National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, 8088.

• Decision Date: 15 June 1936
• Docket Number: No. 8088.,8088.
• Citation: 83 F.2d 998
• Parties: NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. JONES & LAUGHLIN STEEL CORPORATION.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

83 F.2d 998

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. JONES & LAUGHLIN STEEL CORPORATION.^*

No. 8088.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

June 15, 1936.

Charles Fahy, Gen. Counsel, National Labor Relations Board, and Robert B. Watts and Thomas I. Emerson, Associate Gen. Counsel, National Labor Relations Board, all of Washington, D. C., for petitioner.

Earl F. Reed and John E. Laughlin, Jr., both of Pittsburgh, Pa., and Charles Rosen, Justin V. Wolff, and Gibbons Burke, all of New Orleans, La., for respondent.

Aaron Sapiro and Alexander H. Schullman, both of Pittsburgh, Pa., amici curiæ.

Before FOSTER, SIBLEY, and HUTCHESON, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM.

The National Labor Relations Board has petitioned us to enforce an order made by it, which requires Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, organized under the laws of Pennsylvania, to reinstate certain discharged employees in its steel plant in Aliquippa, Pa., and to do other things in that connection.

The petition must be denied, because, under the facts found by the Board and shown by the evidence, the Board has no jurisdiction over a labor dispute between employer and employees touching the discharge of laborers in a steel plant, who were engaged only in manufacture. The Constitution does not vest in the federal government the power to regulate the relation as such of employer and employee in production or manufacture.

"One who produces or manufactures a commodity, subsequently sold and shipped by him in interstate commerce, whether such sale and shipment were originally intended or not, has engaged in two distinct and separate activities. So far as he produces or manufactures a commodity, his business is purely local. So far as he sells and ships, or contracts to sell and ship, the commodity to customers in another state, he engages in interstate commerce. In respect of the former, he is subject only to regulation by the state; in respect of the latter, to regulation only by the federal government. Utah Power & L. Co. v. Pfost, 286 U.S. 165, 182, 52 S.Ct. 548, 76 L.Ed. 1038. Production is not commerce; but a step in preparation for commerce. Chassaniol v. Greenwood, 291 U.S. 584, 587, 54 S.Ct. 541, 78 L.Ed. 1004.

"We have seen that the word `commerce' is the equivalent of the phrase `intercourse for the purposes of trade.' Plainly, the incidents leading up to and culminating in the mining of coal do not constitute such intercourse. The employment of men, the fixing of their wages, hours of labor, and working conditions, the bargaining in respect of these...