A hоspital here challenges a decision of the National Labor Relations Board that various pre-election acts and statements of a union attempting to become the collective bargaining representative for technical workers at the hospital did not so poison the atmosphere of the election that it should be set aside. For the reasons discussed herein we affirm the Board’s conclusions and enforce its unfair labоr practices order against the hospital.
The employer in this case, Melrose-Wakefield Hospital Association, Inc. (Hospital), is a private, non-profit medical care center. The employees in the collective bargaining unit are described as technical employees, a group of 208 workers including licensed practical nurses, some counsellors and a wide range of health care technicians. The union in this casе, the Massachusetts Hospital Workers Union, Local 880 (Union), sought and received a Decision and Direction of Election from the Board’s Regional Director. The Union won the election, held in September, 1978, by 93 to 76 votes; seven challenged votes were never counted. The Hospital thereafter filed with the Regional Director a long list of objections to the Union’s campaign practices.
Under Board-mandated procedure, the Regional Dirеctor, upon receipt of complaints about the conduct of an election, pursues an investigation, assesses the validity of the objections and orders a hearing if the objecting party has raised “substantial and material factual issues”, 29 C.F.R. § 102.69(c). Here, the Regional Director rejected all the Hospital’s objections, found that no hearing was necessary and certified the Union as the exclusive collective bargaining representative of the technical employees. The Board refused to review the Regional Director’s decision, finding that the Hospital’s appeal raised no substantial issues.
Subsequently, the Hospital refused to bargain with the Union, concededly in order to generate an unfair labor practices order from the Board, which would permit judicial review of the disposition of the Hospital’s objections to the Union’s campaign practices. This order issued in May, 1979, and the Hоspital filed a timely notice of appeal. The Board cross petitioned for enforcement of its order.
In seeking to overturn the Board’s decision overruling the objections, the Hospital faces a heavy burden.
Solon Mfg. Co. v. N. L. R. B.,
Misrepresen tations
The Board has adhered to different standards over the years for evaluating what range of misstatements will so mar an election that its results must be set aside. However, in
General Knit of California, Inc.,
The first group of alleged misrepresentations consists of “libellous and slanderous misstatements” about Hospital management and their handling of funds. The Hospital points first to a Union leaflet which contrasted the employees’ ability to vote out corrupt union officials with their inability to rid themselves of “corrupt or irresponsible hospital management”. The petitioner argues that this leaflet falsely cast it as a “lawbreaker”. The Regional Director properly overruled this objection because the employer had ample time to respond and because the message essentially praised the safeguards of union demo *568 cratic procedures rather than attacked management. This statement is well within the permissible give and take of campaign propaganda.
The Hospital further contends that oral denigrations madе in three telephone calls several weeks before the election tainted the voting. Two calls came from a Union official. She suggested to employees that the Hospital could manipulate its accounts to mask funds as a strategy in wage negotiations and, also, that the Hospital had given privileges, such as lockers and parking places, to selected employees. The Regional Director overruled objections basеd on these calls because the caller had disclaimed any special knowledge of the issues, and admitted she had not been to the Hospital recently and was merely giving her opinion. Under
Hollywood Ceramics,
such nonauthoritative statements are seen as leaving the employee free to form his own evaluation and are, therefore, permissible.
See Trustees of Boston University v. N. L. R. B., supra,
at 308.
Compare N. L. R. B. v. A. G. Pollard Co.,
Another employee was telephoned by an unknown person who claimed that the Hospital president had been indicted for Medicare fraud and that management improperly juggled Hospital funds. The Regional Director discounted the impropriety of the statements because they could not be attributed to the Union. Under settled law, non-party statements require the setting aside of the election only when they are shown to have сreated such an atmosphere of fear and coercion that free choice has become impossible.
E. g., Manning, Maxwell and Moore, Inc. v. N. L. R. B.,
The Hospital next complains about a letter distributed by the Union, wherein it is claimed that the Union had never “fired, tried, or punished a member for crossing a picket line.” (The Hospital obviously takes the view that such a relaxed, not to say lax, view of picket line discipline would appeal to workers.) The Hospital presented to the Regional Director another Union leaflet which had publicly exposed a member for crossing a picket-line; thе Hospital alleges that this was severe punishment. The Regional Director was unimpressed by this objection. He ruled that the Union’s boast, while equivocal, was not such a “gross misrepresentation”, as to transcend acceptable campaign overstatement and become a ground for invalidating the election. See Hollywood Ceramics, supra, at 223-24. We think this judgment was reasonable and within the deference afforded the Board’s expertise.
This same observation is applicablе to the Hospital’s objections to the same letter’s railings against the Hospital’s campaign tactics and the Union’s magnification of the benefits conferred on employees by the collective bargaining process. Employees are fully capable of evaluating such campaign propaganda for what it is worth, see
Solon Mfg. Co. v. N. L. R. B.,
Finally, the Hospital alleges that Union statements distorted Board processes by intimating that the Board had found it guilty of “lawbreaking”, when, in fact, the Board had only filed an unfair labor practices complaint against the Hospital and scheduled a hearing. The Board deals severely with statements that entangle it and its processes in campaign wrangling be
*569
cause of its concern that its integrity or neutrality may be compromised in the eyes of voters.
See, e. g., Monmouth Medical Center v. N. L. R. B.,
Here, however, the Regional Director ruled that the leaflet taken in its entirety, did not substantially mischaracterize the status of the Board’s action. The leaflet is captioned in bold headlines stating: “Hospital charged with breaking the law” (emphasis added). Thе leaflet also states that the Board’s “investigator found that many illegal actions had been committed by the hospital”, and that the “NLRB does not issue a complaint unless substantial evidence exists that the hospital has violated the law.” The Regional Director decided that the leaflet did not claim that the Hospital had been judged guilty of any violation and that while the reference to the unlawful actions “found” by the investigator was an overstatement, this amountеd only to a layman’s rendition which was unlikely to substantially mislead voters as to the status of the Board’s action. 3
We think this question is quite close given the Board’s extreme aversion to erroneous references to its procedures. However, we believe that the ruling in this case was not an abuse of discretion. The document at issue contains only a technically incorrect description of the weight afforded a complaint, while clearly indicating that the Bоard had yet to make an ultimate decision. Thus, this case is distinguishable from other Board cases where a Union clearly and erroneously proclaimed that an employer had been found guilty of an unfair labor practice.
Compare Formco, Inc.,
Other Campaign Practices
The Hospital also presented objections to other miscellaneous Union campaign practices which, it alleges, warrant setting aside the election. First, the Hospital charges that the Union “interrogated” employees on their views and made numerous “harassing” telephone calls to employees’ homes. Invеstigation by the Regional Director revealed six calls to employees, all apparently polite, in two of which the workers were asked how they intended to vote. The Regional Director, noting that Union polling of employees is not objectionable in and of itself,
Springfield Discount, Inc.,
The Hospital also аlleges that the Union created an environment of fear by damaging property. The evidence came from four witnesses, none of whom were qualified to vote in the representation election, who reported two instances of minor but offensive defacement of their automobiles and an additional threat of damage that never materialized. Significantly, the *570 witnesses could not identify who had damaged the cars or made the threats. Two pоints support the Regional Director’s conclusion that these undesirable events did not warrant setting aside the election. First, as discussed above, acts not attributable to a party require the invalidation of an election only when the acts create such an atmosphere of fear that free voter choice is impossible. Second, the likelihood of oppressive intimidation is attenuated here because the victims of the incidents were not eligible voters. Thus, this vandalism could have affected the voting only if the voters had been alarmed by news of its occurrence. No evidence was presented to the Regional Director that eligible voters were even aware of these incidents.
The Hospital also cited as objectionable coercion remarks made to a part-time employee, also ineligible to vote in the representation election, by officеrs of another union to which he belonged in connection with other full-time employment. These encounters, apparently instigated by the Union at the Hospital, involved questioning about the employee’s outspoken opposition to the Union at the Hospital. The officials also told the employee that the Union representative at the Hospital had asked them to tell him to “curtail his activities” and that if the employee “didn’t like it he should leave.” The employee admitted that no retaliation was threatened for his stance at the Hospital. The Regional Director found here no ground for requiring a new election because no threats were made and the part-time worker could not vote. While this behavior by the Union, if our account is accurate, 4 is undesirable, it is nevertheless unclear how it could have affected the voting. The employer had the burden of showing the connection bеtween the behavior and the voting and, no such showing having been made, the Regional Director’s conclusion must stand.
The Hospital challenges the Union for engaging in “surveillance” of employees as they arrived at the voting premises. The investigation revealed only a management report that, a Union representative had watched the employees enter the hospital building to vote and had two conversations with employees in a parking lоt behind the building. He never entered the polling area nor could he see it from his vantage point. The Regional Director properly concluded that there was nothing in his behavior that would justify invalidating the election.
See N. L. R. B. v. Moyer & Pratt, Inc.,
The Hospital, finally, contends that even if no single instance of conduct or misrepresentation to which it objected warrants setting aside the election, the Board should have concluded that the collective impact of Union behаvior destroyed the conditions necessary for free and fair elections. This argument was presented to the Board in only the vaguest terms. We may assume that the Board can conclude upon substantial evidence that a “systematic pattern of activity”, involving misrepresentations or coercion, requires invalidation of an election even when no single act so requires.
See N. L. R. B. v. Decoto Aircraft, Inc.,
Hearing
We think that the Board acted within its broad discretion in refusing to grant the Hospital an evidentiary hearing on its objections. It is elementary that a hearing must be held only where substantial, material issues of fact need to be resolved; that thе burden is on the objecting party to proffer specific evidence to contradict the findings of the Regional Director; and, that this evidence must consist of more than a difference of opinion with the Regional Director’s inferences and conclusions.
E. g., N. L. R. B. v. S. Prawer & Co.,
Order enforced.
Notes
. We reject as frivolous the Hospital’s position that the Board’s rules on post-election review of campaign objections are arbitrary and capricious. When the Regional Director has had to resolve pre-election disputes in a Decision and Direction of Election, objections filed after the election are reviewed by only three members of the Board on a narrow scope of review. We think it a wholly adequate answer to the contention that this procedure is arbitrary to note that Congress in section 3(b) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 153(b), authorizes the Board to delegate any or all of its powers to three member panels of Board members and that the Board has “a wide degree of discretion in establishing the procedure and safeguards necessary to insure the fair and free choice of bargaining representatives by employees.”
N. L. R. B. v. A. G. Tower Co.,
. The Board returned to
Hollywood Ceramics
between the time when the Regional Director made his decision and the time of the Board’s review. The Regional Director thus applied the more tolerant standards of
Shopping Kart Food Market, Inc.,
. We note that the Board decision relied on by the Regional Director in reaching this conclusion was subsequently overturned as an abuse of discretion. Monmouth Medical Center v. N. L. R. B., supra. A similar mischaracterization of the significance of the filing of an unfair labor practices charge was at issue in that case. Nonetheless, we think Monmouth Medical Center is readily distinguishable from the instant case. There the union repeatedly and erroneously construed Board action in six separate documents and disfigured an official Board pamphlet. In short, the union’s impairment of the Board’s neutrality was more substantial and pervasive, the challenged statements falling well within the scope of conduct previously condemned by the Board.
. The Union claimed that it had asked the union officials only to ask the employee if he was opposed to all unions or only the Hospital Union. The Regional Director accepted the employee’s version as true for the purpose of making his ruling.
. The Hospital raises for the first time on appeal an argument that the Board should have applied a stricter standard for examining the Union’s campaign practices because the setting of the representation contest was a hospital’. For this proposition, it loosely relies on
N. L. R. B. v. Baptist Hospital, Inc.,
. The most substantial question of fact was whether the telephone caller who claimed thаt the Hospital president had been indicted for Medicare fraud acted as an agent of the Union. The witness who received the call testified that the speaker identified himself as affiliated with the Union, but the witness could not recall his name nor had the witness ever heard his voice. The Union official who had made two similar calls was a woman. On this evidence, the Regional Director concluded that the call could not be attributed to the Union. The Hospital argues that the existence of other Union officials who were men created a question of fact which should have been resolved after a hearing. However, we think that the Regional Director’s conclusion was supported by substantial evidence. The Hospital’s argument amounts to no more than a disagreement about the correct inference to be drawn from the evidence and does not constitute in itself the kind of specific evidence contradicting the Regional Director’s findings which, under N. L. R. B. v. S. Prawer & Co., supra, would mandate a hearing.
. Other arguments raised by the Hospital are too insubstantial to merit discussion.