National Labor Relations Board v. Sterling Electric Motors, Inc.

Our opinion in the first hearing of this review appears in 109 E.2d 194. The National Labor Relations Board has petitioned for and we have granted it a rehearing of the entire proceeding. . The contentions argued covered a much wider area than those of the briefs. This opinion concerns the issue of the right of Sterling Electric Motors, Inc., Employees Association, a self-organized inside or company union, to he made a party or to have notice and an opportunity to be heard before it can be destroyed by the Board’s order of non-recognition and disestablishment. We discuss and attempt to appraise the congressional intent in this labor legislation, with a consideration, “material to the philosophy of that Act,” 1 of the effect of the “abuse” of administrative “power”, 1 under the Board’s renewed contention that Congress conferred on it this kind of administrative absolutism.

As stated in our first opinion, it was for the “protecting” of the laborers’ human right to regulate their creative effort in American society, with their increased power in union organization, that Congress created the Board. Its “protecting” extends as much to the self-organized unions, provided for in Section…

(dissenting).

On the reargument in this case respondent Sterling Motors applied to the court for leave to adduce additional evidence, in conformity with § 10 (e) of the act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 160 (e). Leave was granted and the matter is again before the Board for the taking of further testimony. The point of fact to be inquired into is the crucial one on which the Board largely predicated its finding of an unfair labor practice and its order *70 disestablishing the employee union as a bargaining agency. • ■

The statute, § 10 (e), provides that the Board may “modify its findings as to the facts, or make new findings, by reason of additional evidence so taken and filed, and it shall file such modified or new findings, * * * and shall file its recommendations, if any, for the modification or setting aside of its original order.”

In this posture of the case, with the question of law dealt with in the majority opinion threatening to become moot, I regard its decision at this, and for the second, time as not only unnecessary but as ill advised. That would be true, I think, even though the question were still open to rational debate. But debate, in inferior federal courts at least, has…