National Labor Relations Board v. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co.

730 F.2d 166, 116 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2211, 1984 U.S. App. LEXIS 24064
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit·Decided March 29, 1984·No. 78-1911, 78-1914·Published·Cited by 6 cases

Opinion

REAVLEY, Circuit Judge:

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or the Board) petitions this court to adjudicate Southwestern Bell Telephone Company (Bell or the Company) in civil contempt for four separate violations of two consent judgments we entered in 1978. Bell denies that it had engaged in contumacious conduct. The matter was referred to a special master, Administrative Law Judge Dee C. Blythe, who heard evidence and filed recommended findings and conclusions holding Bell in contempt on all four violations alleged by the Board. Bell contests most of the special master’s findings of fact, disputes his conclusion that the Company’s conduct violated the 1978 consent judgment, and objects to a number of the suggested sanctions. The Board objects only to the special master’s failure to include a prospective fine among his recommended sanctions. We uphold the *168 special master’s findings and conclusions and, with minor modifications, adopt the remedies he suggested.

I. Background

In late 1977, Bell settled a charge brought by the union 1 representing certain of its employees by stipulating to entry of two consent orders by the NLRB and to entry of consent judgments of this court enforcing those orders. The Board issued the resulting consent orders on February 1, 1978, and we granted an appropriate petition to enforce the orders, entering the two requested consent judgments on May 16, 1978. One, to which we will refer as the Representation Judgment, required among other things that Bell “cease and desist from”

(a) Discouraging or intimidating any employee from requesting union representation or in any way interfering with an employee’s right to engage in concerted activities for mutual aid or protection, during an interview if the employee has reasonable grounds to believe that the matters to be discussed may result in his being subject to disciplinary action.
.... [or]
(e) In any other manner or by any other means restraining and coercing employees in the exercise of their rights guaranteed by Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act.

The other consent judgment (the Information Judgment), required that the Company

[m]ake available to the [union] to read and inspect during normal business hours on company premises ... any material contained in the personnel history files of bargaining unit personnel. It is understood that the [union] may not remove said items from company premises or make copies thereof, but that all such items shall be made available to the [union] for use at any step of the grievance proceedings including a hearing before an arbitrator. Any such items introduced in a hearing before an arbitrator shall be made available only subject to an appropriate protective order guaranteeing its confidential nature. 2

The Board now alleges that Bell violated the Representation Judgment by denying “effective” union representation during three investigatory interviews in 1980 and that the Company violated the Information Judgment during a 1981 employee grievance hearing. The special master correctly put the NLRB to the burden of justifying an adjudication of civil contempt by clear and convincing evidence, see Florida Steel Corp. v. NLRB, 648 F.2d 233, 236 (5th Cir.1981); NLRB v. South-wire Co., 429 F.2d 1050, 1053 (5th Cir. 1970), cert. denied, 401 U.S. 939, 91 S.Ct. 932, 27 L.Ed.2d 218 (1971), and found that it had successfully met that burden in proving all four alleged violations. We review his findings of fact only for clear error. Fed.R.Civ.P. 53(e)(2); Florida Steel, 648 F.2d at 236; NLRB v. J.P. Stevens & Co., 538 F.2d 1152, 1160-61 (5th Cir.1976).

II. The Right to Representation

The Supreme Court held in 1975 that section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 29 U.S.C. § 157 (1976), extends to an employee the statutory right “to refuse to submit without union representation to an interview which he reasonably fears may result in his discipline____” NLRB v. Weingarten, Inc., 420 U.S. 251, 256, 95 S.Ct. 959, 963, 43 L.Ed.2d 171 (1975). Stated positively, Weingarten affords to employees the right to union representation at investigatory interviews. The Court outlined the “contours and limits” of the right to union representation in five particulars, noting among them that “[t]he employer has no duty to bargain with the union representative at an investigatory in *169 terview.” In its very next breath, however, the Court defined the role of the union representative by quoting from the Board’s brief:

The representative is present to assist the employee, and may attempt to clarify the facts or suggest other employees who may have knowledge of them. The employer, however, is free to insist that he is only interested, at that time, in hearing the employee's own account of the matter under investigation.

Id. at 260, 95 S.Ct. at 965. Weingarten stated the law in 1978, when the consent judgments were entered, and in 1980, when the three alleged representation violations took place.

A.

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National Labor Relations Board v. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co., 730 F.2d 166, 116 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2211, 1984 U.S. App. LEXIS 24064 (5th Cir. 1984).

730 F.2d 166 (National Labor Relations Board v. Southwestern Bell Telephone Co.) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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