NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD

58 THIRD ANNUAL REPORT OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
ployer, and of the right to question discharges for any reason or no reason regardless
of his affiliation or nonaffiliation with any union. Despite the lipservice
rendered by the terms of the contract to the right of any employee to join
any union of his own choosing, the agreement deprives each employee subscriber
of the fundamental rights inherent in union affiliation and activity—the right
to union recognition, which means the right to collective bargaining, the right
to concerted activities for mutual aid or protection, which is guaranteed to
employees in section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, and the right to
protest against the employer's exercise of his most powerful antiunion weapon,
discharge for union affiliation or activity. It would be hard to devise a more
patently antiunion or "yellow dog" contract, or one more discouraging to membership
in a labor organization.
The Circuit Court of Appeals, in enforcino . the Board's order,
pointed out that although the contract allowed the employees the
right to join the union, "it denied them any right of collective bargaining
and would allow the employer to discharge for any reason,
one of which might be union activities." 34 The court held that in
V view of the circumstances surrounding the company's offer of the
contract to the employees, the Board "could properly find that the
contract offered was not made in good faith as an attempt to bargain
collectively."
The use by employers of similar individual employment contracts
in combating union activity has been held a violation of section 8 (1)
in a number of cases.35 In Matter of Williams Manufacturing Company
36 individual employment contracts of somewhat different provision
nevertheless were used to the same end. The contracts there
provided for employment of the individual employee for a stated
period at the wages then prevailing and were terminable by either
party upon 15 days' written notice. The contracts were presented to
the employees by the company for the first time in its history, during
the course of a vigorous campaign waged by it against union organization.
Employees were called in small groups by the president of
the company who exhorted them to sign. Supervisory officials attended.
Many of the employees who were induced to sign did so
because they feared loss of their jobs if they demurred. The president
testified that counsel had suggested to the company the possibility
of using such contracts as a basis, among other things, for
injunction proceedings against the union and such use was in fact
made during a subsequent strike. In findin g the making of these
contracts a violation of section 8 (1), the Board said :
We find, in the light of the events preceding the presentation of the contracts
and in the light of the circumstances under which they were presented
and executed, that the contracts were not intended by the respondent and were
\./ not regarded by its employees as a genuine and voluntary exchange of promises
mutually induced. The respondent's sole purpose in procuring and presenting
the contracts was, through the guise of spurious individual bargaining, to foreclose
its employees from exercising the right to self-organization and collective
bargaining guaranteed to them under the Act and to impede the right to strike
expressly preserved by the Act. The presentation of the contracts was regarded
by the respondent's employees as a challenge to abandon the rights guaranteed
to them under the Act, and the execution of the contracts was intended by them,
to signify to the respondent their submission to that challenge.
/ 34 Order enforced in part in National Labor Relations Board V. Hopwood Retinning Company,
Inc., 98 F. (2d) 97 (C. C. A. 2d, 1938).
a5 See, for example, Matter of The Jacobs Bros. Co., Inc., and United Electrical and
Radio Workers of America. 5 N. L. R. B. 620; Matter of David E. Kennedy, Inc., and
Isidore Greenberg, 6 N. L. R. B. 699; Matter of National Licorice Company and Bakery and
Confectionery Workers International Union of America, 7 N. L. R. B. 537.
31 Matter of Williams Manufacturing Company and United Shoe Workers of America,
6 N. L. R. B. 135.