1 - National Labor Relations Board

86 Thirty-fourth Annual Report of the National Labor Relations Board
in administering the bargaining agreement. Citing Standard Oil
Co., 42 the Board observed that "the statutory duty of fair representation
requires that the bargaining agent extend representation
to nonunion employees as well as to union members, and
where, as here, the bargaining representative has no effective
means of communicating with a substantial number of unit employees,
it cannot properly meet its statutory obligations under
the Act." According to the Board, the union's lack of any effective
means of communication with nonunion unit employees
was demonstrated by the absence of any union-security or maintenance-of-membership
provisions in the parties' bargaining
agreement and the fact that less than 60 percent of the unit
employees were members of the union. The Board agreed with
the union's claim that the low rate of union membership showed
the difficulties the union had in attempting to communicate with
the employees in the unit. It deemed it significant that the unit
was nationwide in coverage, including almost 17,000 agents employed
at 897 locations, and also observed that the employer
experienced a 25-percent turnover per year among unit employees.
The Board further noted that, although the bargaining agreement
permitted the union to establish a grievance committee at
each office and granted it the right to post certain notices on
office bulletin boards, neither of the applicable contract provisions
allowed the union to communicate generally with unit employees.
There was no contractual authorization for contract
between the grievance committee members, except when a grivance
was processed ; the union was limited to the posting of
general announcements and was prohibited from using the bulletin
boards to distribute materials of any kind ; and the employer
reserved the right to remove from the bulletin board any contractually
unauthorized material.
Under these circumstances the Board concluded that effective
communication between the union and the unit employees must
of necessity be conducted, if at all, at places other than the
employer's offices, and because of the size and geographic scope
of the unit, communication by mail to employees at their homes
seemed to be the only feasible means for effecting communication.
Noting that the requested information was for the purpose
of soliciting the employees' views on contract proposals and
preferences, informing them concerning contract benefits, and
encouraging them to participate in policing and enforcing the
bargaining agreement, the Board found such purposes clearly
42 166 NLRB 343 (1967) ; see Thirty-second Annual Report (1967) , pp. 108-109.