Obligation to Bargain on Basis of Card Majority: Some Thoughts On the Board's "Decision" in Levi Strauss, or New Straws in Support of Cumberland Shoe

Authors

• Harry L. Browne, Spencer, Fane, Britt & Browne, Kansas City, Missouri.

Publication Date

1969

Abstract

FOLLOWING what must have been a deflating series of reversals by the court of appeals in Cumberland Shoe "card-check" cases, and shortly after the Supreme Court declined to review the Fourth Circuit's section 8(a)(5) decision in Crawford Manufacturing Co. v. NLRB, 2 the Board in Levi Strauss & Co. reasserted its independence from the mainstream or consensus of the judiciary and restated its arguments for resisting attacks on authorization cards when solicitor representations or misrepresentations are involved. As the Board acknowledged, Levi Strauss involved nothing unique, but

because their validity [Board principles] has been questioned by some courts and in some other quarters, we take this occasion to restate our reasons for holding in this case, as we have in the past, that election-purpose statements of the kind here involved are not of an invalidating character.

Some new straws were seized upon in the Levi Strauss restatement of Cumberland Shoe and its unacceptable progeny, but despite five years of competent and constructive criticism by both commentators and the courts, for the most part the decision was "stale wine in old, battered bottles."

Recommended Citation

Browne, Harry L. (1969) "Obligation to Bargain on Basis of Card Majority: Some Thoughts On the Board's "Decision" in Levi Strauss, or New Straws in Support of Cumberland Shoe," Georgia Law Review: Vol. 3: No. 2, Article 6.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/glr/vol3/iss2/6