the company’s financial condition precluded it from agreeing to the Union wage proposal. No claim of financial inability, explicit or implicit, was made by myself or any company official.” Letter from Massey to Craner (Mar. 11, 1997), quoted in Order, 335 N.L.R.B. at 334. And when the Union persisted in requesting the information, Lakeland’s attorney again wrote that “[a]t no time did I or any Company official claim a present inability to pay or a prospective inability to pay during the life of the contract being negotiated.” Letter from Massey to Craner (Mar. 27, 1997), quoted in Order, 335 N.L.R.B. at 335. In view of these clarifying statements, the Board could not plausibly conclude that Lakeland asserted an inability to pay. See Georgia-Pacific Corp., 305 N.L.R.B. 112, 116 (1991) (<HOLDING>). Indeed, the Union understood as much. In the
holding that a subsequent letter made it clear that respondent was not pleading poverty or an inability to retain the contractual status quo simply an unwillingness to continue to pay fringe benefits or wages that would make competition more difficult holding that a plaintiff cannot assert a statutory claim for wages under the labor law if he has no enforceable contractual right to those wages holding that the explicit status quo provisions together with   2 first form an integrated harmonious scheme for preserving the status quo from the beginning of the major dispute through the final 30day coolingoff period holding that the scope of the average weekly wage definition is not unlimited and concluding that it excludes fringe benefits recognizing that a limit on the governments ability to enter a consent decree would make it substantially more difficult to settle title vii litigation