Anheuser-Busch, Inc. v. Weber, ANHEUSER-BUSC

• Decision Date: 08 February 1954
• Docket Number: No. 43522,ANHEUSER-BUSC,No. 1,I,43522,1
• Citation: 364 Mo. 573,265 S.W.2d 325
• Parties: , 33 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2519, 33 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2754, 25 Lab.Cas. P 68,137, 25 Lab.Cas. P 68,208 nc. v. WEBER et al
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Page 325

265 S.W.2d 325

364 Mo. 573, 33 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2519,

33 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2754,

25 Lab.Cas. P 68,137, 25 Lab.Cas. P 68,208

ANHEUSER-BUSCH, Inc. v. WEBER et al.

No. 43522.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 1.

Feb. 8, 1954.

Motion for Rehearing or to Transfer to Court en Banc Denied

March 8, 1954.

Roessel, Boxdorfer & Brownell, Robert A. Roessel, Keith M. Brownell, St. Louis, for appellants.

Mark D. Eagleton, Thomas F. Eagleton, St. Louis, J. J. Thyson, St. Louis, for respondent.

CONKLING, Judge.

Anheuser-Busch, Inc., hereinafter called plaintiff, operates a brewery and has its principal place of business and plant (covering about 72 city blocks) in the City of St. Louis, Missouri, where it has about 6000 employees. It is there engaged in manufacturing and selling beer, yeast, corn products and other commodities. It purchases and there uses large quantities of grains and other raw materials which are transported and delivered to it at its St. Louis plant by common and private carriers and otherwise. In its St. Louis plant it processes said raw materials into salable commodities. From its said plant it transports and distributes its manufactured commodities for sale to wholesalers, dealers and to warehouses locally and in other cities, by common and private carriers and in its own trucks. In its St. Louis plant plaintiff employs 220 Machinists who are members of the International Association of Machinists, District No. 9, hereinafter called the 'Union.' Defendants are individually members of, and herein represent the entire class of persons who are members of District 9 of the Union. The Union is the bargaining agent of the above mentioned 220 Machinists. Defendants have appealed from a judgment of the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis, which, after a hearing on the merits, on October 3, 1952, awarded plaintiff a permanent injunction against the defendants and the Union picketing plaintiff's plant.

There is no labor dispute between plaintiff and its employees, and no unfair labor practice is here involved. District No. 9 International Association of Machinists A. F. of L., and Anheuser-Busch, Inc., 101 N.L.R.B., page 346, Labor Management Relations Act, 1947 (Taft-Hartley Act) amending the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, 29 U.S.C.A. Secs. 151 et seq., 152(9).

The petition of plaintiff prayed an injunction to restrain the picketing of plaintiff's plant by defendants and the Union alleging that such picketing was in furtherance of an unlawful conspiracy, agreement and combination in restraint of trade in the transportation or competition in the importation, transportation, manufacture, purchase and sale of products and commodities in this State in violation of Section 416.010, RSMo 1949, V.A.M.S.; that defendants and the Union members had unlawfully conspired and seek to compel plaintiff to conspire with the Union members against certain contractors and their employees, and that the picketing of plaintiff's plant was an illegal and coercive act of such conspiracy; and that as a result of such conspiracy and picketing plaintiff was prevented from receiving raw materials in transportation, operating its plant, and transporting its products.

Defendants answered admitting the Union did go on strike on April 7, 1952, and did then place a picket line around plaintiff's plant, and further alleged the picketing was without violence 'to tell the world of their position'; the answer also made denial of certain allegations, and alleged plaintiff 'has an adequate remedy at law and under the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, and the Labor Management Relations Act.'

From the agreed statement of facts and from the evidence in the record before him, and now before us, the Chancellor could have found, and did factually find:

(1) That plaintiff's above noted manufacturing processes are continuous in nature and interrelated, and the involuntary stoppage of any or all such processes automatically results in progressive spoilage of partially processed grains, yeast, malt and other substances to plaintiff's extensive damage; that the Union members in plaintiff's employment are steadily employed in plaintiff's plant in the repair and maintenance of plaintiff's machinery and equipment therein; that plaintiff's business now and in the future requires and involves the regular and necessary expansion of its plant and facilities by constructing new buildings and expanding existing buildings, and installing, moving and perfecting new machinery and equipment therein, and that plaintiff does not have the means or facilities or equipment for doing that work with its own employees; that for 30 years it has been necessary to, and that new construction and expansion work has always regularly been contracted out by plaintiff to independent construction contractors and such work was not done by plaintiff through any of its regular or part time employees; that the only exception to that was in 1949, when, to end a controversy between the Union and certain Millwright employees of an independent contractor, plaintiff finished certain new machinery installation with its own regularly employed Machinists; that the finishing of that 1949 work by plaintiff resulted in a work stoppage on the construction job by the Carpenters (with whom the Millwrights are affiliated); that the above independent construction contractors perform their above mentioned work for plaintiff with their own employees who are represented under collective bargaining agreements by the Millwrights Union, an affiliate of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, and those employees of the contractors are not subject to any control by plaintiff, and plaintiff does not employ, discharge or supervise the functions of any of those employees; that there is no contractor, large or small, in the St. Louis area whom plaintiff could select for its above new construction and expansion work whose employees are represented by the Machinists Union;

(2) That for at least 25 years the Machinists Union and the Millwrights have been engaged in an unresolved and continuing jurisdictional dispute regarding the representation of the above independent construction contractors' employees who move, erect and install machinery in buildings which have been expanded and enlarged, and in newly constructed buildings; that the Millwrights are affiliated with the Building and Construction Trades Council in St. Louis and the Machinists Union is not a member of that Council; that the Millwrights and Machinists Unions each make recurring demands upon such independent contractors, and picketing has resulted, when demands are not met; that plaintiff is not a party to any of those jurisdictional disputes;

(3) That in the collective bargaining agreements between plaintiff and the Uhion, beginning with the first such agreement in 1948, and through the 1951 agreement, it was agreed by plaintiff, in Section 1 of Article VII, that all the therein listed Machinist work 'performed within the employer's plant by the employer shall be performed' by the Union; that such agreement expressed the traditional relationship of the plaintiff and the Union over a 25 year period and has never been and is not now in dispute; that at the demand of defendants, the 1951 agreement of plaintiff and the Union also provided, in Section 2 of Article VII, that: 'In the event it becomes necessary to have such work hereinbefore described contracted out, the Employer shall let out such work to and select contractors who have with the International Association of Machinists collective bargaining agreements which contain provisions corresponding to or consistent with the aforesaid jurisdictional limitations'; that in practice that provision was interpreted by the Union to require that in constructing new buildings and expanding existing ones plaintiff should let such proposed new construction and expansion work only to independent construction contractors who agreed to do the moving, erecting and installing of machinery therein with only employees represented by the Machinists Union, and the Union thereby sought to secure for Union members the work traditionally performed by members of other unions; that by such attempt of the Union to so obtain work it had never before performed for plaintiff the Union sought, through the exercise of coercive pressure on plaintiff, to expand the scope of its representation to cover and include employees of the above independent construction contractors;

(4) That before the expiration date of the 1951 bargaining agreement plaintiff advised the Union that it could not agree to the reinsertion in the bargaining agreement for 1952 of the above set out Section 2 of Article VII, and that it had been advised by its legal counsel that, as above interpreted by the Union, Section 2 of Article VII would require and compel plaintiff to become a party with the Union to a common law conspiracy against the above independent construction contractors and their employees, and that such conspiracy was also in violation of Section 416.010 RSMo 1949, V.A.M.S., the Missouri statute which declares combinations in restraint of trade to be a conspiracy;

(5) That in the negotiations for a collective bargaining agreement for 1952 between plaintiff and the Union, and prior to April 7, 1952, plaintiff and the Union were in accord with regard to all provisions of the proposed 1952 agreement except the above set out Section 2 of Article VII; that in such negotiations the Union, through the individual defendants, made clear the Union's intention that plaintiff should refuse to contract any work to any independent construction contractor unless the latter would agree to do the work of moving, erecting and installing all machinery in connection with the construction of new buildings and the expansion of existing buildings with employees who were represented by the Machinists Union;

(6) That the Union...