NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD

xn. PUBLICATIONS DIVISION 255
The first is the fact that the Board's public statements consist almost
exclusively of its intermediate reports and decisions. The great
majority of these (in complaint cases) have found employers in violation
of unfair labor practice provisions of the act. It therefore
appears that the Board, whenever it does speak, uses the occasion
primarily to describe at length how employers have discharged employees
unfairly, dominated company unions, and refused to bargain
with duly elected representatives of their employees. To imagine,
however, that the Board's role is solely to find violations of the act
would be to suppose from viewing a stable of black horses that all
horses are black.
The true relation in the Board's case would only appear if each violation
found against an employer were accompanied by reports of 19
other actions disposed of in some other manner. These 95 percent
of all closed cases are settled, withdrawn, or dismissed, all without
public notice from the Board. The comparatively few cases which do
reach the stage of a Board cease and desist order chance to be the
only ones formally described for public attention.
An administrative exigency further lays stress on public declaration
of employer violations. The publications division, which digests
and releases decisions to the press, is stationed in Washington,
whereas all the informal settlements, dismissals, and withdrawals of
actions occur at 22 regional offices scattered over the entire country.
Regional directors themselves are under a Board-imposed ban not to
discuss unsubstantiated charges nor to reveal the steps of negotiations
looking toward informal compliance with the act. Therefore it is
fortuitous, except in the case of publicly held elections, whether
actions dismissed, withdrawn, or settled receive local notice. At
Washington itself, to which correspondents normally turn for national
news, the Board's only picture of its operations as a whole is a
monthly statistical summary. It is true that here may be discovered
the fact that only 1 in 19 cases goes to formal public hearing, yet
these are cold figures which fail to give color and life to activities
which, while necessarily expresed in legal terms, actually deal with
the problems of workers and employers engaged in a search for personal
and industrial security.
The underemphasis on cases disposed of quietly by the Board represents
the reverse of the medal. Given the known emotional appeal of
the sensational, it is normal that newspaper writers and radio commentators
should select for emphasis the declarations by the Board
that such and such an employer has been unfair to his workers. By
the same token the dismissal, withdrawal, or settlement of an action
against an employer, even if the Board chose to make a statement
upon each of them, would not in the nature of journalism be worth
display.
It is evident that all factors stressing sanctions against employers
complement each other. They are the subject matter of Board unfair
labor practice decisions. They are the only usable newspaper copy.
Thus Board cease and desist orders, which in fact are purely incidental
to the long-range industrial peace hopes resting in the act, too often
appear to the public mind as ends in themselves.
The problem of the Board's publications division is to give all
phases of Board activity such currency as is permissible, in further-