1 - National Labor Relations Board

156 Thirty-fourth Annual Report of the National Labor Relations Board
2. Reading of Notices to Employees
In several cases decided during the year, courts considered the
validity of Board orders requiring that notices to employees required
as part of the remedy for unfair labor practices be read
to the employees as well as posted. In the J. P. Stevens case,78
the Fourth Circuit upheld a Board order requiring the employer
to convene its employees in the plants where unfair labor practices
had occurred and read, or allow a Board agent to read, the notice
to the employees during working time. 79 The court regarded the
unfair labor practices in the case before it as a continuation
of the massive and deliberate unfair labor practices previously
committed by the company as established by Board and court
decisions. In view of the extended period of time during which
the company had persistently violated the Act, the varied forms
which the violations had taken, and the company's discrimination
against more than 100 employees in about half its plants in
North and South Carolina, the Board's order, although unusually
broad, could not be regarded as an abuse of discretion.8°
The Fifth Circuit, in a case 81 where the employer had successfully
challenged the Board's bargaining order on the ground that
the employees were illiterate and hence unable to understand
the meaning of the authorization cards which they had signed,
upheld the Board's requirement that the portions of the Board
order which were enforced be read to the employees, pointing
out that "obviously, if the employees are illiterate and thus not
able to read the posted notice it is not unreasonable to require
the company to have the notice read."
On similar grounds, the same court enforced a reading requirement
in another case 82 where approximately one-fourth of the
employees who testified at the hearing admitted that they could
not read. Distinguishing its prior decision in Laney & Duke,83
where it had rejected a reading requirement as "unnecessarily
embarrassing and humiliating to management rather than effec-
"J. P. Stevens & Co. v. N.L.R.B., 406 F.2d 1017.
"The reading requirement was based on the Second Circuit's decisions in the two previous
J P. Stevens cases, 380 F 2d 292 and 388 F.2d 896, discussed in Thirty-third Annual Report
(1968), p 173.
8° The court also approved the Board's orders that the notice be posted in all of the company's
plants and mailed to all employees, and that the union be granted reasonable access to the
company's bulletin boards for a period of 1 year. A further requirement that the employer
furnish the union with a list of the names and addresses of all its employees was enforced only
with respect to the plants where unfair labor practices were found in this case. •
"N.L.R.B. v. Texas Electric Cooperatives, 398 F.2d 722.
"N.L.R B. v. Bush Hog, 405 F.2d 755.
"N.L.R.B. v Laney & Duke Storage Warehouse Co., 369 F.2d 859, Thirty-second Annual
Report (1967), p. 174.