Le Baron v. Los Angeles Build. & Constr. Tr. Council

• Decision Date: 26 May 1949
• Docket Number: No. 9629.,9629.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of California
• Parties: LE BARON v. LOS ANGELES BUILDING & CONSTRUCTION TRADES COUNCIL et al.

84 F. Supp. 629

LE BARON v. LOS ANGELES BUILDING & CONSTRUCTION TRADES COUNCIL et al.

No. 9629.

United States District Court S. D. California, Central Division.

May 26, 1949.

Robert N. Denham, General Counsel, David P. Findling, Associate General Counsel, Winthrop A. Johns, Assistant General Counsel, Washington, D. C., Charles K. Hackler, Chief Law Officer, Jerome Smith, Los Angeles, California, for petitioner.

Arthur Garrett, Los Angeles, California, for respondents.

YANKWICH, District Judge.

I. The Facts in the Case.

On May 3, 1949, Howard F. Le Baron, Regional Director of the Twenty-First Region of the National Labor Relations Board, filed a petition for injunction under Section 10(l) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended,¹ seeking relief pending the final adjudication by the Board of a matter then pending before them on charges alleging that the respondents are engaged in violations of Section 8(b), Subdivision (4) (D) of the Act.²

The Respondents are the Los Angeles Building and Construction Trades Council, — to be referred to as Council, — a labor association consisting of eighteen labor organizations engaged in the building trades industry in the Los Angeles area, Lloyd A. Mashburn, its agent, Millwright and Machinery Erectors Local 1607 of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, American Federation of Labor, — to to be called Millwrights, — and Herman R. Barbaglia, its agent.

On April 15, 1949, Local Lodge 1235 of the International Association of Machinists, — to be called Machinists, — filed charges with the Board alleging that the Respondents have engaged in, and are engaging in unfair practices in violation of the Act, which have been referred to the petitioner as Regional Director for investigation.

The facts back of the charge are: Southern California Edison Company, — to be designated as Edison, — a California corporation, is a public utility engaged in furnishing electrical energy and service to the Los Angeles and Southern California area. Thirty-nine percent of its output of electrical energy goes to instrumentalities of interstate commerce and concerns engaged in interstate commerce, such as oil refineries, rubber companies, steel plants and aircraft machines. In the operation of its business, Edison, during the past year, purchased raw materials of a value in excess of three million dollars, of which approximately 66- 2/3 per cent originated outside the State of California. Approximately 25½ percent of the total power utilized by it during the past year came from outside the state. Edison is now engaged in the construction and equipment of a new steam turbine electric power generation station at Redondo Beach, California, which was begun in July, 1946. The estimated completed cost of it is in excess of $38,000,000.00, of which $18,500,000.00 is the purchase value of equipment, $12,700,000.00 in value of which has been, or will be transported from outside the State of California directly to the job site. The construction is 75 percent completed and the units now in operation at the station furnish approximately 15 percent of Edison's total output of electrical energy.

Stone and Webster, a construction corporation, has the general contract for construction of the station. For the past several months, it has had approximately 550 of its own employees working on the project. There are other sub-contractors, whose employees have been engaged on the project, and who are members of all the trade unions affiliated with the Council.

Some time prior to December, 1948, Edison contracted with Westinghouse for the furnishing and installation of several steam turbine generators at the Redondo Beach plant. These generators, of the total value of approximately $4,800,000.00, were manufactured by Westinghouse in Lester and East Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, whence they were shipped to California for installation.

On January 31, 1949, Westinghouse began the installation of one of the turbine generators, a 60,000 kilowatt unit, pursuant to its contract with Edison. In the installation, it used employees who were members of Machinists. On February 2, 1949, the Respondents, as the Complaint alleges, engaged in and by "orders, directions and instructions induced and encouraged" the employees of Stone & Webster, Westinghouse and others on the Redondo Beach station project to "engage in a strike or concerted refusal in the course of their employment to transport or, otherwise, handle or work" on Westinghouse products or to perform services for their employers in connection with the project.

Westinghouse Electric Corporation, on March 29, 1949, began the unloading of a turbine generator of 60,000 kilowatt units, shipped from its plant at Lester, Pennsylvania to California for installation by its employees, who are members of Machinists, at the Redondo Beach station, using in the unloading operation riggers who are members of International Association of Bridge Structural and Ornamental Iron Workers Local No. 433, a constituent union of the Council.

On April 11, 1949, the Respondents engaged in and "by orders, directions, instructions induced and encouraged" the riggers employed by Westinghouse to engage in a strike or concerted refusal "in the course of their employment, to transport, or otherwise handle or work on the Westinghouse products" in connection with the Redondo Beach installation.

The object of the acts of the respondents was, — in the language of the Complaint, — to require Westinghouse and Stone and Webster to "assign the work of installing the steam turbine generators at the Redondo Beach station to members of Millwrights, rather than to the employees of Westinghouse, who now are members of Machinists."

The petition also averred the existence of a critical power shortage in Southern California, resulting from an inadequate supply of water for the generation of power and increased demand for electrical power, — a shortage which the Redondo Beach station was planned to alleviate by generating electrical energy by steam and increasing Edison's production capacity by 30 percent.

In the main, these facts are not disputed, either by the Return to the Order to Show Cause, or the affidavits filed in conjunction with the hearing on the Order. It appeared at the hearing that only two members of Machinists were involved, who had been withdrawn from their job in order to secure the return to work of the member unions of the Council. Before the hearing of the Order to Show Cause, on May 11, 1949, the Board rendered its decision under Section 10(k) of the Act.³

In substance, it found that the Respondents "are not and have not been, lawfully entitled to force or require Westinghouse Electric Corporation to assign work on the installation of steam turbine generators at Southern California Edison Company's plant at Redondo Beach, California, to members of Millwright and Machinery Erectors Local 1607, of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, A.F.L., rather than to employees of Westinghouse Electric Corporation who are members of International Association of Machinists, Local Lodge 1235."

Other facts will be referred to further on in the opinion.

Before me is an application for a temporary injunction.

II. The Legal Questions Involved

(A) The Aim of the Taft-Hartley Act.

The determination of the problem involved here calls for the interpretation of certain provisions of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, popularly known as the Taft-Hartley Act.⁴ That, in turn, requires a consideration of the legislative object sought to be attained.⁵ One of the objects of the National Labor Relations Act⁶, which this Act purported to amend and supplement, was to encourage "the practice and procedure of collective bargaining" and to protect "the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection."⁷

The jurisprudence of the Act, declared both by the Board and the Courts, reflected these twin aims of the Act. — the encouragement of unionization and of collective bargaining through it. For this purpose, the Act conferred certain rights on the workers as groups, and prohibited certain acts of the employers inconsistent with these aims, which were declared to be unfair practices on the part of the employers.⁸ This it did through the use of plenary powers of the Congress to regulate interstate commerce.⁹ The Taft-Hartley Act did not aim to confer any additional organizational rights. To the contrary, it aimed to take away certain rights, which, either by the language of the Act, or through administrative and judicial interpretation, had been held to flow from its enactment. As one writer has put it:

"The Taft-Hartley amendments represent an abandonment of the policy of affirmatively encouraging the spread of union organization and collective bargaining."¹⁰

This aim must be kept in mind in resolving the limited issue which the present proceeding presents.

(B) The Validity of the Prohibition Against Forced Work Assignment.

At the outset, we are met with the challenge that Section 8(b) (4) (D) of the Act¹¹, which declares it to be an unfair practice on the part of a labor organization or its agent to force or require an employer to assign particular work to employees in a particular organization or group, rather than another, is unconstitutional.

As a matter of judicial policy, the constitutionality of a statute should not be determined upon a motion of this character, but rather upon a full hearing on the matters. For the factual situation may affect the constitutional aspects of a statute. Such an attitude is enjoined upon us by the principle which commands us to place upon any statutory enactment an interpretation consistent with constitutionality.¹² The broad...