1 - National Labor Relations Board

90 Thirty-fourth Annual Report of the National Labor Relations Board
ployer over the employer's recognition of another union as the
bargaining representative of certain employees. Those employees
had been represented by this union, prior to the time when the
Board, in a unit clarification proceeding 51 during the term of
the union's contract with the employer, held that the employees
in question should be included in the unit represented by the
other union. When the employer ref used to submit the matter to
arbitration, the union filed a suit in a Federal district court
under section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act to
compel arbitration." The Board 53 concluded that these actions
amounted to adamant insistence by the union that the employer
continue to bargain with it for a unit which the Board had
already found inappropriate, and hence constituted a refusal to
bargain in violation of section 8(b) (3) of the Act.
In General Transformer Co.,54 the employer had refused to
grant a wage increase demanded by the international union
certified as the bargaining representative of its employees unless
the union agreed to an extension of the contract, which was
executed in the name of a local union affiliated with the international,
and approved as to content and form by the international.
When the international union refused to agree to extend the
contract, the employer met with the bargaining committee of
the local union, which agreed to the extension. The resulting
agreement was signed by the employer and the local union, but
was never presented to the international for signature. The
Board, 55 noting that it was the international union which had
always negotiated with the employer, and that the employer
had never questioned the international's status as the employees'
bargaining representative, pointed out that the employer had,
in effect, dealt directly with its employees, and had unilaterally
offered them a wage increase greater than that offered the international
union. Such bypassing of the bargaining representa-
5' A. 0. Smith Corp., 166 NLRB 845 (1967), discussed in Thirty-third Annual Report (1968),
p. 58.
52 The district court's decision in this suit, in which the Board intervened as a defendant,
is discussed in Thirty-third Annual Report (1968), pp. 177-178.
" Members Fanning, Brown, and Jenkins for the majority. Chairman McCulloch and
Member Zagoria, dissenting, were of the view that the union's actions were merely designed
to enable it to exercise its lawful privilege to institute a law suit under sec. 301 to compel
arbitration, since the attempt to exhaust the grievance-arbitration provisions of the contract
was a prerequisite to the filing of such a suit under the Supreme Court's decisions in Drake
Bakeries v. Bakery Workers, 370 U.S. 254, and Republic Steel Corp. v. Maddox, 379 U.S. 650.
" 173 NLRB No. 61.
"Members Brown, Jenkins, and Zagoria for the majority. Chairman McCulloch and
Member Fanning, dissenting, viewed the contract, as well as various intraunion documents,
as indicating that the local union had been substituted for the international as the employees'
bargaining representative, so that the employer could properly bargain with the local.