Nat’l Labor Relations Bd. v. Caterpillar Inc.

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Caterpillar bought a South Milwaukee factory that manufactures strip-mining equipment and became the employer party to a collective-bargaining agreement with a United Steelworkers local union. Two months later, a crane operator (a member of the bargaining unit) was killed when a 36-ton crawler crushed him after shifting while being rotated by the crane. He had been lying underneath the crawler to unhook chains attaching it to the crane. Police officers, OSHA agents, company executives, and local union officials, converged within hours on the accident scene. The local union’s officials were not safety specialists. The president of the local union informed Caterpillar’s regional manager that a member of the national union’s emergency response team would come to inspect the accident site. The manager promised to cooperate but changed his mind and, the next day, refused to allow the union investigator to enter the factory. The company stated that because it was cooperating with the police and with OSHA, no further investigation was warranted. The Seventh Circuit enforced the National Labor Relations Board’s order requiring Caterpillar to allow the union’s investigator access to the site. The materials shown the investigator were not an adequate substitute for on-site investigation, and the investigation itself would impose trivial costs on the company. View "Nat'l Labor Relations Bd. v. Caterpillar Inc." on Justia Law