NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD

XII. PUBLICATIONS DIVISION
A. FUNCTIONS OF THE PUBLICATIONS DIVISION
The publications divison serves as a channel of all Board information.
Administratively its function is to assume responsibility for all
materials distributed and all questions answered, and to relieve Board
officers and attorneys from the necessity of being interrupted by constant
requests for detailed information.
The external function of the division is to aid in providing a
clearer public understanding of the policy of the act and the operations
of the Board, in order that a new law, operating ha a controversial
field, may through fuller knowledge of its purposes the more
quickly achieve the ends which the Congress intended by its passage.
During the Board's third fiscal year the wholesome effects of a
widened public discussion of the act were somewhat impaired by an
overemphasis on certain phases of the Board's work and an underemphasis
on others. Since both tendencies decrease public acceptance
of the principles of the act it is the part of a responsible stewardship
to analyze their causes.
The quasi-judicial nature of the Board sets limitations on answering
inquiries on matters of policy and of law. A purely administrative
agency may explain the reasons for its actions—indeed, may with
propriety affirmatively publicize them. A quasi-judicial body, on the
other hand, must let its decisions speak for themselves. Each ruling
is susceptible to review by a Circuit Court of Appeals, and possibly
the United States Supreme Court. For the Board to debate its decisions
publicly would affront legal procedure.
The same code precludes Board discussion of cases pending before
it. Early in its experience many employers appealed to the Board
for advice whether the business was in interstate commerce or whether
this or that situation involved a possible unfair labor practice. When
the Board properly declined to settle in advance matters which might
come before it the stream of inquiry dried up. Thereafter the only
relief for perplexed employers had to be whatever light on their own
problems they might gather from seemingly comparable situations
covered in formal Board decisions.
This silence of the Board, while inevitable, acted and continues to
act as a cloud to public understanding In their early years other
regulatory agencies with quasi-judicial powers, such as the Interstate
Commerce Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, found
public acceptance of their respective laws delayed through similar
inability both to expound and to administrate at one and the same
time.
A further influence against current understanding of the National
Labor Relations Act lies in the stress placed upon formal Board
action against employers and the underemphasis, amounting almost
to secrecy, which hides from the public the vastly greater number of
cases which are adjusted amicably in their preliminary stages.
Neither the one effect nor the other is the result of any conscious
intention. Each stems from normal and explicable circumstances.
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