NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD

74 SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
the exercise by employees of full freedom of self-organization. To withhold the
normally appropriate remedy of reinstatement merely because the object of
discrimination has obtained compensatory employment would not effectuate
these public policies ; indeed, it would reduce them, contrary to the intent of
Congress, 74 to mere vindication of private rights and restitution for private
wrongs. Our power to order affirmative relief was conferred, and it is our duty
to exercise it, to the end that conditions permitting free exercise of the publicly
significant rights of self-organization and collective bargaining shall, when destroyed
or disrupted, be restored. The Act postulates, and the fact is readily
verified by common experience, that antiunion discrimination exercises a coercive
effect not only upon the immediate victim, but upon all present or future employees
of the particular employer ; it impresses upon them the danger to their
welfare and security associated with membership in or activity on behalf of a
labor organization. Accordingly, the purpose of the order to offer reinstatement
is not only to restore the victim of discrimination to the position from
which he was unlawfully excluded, but also, and more significantly, to dissipate
the deeply coercive effects upon other employees who may desire self-organization,
but have been discouraged therefrom by the threat to them implicit in
the discrimination. This essential reassurance can be afforded—freedom can be
reestablished—only by a demonstration that the Act carries sufficient force to
restore to work anyone who has been penalized for exercising rights which the
Act guarantees and protects ; the acquisition of equivalent employment is no
more relevant to this purpose than the acquisition of non-equivalent employment,
or of no employment at all.
Further, it is a demonstrated fact of which we take notice that necessity
almost inevitably compels a discharged employee to seek the best available
other employment. If reinstatement were rendered inappropriate by reason of
success in that search, the employer would be able, through elimination of union
adherents, at once to impede or terminate exercise of the right of self-organization
in his plant and at the same time to perpetuate his advantage by relying
upon the victims' necessity of earning a livelihood elsewhere to assure their
permanent riddance. This would afford a ready means for complete and final
ouster of those prominent in the employees' efforts at self-organization.
For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the mere obtainment of substantially
equivalent employment, and evidence pertaining thereto, is irrelevant
to considerations decisive of the question whether reinstatement effectuates the
policies of the Ac-t. These decisive considerations do not vary from case to case.
Accordingly, we find that it will effectuate the policies of the Act to require the
respondent to offer reinstatement to all individuals who we have found were
victims of discrimination, whether or not they, or any of them, may have
obtained other regular and substantially equivalent employment.
In several other cases also the employer has sought to be relieved
of the obligation to reinstate a victim of discrimination. One reason
advanced in support of such a request was that the reinstatement of
the employee would offend a compan y rule that only one member of a
family should be employed. The Board, pointing out "that rthe
employee] was not dismissed pursuant to this rule, but because of his
union membership and activities," overruled the company's objection
to his reinstatement."
In Matter of Hawk & Buck CQmpauy, Inc.," a piece-work operator
was found to have been discriminatorily transferred to her last job
and then discriminatorily discharged therefrom. She had been able
prior to the transfer
'
but unable thereafter, to earn the minimum
wage prescribed by the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Board
directed the employer to reinstate the employee but provided that
" Section 1 of the Act ; House Report No. 1147, 74th Cong...1st Sees., p. 24: Amalgamated
Utility Workers v. Consolidated Edison Co., 309 TJ. S. 261, 266, 269; National Licorice Co.
V. National Labor Relations Board, 309 U. S. 350, 362.
7, Matter of Montgomery Ward & Company, Incorporated and United Mail Order and
Retail Employees of Kansas City, Local 131, affiliated with the United Retail and Wholesale
Employees of America, C. I. 0., 31 N. L. R. B., No. 134.
70 matter of Hawk i Buck Company, Inc. and United Garment Workers of America,
Local No. 229 (A. F. L.), 25 N. L. R. B., No. 94.