In Fansteel, the Board awarded reinstatement with backpay to employees who engaged in a "sit down strike" that led to confrontation with local law enforcement officials.
Holding that "[t]he plain words and meaning of a statute cannot be overcome by a legislative history which, through strained processes of deduction from events of wholly ambiguous significance, may furnish dubious bases for inference in every direction"
311 U.S. 7 (1940) Cited 231 times 3 Legal Analyses
In Republic Steel, supra, the Court refused to enforce an order requiring the employer to pay the full amount of back pay to an employee who had been paid to work for the Work Projects Administration in the meantime.
In N.L.R.B. v. Sands Mfg. Co., 306 U.S. 332, 59 S.Ct. 508, 83 L.Ed. 682, affirming the ruling of this Court in 6 Cir., 96 F.2d 721, the Supreme Court held the employer justified in abandoning further negotiations with the Union when conditions showed the uselessness of continuing with them.