Art Metals Const. Co. v. National Labor Relations Board

CHASE, Circuit Judge

(dissenting in part).

I concur except as to that part of the decision which holds it is an unfair labor practice for an employer to decline to sign a written contract which embodies the terms of whatever agreement may be reached as a result of the collective bargaining the statute requires. As to that, I think the recent decision of the Seventh Circuit in Inland Steel Company v. National Labor Relations Board, 7 Cir., 109 F.2d 9 , is right and ought to be followed.

Were we a legislative body with power to amend the law, I should feel keenly the force of the argument that the reduction to writing of an agreement when reached would be a worthwhile means for avoiding the danger of any subsequent misunderstanding concerning the rights and duties of the parties thereunder. There may, however, be good and sufficient reasons not appearing in this record why even such legislative action would be unwise. It is significant that when Congress explored the subject matter of the relations of employees with their employers and passed the comprehensive regulatory statute known as the Wagner Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq., it did not see fit expressly to require that any agreement which might be reached, after the collective bargaining made compulsory upon the employer, should be put in the form of a signed written contract.

If more is at stake than merely the form a collective bargaining contract should be given to put its terms beyond danger of controversy, Congress should take such action by way of amendment as may be necessary to exercise its power for we have no right to read into the statute a mandatory provision which is not there. If only the desirability for having a ready means for preserving with accuracy the terms of such an agreement underlies this part of the order, on the theory that good faith in collective bargaining precludes an employer from doing less than sign in written form any agreement reached, our course, it seems to me, is equally plain. Nothing prevents any party from putting the terms of the agreement into any sort of memorial desired for its own use and, until there is some reason to believe that this employer will not faithfully carry out any agreement it makes, we should not gratuitously impute; to it bad faith in collective bargaining, and a consequent violation of the statute, merely because it insists in effect that its pledged word, however given, will be made good It should now be left, as the statute leaves it, at least so far as language is concerned, as free to decide how it will promise as to decide what it will promise in the light of all the circumstances which may properly influence it in making an honest effort to bargain collectively.