Extract
Manna Pro Partners, 782 (1991)
Manna Pro Partners, L.P. and American Federation of Grain Millers, Local No. 155. Case 27-CA- 11260
August 27, 1991DECISION AND ORDERBY MEMBERS CRACRAFT, DEVANEY, AND OVIATTOn February 27, 1991, Administrative Law Judge Timothy D. Nelson issued the attached decision. The Respondent filed exceptions and a supporting brief.The National Labor Relations Board has delegated its authority in this proceeding to a three-member panel.The Board has considered the decision and the record in light of the exceptions and brief and has decided to affirm the judge's rulings, findings,1 and conclusions as modified and to adopt the recommended Order as modified.2The judge, citing Bay Area Mack, 293 NLRB 125 (1989), found that the Respondent did not have a reasonably based, good-faith doubt of the Union's majority status when it refused to bargain on March 6, 1990.3 As found by the judge, at that time, Markley, the Respondent's plant manager, was aware of only a few unit employees who had expressed specific sentiments against union representation. Additionally, the employee petitions received by Markley beginning on April 26 were tainted by the Respondent's prior unfair labor practices and were not, in any event, probative of the Respondent's knowledge at the time of its refusal to bargain. We further find that the additional factors cited by the Respondent in support of its good-faith doubt, which were not discussed by the judge, are insufficient to rebut the presumption of the Union's continuing majority status.The Respondent contends that evidence concerning an aborted 3-day strike in 1984 by the unit employees of Farmers Marketing Association (FMA), the predecessor employer, supports its good-faith doubt defense.Following that strike, the employees returned to work under a new collective-bargaining agreement that provided for reductions in wages, hours, and benefits. Employee McCune testified that as a result of the strike the employees had ''kind of a hopeless feeling'' and that the Union began to lose the support of FMA employees. We find that employee sentiments concerning the 1984 strike are too remote in time to support a reasonably based, good-faith doubt in March 1990. Thus, the record does not establish a link between the striking employees' union views in 1984 and employee support for the Union 6 years later. In fact, although McCune left FMA for 6 months after the strike, he subsequently returned to FMA and was a member of the Union. Moreover, employee disapproval of a union's handling of a strike is not to be equated with rejection of the union as the employees' bargaining representative. See NLRB v. Windham Community Hospital, 577 F.2d 805, 814 (2d Cir. 1978).4As further objective evidence in support of its reasonable doubt of the Union's majority status the Respondent asserts that ''many'' of the employees it hired came from the Manna Pro plant in Fort Lupton, Colorad...See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
