National Labor Relations Board v. International Harvester Company

The National Labor Relations Board petitions for enforcement of its order directing International Harvester Company to bargain about a decision to alter its marketing structure. The issue is whether International Harvester’s decision was a mandatory subject of bargaining. We conclude that the decision was within the prerogative of management. We enforce, however, that part of the order directing the Company to bargain about the effects of the decision on the terms and conditions of employment of employees in a certified bargaining unit at the time of the decision.

For many years International Harvester Company sold all of its trucks through approximately 150 branch offices. The institution of government price controls in 1973 caused the Company to evaluate its traditional marketing emphasis on volume manufacturing and sales. The Company in 1975 was losing approximately $10,000,000 a month. It suspected that sales of large numbers, of trucks in a single order, also called “fleet sales,” contributed greatly to the losses. The Company found, moreover, that under its system of accountability, there was no way to trace or allocate losses at branch levels among fleet sales, used-truck…