Ethical Analysis Of First Central Bank Essay

, Research Paper

FIRST CENTRAL BANK CASE ANALYSIS

The relevant facts are centered on communications concerning union activity by the bank’s employees, the bank’s management, and the union. On one occasion, membership cards had been distributed to various locations within the bank. On two separate occasions, bank employees had been directly involved in initiating union activity. The bank’s management communicated with its employees as an information and education campaign. Communication took place via meetings and letters. The union had formally communicated with the employees by letters sent to their home addresses.

A guard at the main office discovered that membership cards had been distributed to the various teller stations, the bookkeeping department, the switchboard and in the ladies lounge. Management never was able to determine who was responsible for the distribution of the cards.

Harold Newell, vice president of branch operations, reported to Johnson that number of the branch office employees had informed him that the three assistant auditors were engaging in union organizing activities in the branch offices while ostensibly instructing employees on the use of a new computer. According to Newell’s informants, the auditors spent only about 15 minutes explaining the new computer procedures and the remainder of the two-hour session talking about the advantages of having a union. At the end of the meetings they had passed out union membership cards. At the meeting with mgmt., the assistants admitted that they favored a union and had been trying to get other employees to join. Attorney Smith opinioned that the assistant auditors were a part of management and, therefore, that union activity by them was not protected under the NLRA.

Three employees at the bank’s main office were observed by a supervisor in a part of the bank other than where they worked, handing out union membership cards to other employees during working hours.

Johnson set up meetings with small groups of employees as a question and answer session. The first written communication to the employees from management was sent soon thereafter.

Employees reported to their supervisors that they had received a letter from the International Metalworkers Union (IMU) addressed to their homes.

In addition, the bank filed with the IRS a request to institute a hospital medical plan to be paid entirely by the bank. The bank produced witnesses and correspondence to show that work on the hospital medical plan had been undertaken before the bank was aware that the union was attempting to organize its employees.

Exhibit 4 included the bank’s statement: If you vote in favor of a union, all of these items (pension and profit sharing plans) are subject to negotiation.

Articulate the critical legal issues:

Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935. The NLRA guaranteed workers the right to join unions without fear of management reprisal. It created the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to enforce this right and prohibited employer from committing unfair labor practices that might discourage organizing or prevent workers from negotiating a union contract.

The most important sections of the NLRA are Section 7, 8, and 9. Section 7 is the heart of the NLRA. It defines protected activity. Stripped to its essential, it reads: Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid and protection.

An employer’s free speech right to communicate his views to his employees is firmly established and cannot be infringed by a union or the NLRB. An employer’s rights cannot outweigh the equal rights of the employees to associate freely, as those rights are embodied in section 7 and protected by Section 8(a)(1) and the proviso to Section 8 (c) of the NLRA.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

An employer is free to communicate to his employees any of his general views about unionism or any of his specific views about a particular union, so long as the communications do not contain a threat of reprisal or force or promise of benefit. He may even make a prediction as to the precise effects he believes unionization will have on his company. In such a case, however, the prediction must be carefully phrased on the basis of objective fact to convey an employer’s belief as to demonstrably probable consequences beyond his control or to convey a management decision already arrived as to close the plant in case of unionization.

If there is any implication that an employer may or may not take action solely on his own initiative for reasons unrelated to economic necessities and known only to him, the statement is no longer a reasonable prediction based on available facts but a threat of retaliation based on misrepresentation and coercion, and as such without the protection of U.S. Constitution Ame