National Woodwork Manufacturers Ass'n v. National Labor Relations Board

354 F.2d 594
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedNovember 17, 1965
DocketNos. 14904, 14988, 15064
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 354 F.2d 594 (National Woodwork Manufacturers Ass'n v. National Labor Relations Board) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
National Woodwork Manufacturers Ass'n v. National Labor Relations Board, 354 F.2d 594 (7th Cir. 1965).

Opinion

SCHNACKENBERG, Circuit Judge.

Petitioner, National Woodwork Manufacturers Association, on behalf of its members, Hardwood Products Corporation, a Wisconsin corporation, and Mohawk Flush Doors, Inc., an Indiana corporation, herein called “NWMA”, “Hardwood”, and “Mohawk”, respectively, asks us in No. 14904 to review and modify an order of the National Labor Relations Board, herein called the “Board”, issued on November 12, 1964, dismissing, in part, a complaint against Metropolitan District Council of Philadelphia and Vicinity of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, AFL-CIO, et al., herein called the “Council” or the “Union”.

In No. 14988, NWMA and Charles B. Mahin, an individual, made charges upon which the Board issued a complaint on August 27, 1963, and its amended complaint on October 4, 1963, alleging that respondent unions had engaged and were engaging in unfair labor practices in violation of section 8(b) (4) (A), section 8(b) (4) (B), and section 8(e) of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, as amended, herein called the “Act”, 29 U.S.C.A. § 158. In No. 14988, the Board seeks enforcement of its order entered against the Council and its affiliated local unions.

In No. 15064, the Council, Robert L. Gray and Charles L. Boyer, by their petition, seek an order setting aside the order of the Board to the extent that it finds against them and imposes sanctions on them.

Following a hearing before an examiner and the filing of his decision, the Board issued the aforesaid order of November 12, 1964, which dismissed all charges of violations except those with respect to the Union’s conduct on three construction jobs described as (1) the Coatesville Hospital job, at which L. F. Driscoll Company was general contractor; (2) the North Junior High School job, at which John J. McDonnell, Inc., was general contractor; and (3) the St. Aloysius Academy job, at which Nason & Cullen, Inc., was general contractor; as to each of which the Board found violations of section 8(b) (4) (B) but granted what NWMA considers only partial and inadequate relief.

Twenty-seven local carpenter unions in Philadelphia and in four other counties in Pennsylvania are affiliated with the Metropolitan District Council of Philadelphia and Vicinity. These locals are “serviced” by 11 business agents who work directly under Gray, the Council’s secretary-treasurer and business manager. These business agents police the jobs and see that contracts are adhered to.

The Council engages in collective bargaining with individual employers and with the General Building Contractors’ Association, Inc., (GBCA) which bargains on behalf of its employer members who build schools, hospitals, factories, and other structures in the Philadelphia area. The contracts in effect during the relevant period contain a provision similar to rule 17 of the Union’s bylaws, which reads as follows:

Rule 17. No employee shall work on any job on which cabinet work, fixtures, millwork, sash, doors, trim or other detailed millwork is used unless the same is Union-made and bears the Union Label of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America.1 No member of this District Council will handle material coming from a mill where cutting out and fitting has been done for butts, locks, letter plates, or hardware of any description, nor any [596]*596doors or transoms which, have been fitted prior to being furnished on job, including base, chair, mil, picture moulding, which has been previously fitted. This section to exempt partition work furnished in sections. (Emphasis added.)

It is petitioner’s contention in No. 14904 that the Union engaged in an unlawful product boycott of prefabricated doors in the Philadelphia area and enforced an illegal hot-cargo contract prohibiting the use of such prefabricated doors 2 throughout said area.

Prefabricated doors are doors which are machined, processed and finished in various ways at the plants where they are manufactured. There was testimony that the use of prefabricated doors saves time and money.

Petitioner cites, as a matter of common knowledge, that the use of prefabricated doors has been greatly increasing in the construction industry, which extends to numerous other parts of building, such as windows, factory-built trusses, wall and partition assemblies, prefinished paneling, prefabricated kitchens and bathrooms, and on up to the point of prefabricated houses and other buildings.

Prior to the present proceedings a letter was written in February, 1963, by Business Manager Gray of the Council to President Hutchinson of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, stating that there was a serious problem of precut and prefitted doors coming into the Philadelphia area. Then followed a union drive to bar all prefabricated doors, which was implemented by the alleged boycotts and work stoppages that led to the NWMA charges against the Union and these proceedings.

Typical of the operation of the Union drive in this respect was the Coatesville Hospital job in May 1963. Driscoll, the contractor, purchased through a Pennsylvania millwork distributor, prefabricated architectural doors made by Hardwood for this job. In accordance with the architect’s common practice, the specifications called for precut, prefitted and prefinished doors. On May 23, the day after the doors were delivered to the job, Union agent Boyer called from the job and told vice-president Brown of Driscoll that the prefinished doors could not be hung, because it was “in violation of an agreement”. When Brown asked “where do we go from here?”, Boyer said that he did not know and that if the doors were hung anyhow, the job would be “struck”. Boyer admitted that his word was not final and that Brown could take it up with Gray. Brown then called Gray and stated what had occurred, but Gray said that “no carpenters from now on will hang pre-finished or pre-fit doors.” Brown asked what could be done, because the hospital was hoping to get into the building, and Gray said that was not his problem. Thereupon Driscoll’s secretary telephoned Gray and asked for an explanation and was told that Driscoll was in violation of rule 17 because the doors had been factory precut, and that the carpenters were not allowed to hang them. From May 23, when the Union carpenters discovered the doors on the job, until May 27, they refused to hang them. They were then hung after the contractor agreed to pay the carpenters for work which they did not perform.

[597]*597Such a solution was not reached in the North Junior High School, St. Aloysius Academy or Frouge Corporation jobs, the first two of which are factually not different from the Coatesville Hospital job.

Frouge Corporation was the general contractor on a housing project in Philadelphia, for which it ordered factory-machined Mohawk doors. Neither job specifications nor Frouge’s contract required that the doors be precut, prefitted, or premachined. When the second shipment thereof arrived, Union agents did not allow their men to work on them. They cited rule 17 which was then shown to and read by President Frouge and Project Manager Green. Frouge had Green order 665 Mohawk doors, which, when delivered, did not bear a union label. Union carpenters did the cutting on the replacement doors which were then installed on the job.

The Board held that the Union violated § 8(b) (4) (i) (ii) (B), by reason of its boycott of prefabricated doors on the Coatesville, North Junior High and St.

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