondent’s employees by the C. I. O. union, Louis Katz learned of a union meeting which had been held and requested Phil Katz, Clement Swan, who was in charge of the art department, and Harry Hankoff, the credit manager and supervisory head of the stock and shipping department, to find out what grievances the employees had and report to him so that he could remedy them. In the course of their investigations one or more of them told the employees not to join the outside union; that it really wasn’t any good but was composed of racketeers; and that instead of paying “a lot of dues” they could do better by dealing directly with the management. The advice of these men was not lightly to be disregarded by employees under their supervision. There was substantial evidence to support similar findings of attempts to prevent the employees joining the C. I. O. union which amounted to interference with their exercise of rights guaranteed them by § 7 of the Labor Relations Act.

Acting upon the suggestion of Phil Katz, the employees appointed committees to deal directly with the management. Meanwhile, and on October 21, 1937, the C. I. O. union called a meeting to be held that evening, and circulars giving notice to that effect were distributed in the respondent’s plant. An inspector with authority to hire and fire some employees advised them not to attend the union meeting; a foreman questioned some of the employees about the meeting and asked whether they had been solicited to join the union telling them they had no need to go elsewhere for assistance as he had always been, and would continue to be, fair with them. And in the afternoon about one hundred and fifty of the employees were asked to assemble and were addressed by Clement Swan who told them the management was negotiating with two departments about grievances and “was ready to do the same thing with all other departments that might have had anything to complain about, or requests to make.” He disparaged the C. I. O. union and advised the employees not to join it, suggesting that a vote be taken to determine whether the employees would choose an A. F. of L., a C. I. O. or a company union. Others representing the respondent attempted to discourage attendance at the C. I. O. meeting and when it was held such discouragement took the form of watching by supervising employees to find out who did attend. The next day the management began to encourage the formation of the intervenor. Though nothing tangible was contributed to its organization or maintenance by the respondent the latter did smooth the path of its organizers and patently preferred to have its employees join it instead of an outside union. Though the respondent’s first choice was to have no union at all and to deal directly with committees or employees, when that failed it made the intervenor its favorite and made a contract with it recognizing it as the exclusive bargaining agent of its employees and giving them a preferential status in respect to promotion, lay-offs, and rehiring.

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127 F.2d 903, 10 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 655, 1942 U.S. App. LEXIS 4019, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/national-labor-relations-board-v-quality-art-novelty-co-ca2-1942.