International Broth. of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers, and Helpers, AFL-CIO v. Local Lodge 714, Intern. Broth. of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers, and Helpers, AFL-CIO, AFL-CIO

• Citation: 845 F.2d 687
• Decision Date: 22 April 1988
• Docket Number: AFL-CIO,No. 87-2244,87-2244
• Parties: 128 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2259, 108 Lab.Cas. P 10,455 INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF BOILERMAKERS, IRON SHIP BUILDERS, BLACKSMITHS, FORGERS, AND HELPERS,, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. LOCAL LODGE 714, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF BOILERMAKERS, IRON SHIP BUILDERS, BLACKSMITHS, FORGERS, and HELPERS,, et al., Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (7th Circuit)

Page 687

845 F.2d 687

128 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2259, 108 Lab.Cas. P 10,455

INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF BOILERMAKERS, IRON SHIP BUILDERS, BLACKSMITHS, FORGERS, AND HELPERS AFL-CIO, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. LOCAL LODGE 714, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF BOILERMAKERS IRON SHIP BUILDERS, BLACKSMITHS, FORGERS, and HELPERS, AFL-CIO, et al., Defendants-Appellants.

No. 87-2244.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued Feb. 16, 1988.

Decided April 22, 1988.

Richard J. Tupper, Cornfield & Feldman, Chicago, Ill., for defendants-appellants.

Bernard M. Mamet, Bernard M. Mamet & Assoc., Ltd., Chicago, Ill., for plaintiffs-appellees.

Before POSNER, EASTERBROOK and MANION, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

This appeal from the grant of injunctive relief in a suit between two labor unions requires us to explore the esoteric question of when a parent union may impose a trusteeship on a local under section 302 of the Landrum-Griffin Act (formally, the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959), 29 U.S.C. Sec. 462. See generally Bellace, Union Trusteeships: Difficulties in Applying Sections 302 and 304(c) of the Landrum-Griffin Act, 25 Am.U.L.Rev. 337 (1976). The principal plaintiff is the international boilermakers' union, and the defendants are one of its locals, Local Lodge 714, and the local's former officers. Members of the international union who disagreed with the union's leadership over dues and other matters formed a rival union, the Independent Workers of North America, after losing an election for officers of the international. The rival began trying to induce locals of the international to break away and affiliate with it. These efforts succeeded with Local Lodge 714, for 130 of its 135 members signed a petition to disaffiliate from the international boilermakers' union and subsequently voted 112 to 2 to disaffiliate, and to affiliate with the Independent Workers of North America instead. The officers of Local Lodge 714 then formed Local 15 of the Independent Workers of North America. The new local has the same officers as Local Lodge 714, and most of the members of the local lodge followed their leaders into Local 15; the record does not reveal how many (if any) remained in Local Lodge 714. The officers took with them both the books of Local Lodge 714 and its bank account, containing some $6,000 to $8,000, and they used some of this money to pay their salaries and other expenses of the new local.

Local Lodge 714 had been the exclusive bargaining representative of its members, who are production and maintenance workers employed at a plant owned by Quaker Industries. After the breakaway, Local 15 petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to order a new election for collective bargaining representative. Although the record turns murky at this point, it seems both that the petition was granted and that the workers voted for Local 15; for at argument the defendants told us, without being contradicted by their adversaries, that Local 15 is now the exclusive bargaining representative of the Quaker workers.

A few days after Local 15 had petitioned the Board for a new election, the international union, having already held a hearing on whether to impose a trusteeship on Local Lodge 714, voted to impose the trusteeship and appointed new officers for the lodge. The officers were brought in from the outside rather than selected from among members of the lodge; it is unclear whether by this time the lodge had any members left. The international union then brought this suit, under section 301 of the Taft-Hartley Act, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 185, which authorizes suits between labor unions as well as the more familiar suits between company and union or between an employee and a company or union. The suit sought an injunction enforcing the trusteeship, specifically by ordering the former officers of Local Lodge 714 to turn over the lodge's books and money to the trustee. The defendants--nominally Local Lodge 714 and its former officers, really Local 15 and its current officers (the same people)--counterclaimed under section 304(a) of the Landrum-Griffin Act, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 464(a). The district court, noting that section 304(c) provides that a trusteeship established in conformity with the procedural requirements of the union's constitution or bylaws and authorized or ratified after a fair hearing shall be presumed valid for 18 months, during which time it "shall not be subject to attack ... except upon clear and convincing proof that the trusteeship was not established or maintained in good faith for a purpose allowable under section 462," granted a preliminary injunction (since made permanent) authorizing the trustee appointed by the international union to run Local Lodge 714 and directing the individual defendants to hand over the Lodge's books and money to the trustee, which has been done. See 663 F.Supp. 1071 (N.D.Ill.1987).

There is a small procedural knot to untie before we get to the merits. The basis of the international's suit is unclear. Section 304(a) of the Landrum-Griffin Act does not authorize the parent union to bring suit against a subordinate unit or its members, or against anyone else; it only authorizes suit by a "member or subordinate body of a labor organization," or by the Secretary of Labor. Section 301 of the Taft-Hartley Act does, as we just mentioned, authorize a suit by one labor union against another, but only for breach of contract. The international has not cast its suit in breach of contract terms but merely asks for enforcement of the trusteeship.

Despite the inartful pleading, the suit is within the jurisdiction conferred by section 301 of the Taft-Hartley Act. The trusteeship provision, section 302 of the Landrum-Griffin Act, provides:

Trusteeships shall be established and administered by a labor organization over a subordinate body only in accordance with the constitution and bylaws of the organization which has assumed trusteeship over the subordinate body and for the purpose of correcting corruption or financial malpractice, assuring the performance of collective bargaining agreements or other duties of a bargaining representative, restoring democratic procedures, or otherwise carrying out the legitimate objects of such labor organization.

Section 302 thus does not confer any powers on parent unions (as distinct from "subordinate bod[ies]"); it merely limits the authority of those unions to exercise their contractual rights to impose trusteeships on their local affiliates. (The abuses of trusteeship that led to the enactment of section 302 are well described in Levitan, The Federal Law of Union Trusteeship, in Symposium on LMRDA 443 (Slovenko ed. 1961).) That is no doubt why section 304(a) empowers union members and subordinate bodies to sue to enforce section 302, but not the union imposing the trusteeship. Within the limits fixed by the statute the union can exercise whatever powers of imposing trusteeships it enjoys by virtue of its contractual relationship with its affiliates. The enforcement of a trusteeship is therefore a contract remedy which the union can seek under section 301 together with any ancillary relief of an equitable character that may be necessary to make the trusteeship effective. See National Association of Letter Carriers v. Sombrotto, 449 F.2d 915, 918-19 (2d Cir.1971) (Friendly, J.).

The defendants' first argument against the relief granted by the district court is that the local, having disaffiliated, is no longer a "subordinate body" of the international boilermakers' union and is therefore beyond the reach of any trusteeship permitted by section 302. This argument treats the statutory reference to subordinate bodies not as demarcating the scope of section 302 viewed as a limitation on the powers of unions to impose trusteeships, but as an additional limitation on those powers. Maybe it is, but this we need not decide. Section 302 forbids the union to impose a trusteeship except in conformity with the union's constitution and bylaws. Nothing in the constitution or bylaws of the international boilermakers' union authorizes it to impose a trusteeship on a local union that is not a subordinate of the international union; it cannot for example impose a trusteeship on a local of the teamsters' union. On the contrary, the constitution only authorizes the international union "to place any subordinate body under trusteeship."

Intermediate between the case of the securely affiliated local union and the local that is not a subordinate body because it is (and let us say, always has been) the affiliate of another international union is the case of a local that has succeeded in disaffiliating. Can its (former) parent impose a trusteeship on it? The international boilermakers' union wavers between arguing that it can and arguing that Local Lodge 714 did not succeed in disaffiliating. The international's constitution is ambiguous on the right to disaffiliate. It contains no provision authorizing disaffiliation and contains a provision making "secession or threatened secession" a ground for imposing a trusteeship, which could be taken either as an implied prohibition of disaffiliation or as recognition that disaffiliation will sometimes occur and authorization to do something about it. But in addition the constitution provides that "any Local Lodge having less than ten (10) active members shall be automatically disbanded and its Charter returned to the International Brotherhood, together with all books, records, properties, funds and assets (including trusts, trust funds or other trust properties held, operated or controlled by such Local Lodge) owned or held by such Local Lodge at the time of such disbanding, which shall become the property of the International Brotherhood." There is no necessary inconsistency, however, between this provision and the stricture against disaffiliation. Maybe Local Lodge 714 could not disaffiliate but...