Sewell Manufacturing Co.
National Labor Relations Board
138 N.L.R.B. 66 (1962)
- Written by Abby Roughton, JD
Facts
Sewell Manufacturing Company (Sewell) (defendant) was an employer in rural Georgia. In 1961, two weeks before a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election to determine whether a union could represent Sewell’s employees as their bargaining representative, Sewell mailed employees (1) a picture of a Black man dancing with a White woman, with a caption indicating that the union pushed for and endorsed federal antidiscrimination efforts, (2) a copy of a newspaper article with a large photograph of a White man—identified as a union leader—dancing with a Black woman, above an article identifying “race mixing” as an issue surrounding the election, and (3) other racially inflammatory material. The union petitioned the NLRB to set aside the election because of Sewell’s preelection mailings, but the NLRB’s regional director refused. The director noted that the NLRB had repeatedly refused to condone employers’ appeals to religious and racial prejudices but found that the items disseminated by Sewell had not exceeded permissible levels of preelection propaganda. The director cited a previous NLRB decision in which the NLRB had held that mentioning racial issues during an election campaign was not per se improper and had allowed an employer to send employees a letter describing a union as being strongly pro-integration because the letter was temperate in tone and factually correct. The union appealed the director’s decision.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning ()
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