## Facts

- Crown Cork & Seal Company operated an aluminum-can plant in Sugar Land, Texas and implemented an employee-involvement structure called the “Socio-Tech System.”
- The system used seven standing employee-participation committees/teams composed of employees and management representatives, addressing matters such as production, quality, training, attendance, safety, maintenance, and discipline.
- Committees made decisions through discussion and consensus; management participants had no formal veto or superior voting authority within the committees.
- Four production teams, each led by one management team leader and staffed primarily by production and maintenance workers, exercised significant shop-floor authority, including stopping production lines, stopping deliveries over quality concerns, assigning tasks, and handling certain disciplinary matters.
- Although a management team and plant manager retained ultimate authority, committee decisions were commonly implemented without higher-level review, and the plant manager reportedly rarely overruled committee decisions.
- An employee filed an unfair labor practice charge alleging the committees were unlawful employer-dominated “company unions” barred by NLRA § 8(a)(2).
- A regional office initially found the committees unlawful; an Administrative Law Judge found no violation; the Board reviewed exceptions and affirmed the ALJ.

## Issues

1. Whether the employee committees/teams were “labor organizations” under NLRA § 2(5) because they existed, at least in part, for “dealing with” the employer concerning terms and conditions of employment.
2. If they were “labor organizations,” whether Crown unlawfully dominated or interfered with them in violation of NLRA § 8(a)(2), or whether the committees’ delegated managerial authority placed them outside § 2(5).

## Decision

- The NLRB affirmed the ALJ and dismissed the § 8(a)(2) complaint.
- The Board held that Crown’s committees and teams were not “labor organizations” within § 2(5).
- Because § 2(5) was not satisfied, maintaining the committees did not violate § 8(a)(2).

## Legal Principles

- Under NLRA § 2(5), “dealing with” generally connotes a bilateral, representational pattern in which a group engages management through proposals and responses about grievances or working conditions.
- An employee-involvement body that functions within the employer’s decision-making structure by exercising delegated managerial or supervisory authority to make and implement binding operational decisions is less likely to be “dealing with” the employer for § 2(5) purposes.
- Employer-created committees remain subject to § 8(a)(2) scrutiny when they operate as representative bodies that engage in back-and-forth exchanges with management over terms and conditions of employment, rather than as entities executing delegated management functions.

## Conclusion

The Board treated Crown’s Socio-Tech teams as part of the plant’s managerial decision-making system because they exercised real, binding operational authority, and therefore concluded they were not § 2(5) labor organizations and could not support a § 8(a)(2) unlawful-domination finding.


Crown, Cork & Seal Co., 334 N.L.R.B. 699 (2001)