Mangold Markets, Inc.

MANGOLD MARKETS Mangold Markets, Inc. and United Food and Com- mercial Workers, AFL-CIO & CLC, District Local 340 affiliated with United Food and Com- mercial Workers International Union, AFL- CIO & CLC. Case 17-CA-11134 24 June 1986 DECISION AND ORDER BY MEMBERS DENNIS, JOHANSEN, AND BABSON On 27 April 1983 Administrative Law Judge Timothy D. Nelson issued the attached decision. The Respondent filed exceptions and a supporting brief. The General Counsel filed a cross-exception and a brief in support and in answer to the Re- spondent's exceptions. The National Labor Relations Board has delegat- ed its authority in this proceeding to a three- member panel. The Board has considered the decision and the record in light of the exceptions and briefs and has decided to affirm the judge's rulings, findings, I and conclusions and to adopt the recommended Order as modified.2 ORDER The National Labor Relations Board adopts the recommended Order of the administrative law judge as modified below and orders that the Re- spondent, Mangold Markets, Inc., Pittsburg, Kansas, its officers, agents, successors, and assigns, shall take the action set forth in the Order as modi- fied. 1. Insert the following as paragraphs 1(a) and (b). "1. Cease and desist from "(a) Failing and refusing to recognize and bar- gain collectively in good faith with United Food and Commercial Workers AFL-CIO & CLC, Dis- trict Local 340 affiliated with United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, AFL- CIO & CLC as the exclusive representative of em- ployees in the following unit: "All regular part-time and full-time meat de- partment employees including meat cutters and wrappers, employed at the retail grocery store I In adopting the judge's finding that Darlington was a member of the predecessor's work force, we stress that Darlington was "bumped" from the Broadway location by a more senior meatcutter , that he remained an employee of Foodtown until 2 weeks before it ceased operations (when his work schedule was reduced to I day a week), and, finally, during that brief period before he was employed by the Respondent, he worked as a "vacation relief ' for other union-affiliated employers through referrals from the union's hiring hall 2 The judge inadvertently failed to include narrow injunctive language in the recommended Order and notice 773 located at 318 South Broadway, Pittsburg, Kansas, but excluding grocery employees, office clerical employees, professional employ- ees, guards and supervisors as defined in the Act. "(b) In any like or related manner restraining or coercing employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed them by Section 7 of the Act." 2. Substitute the attached notice for that of the administrative law judge. APPENDIX NOTICE To EMPLOYEES POSTED BY ORDER OF THE NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD An Agency of the United States Government The National Labor Relations Board has found that we violated the National Labor Relations Act and has ordered us to post and abide by this notice. Section 7 of the Act gives employees these rights. To organize To form, join, or assist any union To bargain collectively through representa- tives of their own choice To act together for other mutual aid or pro- tection To choose not to engage in any of these protected concerted activities. WE WILL NOT refuse to recognize and bargain with the Union as the exclusive representative of our employees in the unit below and, on the Union's request, WE WILL promptly meet and bar- gain collectively in good faith with the Union re- specting wages, hours of work, and other terms and conditions of employment of those employees. All regular part-time and full-time meat de- partment employees including meat cutters and wrappers, employed at the retail grocery store located at 318 South Broadway, Pittsburg, Kansas, but excluding grocery employees, office clerical employees, professional employ- ees, guards and supervisors as defined in the Act. WE WILL NOT in any like or related manner interfere with, restrain, or coerce you in the exer- cise of the rights guaranteed you by Section 7 of the Act. MANGOLD MARKETS, INC. Donald B. Zavelo, Esq., for the General Counsel. Richard W. Noble, Esq. (Shugart, Thomson & Kilroy), of Kansas City, Missouri, for Respondent Mangold. 280 NLRB No. 90 774 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD Phillip L Immesote, Secretary-Treasurer, for Charging Party Local 340. DECISION STATEMENT OF THE CASE TIMOTHY D. NELSON, Administrative Law Judge. After investigation of a charge filed on August 5 , 1982,11 by the above-named Charging Party (Union) against Mangold Markets, Inc. (Respondent), the Regional Di- rector for Region 17 of the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint against Respondent on Septem- ber 21, which alleged in substance that Respondent was a legal successor in the operation of a grocery store whose meat department employees had been historically represented by the Union and that Respondent had re- fused to recognize and bargain in good faith with the Union as such representative after its takeover of the store, in violation of Section 8(a)(5) and (1) of the Na- tional Labor Relations Act (Act). Respondent duly answered, admitting certain alleged facts warranting the exercise of jurisdiction by the Board, that certain individuals were its supervisory agents, and that the meat department unit in question was an appropriate one for collective-bargaining pur- poses, but denying a series of allegations all linked to the legal proposition that Respondent owed a successor's duty to recognize and bargain with the Union.2 On due notice, I heard the matter in trial at Pittsburg, Kansas, on November 30, at which time all parties ap- peared as indicated and were afforded full opportunity to present evidence and to make argument. The General Counsel and counsel for Respondent have filed timely posttrial briefs, which I have fully considered. FINDINGS OF FACT 1. BACKGROUND AND OVERVIEW From stipulations of the parties and undisputed evi- dence elsewhere in the record , I find as follows The Union was the recognized representative of meat department employees employed by Foodtown Stores, Inc. (Foodtown) in a single, multistore unit consisting of Foodtown's various stores in Kansas and Missouri, in- cluding the store involved at 318 South Broadway in Pittsburg, Kansas (the Broadway store). The most recent labor agreement between Foodtown and the Union was effective January 27, 1980, through October 1, 1983. Under Foodtown's operation, the meat departments in the various stores were under the common, centralized direction of Foodtown's "Director of Meat Operations," an individual responsible for establishing and enforcing general operating policies and for the administration of the labor agreement and other personnel -related matters within the various meat departments. The meat depart- ment in each store included at least one "market manag- i All dates hereafter are in 1982, unless otherwise specified 2 Respondent's answer denying certain complaint allegations about the background leading up to Respondent's acquisition of the store in ques- tion has been effectively amended, sub silentio, by a stipulation received into evidence at the opening of the trial er"s who, despite his title, was nevertheless included within the recognized bargaining unit. Beginning in 1980, and as part of a gradually accelerat- ing process linked to financial problems, Foodtown was required to make many adjustments in the traditional staffing and scheduling arrangements at its various stores. This resulted in, among other things, reductions in the numbers of persons employed and/or the hours they worked at some of the least profitable meat departments and the reassignment, in turn, of some meat department employees at stores thus affected to other stores where they could exercise "bumping" rights linked to relative seniority. This type of "interchange" within the multi- store bargaining unit was in addition to the more tradi- tional types of interchange practice associated with the need to maintain constant staffing levels during vacation or other absences of employees regularly assigned to a given store's meat department, or those related to the need to staff a new store. On May 15, Foodtown found its financial difficulties to be insuperable and it closed all its stores. On the day that this occurred, the bargaining unit employee comple- ment within the meat department at the Broadway store consisted of the "market manager," Bob Richardson,' the journeyman meatcutter, Jack Hendricks, and the meat wrapper, Betty Trites. On May 16, Foodtown surrendered its stores to Wet- terau, Inc., a principal supplier and major creditor. On May 17, Wetterau sold a number of the stores, including the Broadway store, to Associated Wholesale Grocers. The latter, in turn, sold the Broadway store to Respond- ent on June 1.5 The Broadway store was reopened for business by Re- spondent about June 15. This followed a brief period during which Respondent's owner, Bob Mangold, locat- ed and hired key personnel and consulted with them about plans for reopening. The Broadway store was in a state of disuse between May 15 and June 15, but, on re- opening, the facility and its fixtures and equipment, the products it sold, and the customer market it served all were essentially the same as the status quo ante the May 15 surrender of the Broadway store by Foodtown. Re- spondent knew at the time it reopened of the existence of the labor agreement between the Union and Foodtown. The complement within the meat department when the Broadway store reopened consisted of three persons. The former market manager, Bob Richardson, was rehired and given the same title by Mangold, although it is Re- spondent's contention that Richardson's rehire was ac- companied by the conferral-and subsequent exercise- of additional authority and responsibilities sufficient now to cloak him with supervisory status. The others hired were Paul Darlington, a journeyman meatcutter, and 3 Within the labor agreement, the same individual was referred to as a head cutter * The parties stipulated that Bob Richardson was not a supervisor within the meaning of the Act during the period he was the manager or head cutter in the Broadway store under Foodtown's management 5 Respondent , a Kansas corporation , operates retail grocery stores and derives annual volumes exceeding $500,000 from those operations It also purchases goods and services directly from outside Kansas valued in excess of $50,000 MANGOLD MARKETS Judy Richardson, Bob Richardson's estranged wife, as a meat wrapper. Darlington and Judy Richardson had each worked previously in those capacities for Food- town, including, occasionally, at the Broadway store; and each had been members of the Union during their employment by Foodtown. 6 Respondent's store manag- er, Michael King, who had been the manager of the Broadway store under Foodtown's operation as well, knew that Darlington and Judy Richardson had been members of the Union and he assumed that they contin- ued to be members of the Union at the time they were hired by Respondent. On July 30, the Union's secretary-treasurer, Phillip Im- mesote, dispatched a mailgram to Respondent, to the at- tention of Bob Mangold, asserting the Union's belief that Respondent was a "legal successor" to Foodtown and requesting that Respondent "immediately meet . . . and ... bargain" with the Union over "wages , benefits and working conditions for the employees in the appropriate bargaining unit." On August 3, Bob Mangold replied by telegram asking the Union to "state the basis" on which it claimed that Respondent was a successor . On August 5, by certified letter, Immesote wrote to Mangold stating the Union's belief that Respondent was "a successor em- ployer under the National Labor Relations Act and ap- propriate regulations thereof." Respondent has admittedly refused at all times since July 30 to recognize and bargain with the Union as the representative of the meat department employees at the Broadway store. II. ANALYSIS, FURTHER FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS OF LAW Introduction The General Counsel stresses that Respondent ac- quired the Broadway store and continued to operate it in a substantially unchanged way, continuing to employ in its meat department former Foodtown employees who had worked in essentially the same capacities (although not continuously in the Broadway store) as they had under Foodtown's operation and, therefore, that Re- spondent owed a "successor's" duty to recognize and bargain with the Union. The General Counsel places pri- 6 had been a "regular" employee at the Broadway store for a period in 1976 until he was "bumped" by a more senior meatcutter and was then sent to a succession of positions at other Foodtown stores in Kansas He left the employ of Foodtown entirely sometime in early May, within 2 weeks of Foodtown's overall cessation of operations, when his schedule at the Foodtown store where he was then working was reduced to I day a week For the remaining period before he was hired by Re- spondent, Darlington obtained "vacation relief" work for other union-af- filiated employers through referrals out of the Union's hiring hall He was working for a Safeway store on this basis when hired by Respondent to work in the reopened Broadway store Judy Richardson had worked on a casual , "vacation relief," basis for Foodtown for a period of several years, including at the Broadway store, before obtaining sufficient hours to be treated as a "seniority member" entitling her to a regular assignment Since a point in 1979, she worked a regular, full-time schedule for Foodtown, although, due to her relatively low seniority, she was regularly bumped from location to location Within the final 3 years of her employment by Foodtown, she worked once for a period of about 2 weeks as vacation relief at the Broadway store. She was working at Foodtown's Fort Scott, Kansas store when Foodtown ceased all operations on May 15 775 mary legal reliance on the principles of successorship es- tablished in Burns7 in which the Court stated: [A] mere change of ownership in the employing in- dustry is not such an "unusual circumstance" as to affect the force of the Board's certification . . . if a majority of employees after the change of owner- ship or management were employed by the preced- ing employer. [406 U.S. at 279.] [W]here a bargaining unit remains unchanged and a majority of the employees hired by the new em- ployer are represented by a recently certified bar- gaining agents there is little basis for faulting the Board's implementation of the express mandates of § 8(a)(5) and § 9(a) by ordering the employer to bargain with the incumbent Union. [Id. at 281.] In resisting the General Counsel's contention that it has merely succeeded to the operation of the Broadway store and has merely continued it in the same manner as it existed under Foodtown's operation, Respondent stresses two principal factors: First, the shift from its being merely a unit in a large, centrally directed, multi- store chain to a locally controlled single-store operation and, second, that the employees who staffed the meat de- partment (excluding Manager Bob Richardson) had not been employed at the Broadway store immediately before Foodtown was forced to surrender it. These fac- tors, argues Respondent, suffice to warrant treating Re- spondent as an essentially new entity, free of the bargain- ing obligations that attend succession to the operation of a business whose employees are represented by a union. I conclude below that, although there are no strict fac- tual precedents in Board annals, Respondent's acquisition of the Broadway store and its hiring of employees in the meat department who had only recently ceased working in the same capacities within a union-represented multi- store bargaining unit that had included the Broadway store did not present such an "unusual circumstance" as to create a question concerning the representation of those employees when none had previously existed. III. APPLICABLE DOCTRINES The general principles commonly applicable to most of the successorship questions presented herein are set forth in, e.g., Stewart Granite Enterprises, supra, and will not be repeated in detail here. At the risk of oversimplification of the often subtle or elusive chain of reasoning that had informed and connected the holdings in the successor- ship cases,9 I believe it fair to state that the analytical 7 NLRB v Burns Security Service, 406 U.S 272 (1972) 6 It is established that Board "certification" of a union's representative status is not necessary to the application of the Burns doctrine and that, as herein, a union's incumbency as a recognized bargaining agent will normally have legal significance equal to that of a certification See, e.g , Stewart Granite Enterprises, 255 NLRB 569, 572 fn 16 (1981) 9 Judge Leventhal's comments are still apt "[t]he subject of successor- ship is shrouded in somewhat impressionistic approaches ." Machinists Dis- trict Lodge 94 Y. NLRB, 414 F 2d 1135, 1139 (D.C. Cir 1969 ) Certainly, each successorship case involves a different mix of facts, and because a certain factor is stressed by the Board in one case as tending to suggest Continued 776 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD focus authorized by the' precedents "is on the question of "continuity"-usually subdivided into two subcategories, continuity of operations generally as between predeces- sor and alleged successor, and continuity of the employ- ee complement, with the latter factor almost always being decisive in finding successorship when such em- ployee continuity may be found.' 0 Concerning the "continuity of operations" question, I would have no difficulty in finding such continuity here in the operation of the Broadway store, especially viewed from the perspective of the employees in the meat department unit. The store always was, and re- mains, after all, a retail 'grocery store. The meat depart- ment always was, and is, a place where meat products are cut, displayed, and priced according to a virtually standard scheme, in part influenced by Federal and state health regulations, and otherwise by the exigencies of competition and customer expectations. It was a three- person operation before Respondent took it over and it remained so thereafter. Slight operational adjustments, which the record indicated took place after Respondent took over, including as I assume, arguendo, the elevation in the status of Bob Richardson to a position involving the occasional exercise of supervisory authority," do nor truly show discontinuity in operations; rather, they reflect mere operational refinements. Although the acqui- sition of the Broadway store by Respondent necessarily resulted in its becoming a more autonomous operation than it was when it was part of the Foodtown chain, Re- spondent had not shown that this change had materially affected working conditions of employees within the meat department.' 2 And it is established that, absent such a showing, the mere reduction in the size of the unit from one which is multilocation in character to one in a single location does not defeat successorship provid- ed that the succeeding unit is appropriate and that a ma- jority of the employees in it were similarly employed by the predecessor owner. Stewart Granite, supra, 255 NLRB at 573, and cases cited. Respondent has conceded the appropriateness of the single-store unit of meat department employees and it does not contest the general proposition just stated. It argues, however, that the employees now employed in the meat department (i.e., Darlington and Judy Richard- son) cannot properly be treated for successorship pur- poses as "employees of the predecessor" because neither of them were employed at the Broadway store immedi- ately prior to its shutdown and surrender by Foodtown and, additionally concerning Darlington, that he had successorship does not mean that its absence in the next case will require an opposite result 10 See Stewart Granite, supra, 255 NLRB at 573 fn 19 and cases cited 11 There is credible and undisputed evidence in the record that Bob Mangold told Bob Richardson when he hired him that the meat depart- ment would be Richardson's "baby," that Richardson was allowed to make final staffing choices and that Richardson was the person responsi- ble for the decision to hire cleanup personnel and a temporary substitute for Judy Richardson In addition , Bob Richardson receives $100 per week more than the next-highest paid meat department employee and he directs the work priorities in the department (although the latter direc- tions are rather routine in character) These are prima facie indications that Bob Richardson is a supervisor within the meaning of Sec 2(11) of the Act 12 Parkwood 1 G A , 201 NLRB 905, 909 (1973) fully severed his employment tie with Foodtown before Foodtown ceased all operations. This argument is essen- tially a claim of discontinuity in the employee comple- ment and it presents the most substantial issue in this case. No case has been called to my attention that clearly disposes of this most important question, i.e., whether the fact that Judy Richardson and Paul Darlington had not worked at the Broadway store immediately before Re- spondent acquired it defeats the claim that Respondent owed a successor's duty to bargain with the Union. In Stewart Granite, supra, the Board adopted the' view that when the successor employer intended to use as his ini- tial crew persons who had been employed immediately before the takeover at the same facility and further in- tended to supplement the employee complement by hiring from a pool of employees who had only recently ceased working at the acquired plant, this was sufficient to "demonstrate that Stewart had no basis for entertain- ing any genuine doubt as to the representational desires of his putative work force." 255 NLRB at 575. Implicit- ly, therefore, the Board would not require as a precondi- tion to attachment of successorship consequences that a majority of a successor's intended full employee comple- ment have been employed at the predecessor operation immediately before the takeover. To that extent, Stewart Granite stands for the proposition, inter alia, that an em- ployee's representational desires will not be presumed to have changed simply because he or she had left the employ of the predecessor at some point before the last day on which the predecessor was in operation (Darling- ton's case), or because he or she had been working at an- other location within the predecessor unit when the predecessor ceased operating (Judy Richardson's case), Parkwood I. G.A., supra, is factually close to this case, but ultimately nondispositive. There, Parkwood, the new operator of a single grocery store, which had been part of a local multistore bargaining unit, hired five persons into the relevant unit. Two of them had been working in other stores within the multistore predecessor unit short- ly before the transition occurred. A third, Lewerenz, had been employed in the same store immediately before the takeover; but he withdrew his union membership within 5 days of becoming employed by Parkwood. The other two employees either had no prior history of employ- ment at any of the predecessor's stores, or had no recent employment at any of those stores. The administrative law judge concluded that the General Counsel had failed to establish that a majority of the employees in the new, single-store unit were represented by the union, com- menting about the two who had been employed at other area stores in the multistore unit that "it may not be rea- sonably assumed that the desires of these two employees concerning unionization have not altered as a result of the transition."'s Alternatively, however, the judge rea- soned that Lewerenz' withdrawal from membership shortly after commencing employment for Parkwood is The ,fudge's reasoning in so concluding is not separately set forth, but his conclusion is expressly linked to the "circumstances of this case" (ibid ) MANGOLD MARKETS "dissipates any reasonable assumption that the Retail Clerks in fact represented a majority." 201 NLRB at 910. Respondent relies heavily on the judge's comments with respect to the first two employees and the legal sig- nificance that he attached to their having made a "transi- tion" from other stores within the formerly multistore unit. Respondent's reliance is plainly not frivolous, but neither do I regard the quoted comments as binding on me in this case when an independent rationale (Lewer- enz' withdrawal from membership) sufficed in itself to "dissipate" the union's majority in the new unit. Argu- ably, -therefore, the "transition" comments are merely obiter dicta because of the existence of a sufficient inde- pendent ground cited to establish a lack of union majori- ty. Alternatively, because the judge expressly linked his "transition" comments to the "circumstances of this case," they do not govern the result in this case, which presents facts that more strongly favor the imposition of successorship consequences, as I discuss next. As the General Counsel persuasively points out, the multistore bargaining unit in Parkwood that preceded Parkwood's acquisition of the store in question , unlike the multistore Foodtown unit herein , was not shown to be highly integrated . Thus, herein, substantial employee interchange among the stores in the multiemployer unit was commonplace and, unlike in Parkwood, the contrac- tual terms for Foodtown employees were identical for all locations. 14 Accordingly, placing particular emphasis on the highly integrated nature of the predecessor Foodtown oper- ation, the mere fact that Judy Richardson and Paul Dar- lingon had not worked at the Broadway store immediate- ly prior to its closure by Foodtown is seemingly of no significance in determining their "desires ... concerning unionization " Indeed, as was recognized in Parkwood, the ultimate focus in these cases is on the question whether the new owner of a substantially unchanged business can "reasonably entertain a good faith doubt" about his employees' continued representational desires. 201 NLRB at 910 . See also Burns, supra, 406 U.S. at 278, employing a "good faith doubt" analysis. Here, Respond- ent's agents concededly knew of the employment history of both Judy Richardson and Darlington, and Respond- ent's agents concededly had no reason to doubt that each still retained membership in the Union, as each did. Cou- pling this with the fact that each had been recently em- ployed within the same , highly integrated unit that in- cluded meat department employees at the Broadway store enhances, rather than dissipates, the assumption that Darlington and Judy Richardson's "desires ... con- cerning unionization" would not have changed merely because they became employed at a different store loca- tion from the one at which each had recently worked. Those circumstances, therefore, cause me to conclude that Respondent owed a successor 's duty to recognize and, on request, to bargain in good faith with the Union as the exclusive representative of the meat department 14 In Parkwood, supra, the judge specifically noted the absence of any evidence of multistore interchange (201 NLRB 909, fn 28) and specifical- ly found that each store within the multistore unit was treated separately within the applicable labor agreements , "particularly as to the different schedules of wage rates applicable to specific stores " Id. 777 employees at the Broadway store. Because Respondent admittedly failed and refused to do so, I would sustain the complaint. CONCLUSIONS OF LAW 1. Respondent is an employer engaged in commerce within the meaning of Section 2(6) and (7) of the Act. 2. The Union is a labor organization within the mean- ing of Section 2(5) of the Act. 3. At all times material herein , the Union has been and is now the exclusive representative of employees in the following described unit , an appropriate one for collec- tive-bargaining purposes: All regular part-time and full-time meat de- partment employees including meat cutters and wrappers, employed at the retail grocery store located at 318 South Broadway, Pittsburg, Kansas, but excluding grocery employees, office clerical employees, professional employ- ees, guards and supervisors as defined in the Act. 4. Respondent is the successor to the operation of the store referred to above in the description of the unit. 5. By failing and refusing on and after July 30, 1982, to recognize the Union as the exclusive representative of employees in the unit and, at the Union's request , to bar- gain collectively in good faith with the Union over the wages, hours of work, and other terms and conditions of employment in the unit, Respondent has engaged in and is engaging in unfair labor practices within the meaning of Section 8(a)(5) and, derivatively, Section 8(a)(1) of the Act. THE REMEDY The General Counsel appropriately seeks a remedial order directing Respondent to recognize and bargain col- lectively in good faith with the Union over terms and conditions of employment in the meat department unit, and to post a notice to employees setting forth their rights and Respondent's obligations under such an order. In the absence of any proof of unlawful unilateral changes attending Respondent 's succession to the Broad- way store's operation and given the General Counsel's disclaimer at the trial of any contention that a make- whole order would be appropriate , I will limit my rec- ommended Order to the one sought by the General Counsel. On these findings of fact and conclusions of law and on the entire record, I issue the following recommend- ed" 25 If no exceptions are filed as provided by Sec 102 46 of the Board's Rules and Regulations, the findings, conclusions, and recommended Order shall, as provided in Sec 102 48 of the Rules, be adopted by the Board and all objections to them shall be deemed waived for all pur- poses 778 DECISIONS OF NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD ORDER The Respondent , Mangold Markets, Inc., Pittsburg, Kansas, its officers, agents, successors, and assigns, shall 1. Cease and desist from failing and refusing to recog- nize and bargain collectively in good faith with United Food and Commercial Workers AFL-CIO & CLC, Dis- trict Local 340 affiliated with United Food and Commer- cial Workers International Union, AFL-CIO & CLC as the exclusive representative of employees in the unit. 2. Take the following affirmative action necessary to effectuate the purposes and policies of the Act. (a) Recognize the Union as the exclusive collective- bargaining representative of employees in the unit and, on the Union's request, promptly meet and bargain col- lectively in good faith with the Union with respect to the wages, hours of work, and other terms and condi- tions of employment of employees in the unit. (b) Post at its store at 318 South Broadway, Pittsburg, Kansas, copies of the attached notice marked "Appen- dix."18 Copies of the notice, on forms provided by the Regional Director for Region 17, after being signed by the Respondent's authorized representative, shall be posted by the Respondent immediately upon receipt and maintained for 60 consecutive days in conspicuous places including all places where notices to employees are cus- tomarily posted. Reasonable steps shall be taken by the Respondent to ensure that the notices are not altered, de- faced, or covered by any other material. (c) Notify the Regional Director in writing within 20 days from the date of this Order what steps the Re- spondent has taken to comply. 16 If this Order is enforced by a judgment of a United States court of appeals, the words in the notice reading "Posted by Order of the Nation- al Labor Relations Board" shall read "Posted Pursuant to a Judgment of the United States Court of Appeals Enforcing an Order of the National Labor Relations Board "