Extract
Aluminum Casting & Engineering Co.(corrected), (2007)
Aluminum Casting & Engineering Co., Inc. and United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). Cases 30CA12855, 30CA12902, 30CA12943, 30CA12944, and 30CA12949
January 31, 2007SECOND SUPPLEMENTAL DECISION AND ORDERBy Chairman Battista and Members Schaumber and WalshOn November 14, 2003, Administrative Law Judge Bruce D. Rosenstein issued the attached Supplemental Decision. The General Counsel and the Charging Party each filed exceptions and a supporting brief. The Respondent filed cross-exceptions and a supporting brief. Each party filed an answering brief, and the General Counsel and the Charging Party filed reply briefs.[1] The National Labor Relations Board has delegated its authority in this proceeding to a three-member panel. The Board has considered the supplemental decision and the record in light of the exceptions and briefs and has decided to affirm the judges rulings, findings, and conclusions and to adopt the recommended Order.The issue in this compliance proceeding is the appropriate amount of backpay due to employees who were not granted a wage increase as a result of the Respondents unfair labor practices. In the underlying proceeding,[2] the Board found that the Respondent violated Section 8(a)(3) and (1) of the Act by withholding annual across-the-board wage increases in 1995. The Board ordered the Respondent to make whole the employees who were employed in the bargaining unit in 1995 for the annual wage increases they would have received in 1995 to date.[3]On appeal to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the Respondent argued, in relevant part, that the Boards Order was overbroad on the grounds that the Board did not have before it the question of any wage increases for years following 1995, and that the Boards Order should have provided for backpay only for 1995, the year that the wage increases were unlawfully withheld.[4] The court agreed with the Board that the across-the-board increases had been unlawfully withheld. In enforcing the Boards order in relevant part, however, the court implicitly acknowledged that the Respondents argument could have merit, if the Respondent were able to establish requisite facts in support of limiting the remedy in compliance. The court noted that As long as [Respondent] has a fair opportunity to prove the proposition it has argued so strongly herethat general wage increases are passé . . . the present order does no more than require payment of the 1995 increase . . . and any later ones supported by the companys normal practice at that later time.[5] Thus, the court found that the basis for finding a violation of Section 8(a)(3) was that the Respondent had a normal practice of granting some kind of annual, across-the-board, wage increase to its employees . . . [and] wanted its employees to blame the union for the fact that the established practice was abandoned during the union campaign.[6]With respect to the remedy, the court found that the Boards backpay order was entitled to enforcement based on two factors. First, the court read the Boards order as not binding the Respondent to a perpetual practice of gra...See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
