Summary
The Supreme Court reviews an order of the National Labor Relations Board arising from Express Publishing Company's refusal to bargain collectively with the San Antonio Newspaper Guild. The Court holds that the Board may restrain the proven unfair labor practice and related conduct, but may not issue a blanket order prohibiting all unrelated violations of the National Labor Relations Act. The judgment is reversed, and the Board's order is reinstated with modifications limiting the cease-and-desist provision and revising the notice language.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the Board's finding that Express Publishing refused to bargain in good faith supported an order requiring it to cease refusing to bargain.
- Whether the National Labor Relations Act authorized the Board to issue a blanket order prohibiting the employer from violating the Act in any manner based on the refusal to bargain and related conduct.
- Whether the Board could require Express Publishing to post notices stating that it would not engage in the conduct from which it was ordered to cease.
Holdings
- The Board's finding that Express Publishing refused to bargain in good faith supported an order requiring it to cease and desist from refusing to bargain collectively with the Guild.
- The Board may not issue, and a court may not enforce, a blanket order prohibiting all future violations of the National Labor Relations Act merely because the employer committed one unfair labor practice.
- The order should be limited to requiring Express Publishing to cease refusing to bargain and to cease interfering with the Guild's efforts to bargain collectively.
- The Board may require the employer to post notices advising employees of the Board's order and stating that the employer will not engage in the conduct from which it is ordered to cease.
Key quotations
“It would seem equally clear that the authority conferred on the Board to restrain the practice which it has found the employer to have committed is not an authority to restrain generally all other unlawful practices which it has neither found to have been pursued nor persuasively to be related to the acts of respondent which alone emerged in course of the hearing and which the Board has found.” (433)
“To justify an order restraining other violations it must appear that they bear some resemblance to that which the employer has committed or that danger of their commission in the future is to be anticipated from the course of his conduct in the past.” (437)
Factual background
Express Publishing had recognized the Guild as representative of its editorial-room employees and met with Guild representatives when requested. The Board found that the company persistently refused to discuss the Guild's proposals in detail, make counterproposals, or enter an agreement, and therefore failed to bargain in good faith. The Board also found that statements made at an employee meeting interfered with the Guild's bargaining efforts.
Procedural history
The Board ordered Express Publishing to bargain with the San Antonio Newspaper Guild, cease refusing to bargain, cease broadly interfering with employees' rights under section 7, and post notices. The Fifth Circuit struck all provisions except the order to bargain and embody any agreement in writing, substituting a narrower notification requirement. The Supreme Court reversed the judgment and directed reestablishment of the Board's order with specified modifications.
Remand instructions
The judgment below was reversed and the Board's order was to be reestablished, except that paragraph 1(b) was to be narrowed to prohibit interference with the Guild's efforts to bargain collectively with Express Publishing, and paragraph 2(b) was to be modified to replace the words 'will cease and desist as aforesaid' with 'will not engage in the conduct from which it is ordered to cease and desist as aforesaid.'