noting that “continuous rotation of Committee members” for three-month terms suggested that members acted as individuals rather than as representatives
How later courts described this case
- noting that “continuous rotation of Committee members” for three-month terms suggested that members acted as individuals rather than as representatives
- "Although Cabot Carbon cautions against a restrictive reading of the term 'dealing,' it involved a more active, ongoing association between management and employees, which the term dealing connotes, than is present here."
- assuming domination where committee “was expressly mandated by the Company, and the Company controlled its composition and its meetings”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
*297 COHN, District Judge.
I concur in the result reached in Part II of the panel opinion; I respectfully dissent from Part I. I believe my colleagues give too little weight to the National Labor Relations Board’s determination that the In-Plant Representation Committee was a “labor organization” as defined in Section 2(5) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 152 (5). See N.L.R.B. v. Production Molded Plastics, Inc., 604 F.2d 451, 453-54 (6th Cir. 1979). My reading of the record supports the Board’s conclusion that the committee was a labor organization as defined in Section 2(5) as interpreted by the Supreme Court in N.L.R.B. v. Cabot Carbon Co., 360 U.S. 203 (1959). See 249 N.L.R.B. No. 54 (1980).
However much there may be a need for “bona fide, socially desirable employee committee[s] or joint employer-employee committee[s] that [are] something less than a labor organization and something more than a Great Books Study Group”, N.L.R.B. v. Walton Manufacturing Co., 289 F.2d 177, 182 . (5th Cir. 1961) (Wisdom, J., dissenting in part), that objective should not be achieved by overly restricting the definition of a labor organization. Rather, I believe, the test to be emphasized is employer domination, Section 8(a)(1), (2) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 158 (a)(1), (2). See Modern Plastics Corp. v. N.L.R.B., 379 F.2d 201 (6th Cir. 1967).