Wausau Steel Corp. v. National Labor Relations Board’s Empirical Analysis
377 F.2d 369 · 1967
Citation profile
36 federal appellate · 1 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 39 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently September 2013 · most notably National Labor Relations Board v. Gissel Packing Co. (1969), National Labor Relations Board v. Ayer Lar Sanitarium (1970)
36 federal appellate · 1 district · 1 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Smith v. Crouse · International Ass'n of Machinists; Tool & Die Makers Lodge No. 35 v. National Labor Relations Board · Franks Bros. v. National Labor Relations Board · United States v. Utah Construction & Mining Co. · American Tobacco Co. v. Green
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 39 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[A]n 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.... 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 the First Amendment.... [The employer in Gissel Packing ] argues that the line between so-called permitted predictions and proscribed threats is too vague to stand up under traditional First Amendment analysis and that the [National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) ] discretion to curtail free speech rights is correspondingly too uncontrolled. It is true that a reviewing court must recognize the [NLRB’s] competence in the first instance to judge the impact of utterances made in the context of the employer-employee relationship. But an employer, who has control over that relationship and therefo”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority“We cannot say where the evidence does not disclose the inappropriateness of the Board’s bargaining order that the Board has exceeded the statutory discretion given it. To devise appropriate remedies and to gauge when the labor atmosphere has been cleared so that a new election may be held are within the Board’s discretion. Id. at 374 .”
1 later decision quote this exact passage“must be judged by their likely import to (the) employees.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.