Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local No 70 v. California Consolidators, Inc, 83-1755

• Decision Date: 09 October 1984
• Docket Number: No. 83-1755,83-1755
• Citation: 105 S.Ct. 263,469 U.S. 887,83 L.Ed.2d 199
• Parties: BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, LOCAL NO. 70 v. CALIFORNIA CONSOLIDATORS, INC
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

469 U.S. 887

105 S.Ct. 263

83 L.Ed.2d 199

BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, LOCAL NO. 70

v CALIFORNIA CONSOLIDATORS, INC

No. 83-1755

Supreme Court of the United States

October 9, 1984

Rehearing Denied Nov. 26, 1984.

See 469 U.S. 1066, 105 S.Ct. 550.

On petition for writ of certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied.

Justice WHITE, with whom Justice O'CONNOR joins, dissenting.

In South Prairie Construction Co. v. Operating Engineers, 425 U.S. 800, 96 S.Ct. 1842, 48 L.Ed.2d 382 (1976) (per curiam ), this Court held that a Federal Court of Appeals did not have jurisdiction to decide the appropriateness of a bargaining unit in the first instance, but should have allowed the National Labor Relations Board to make an initial determination. Because two Courts of Appeals have adopted inconsistent interpretations of South Prairie, I dissent from the denial of certiorari.

In South Prairie, a union that represented the employees of one company had filed a complaint with the Board contending that its collective-bargaining agreement should cover the employees of a second company because the two companies actually constituted a "single employer" within the National Labor Relations Act. The Board concluded that the two companies were in fact separate employers, and dismissed the complaint. On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit set aside this determination. It then went on to reach and decide a second question, which had not been passed on by the Board: whether the employees of the two companies constituted the appropriate unit under § 9(b) of the Act for purposes of collective bargaining. Section 9(b) directs the Board to "decide in each case whether . . . the unit appropriate for the purposes of collective bargaining shall be the employer unit, craft unit, plant unit, or subdivision thereof." 61 Stat. 143, 29 U.S.C. § 159(b). We held that the Court of Appeals had erred when it took upon itself the initial determination of this issue:

"In foreclosing the Board from the opportunity to determine the appropriate bargaining unit under § 9, the Court of Appeals did not give 'due observance [to] the distribution of authority made by Congress as between its power to regulate commerce and the reviewing power which it has conferred upon the courts under Article III of the Constitution.' FCC v. Pottsville Broadcasting Co., 309 U.S. 134, 141 [60 S.Ct. 437, 440, 84 L.Ed. 656] (1940)." 425 U.S., at 806, 96 S.Ct., at 1845.

In the present case, the Court of Appeals interpreted this language to mean that a federal court is precluded from deciding the appropriateness of a bargaining unit even when the question has never been presented to the Board. The union in this case had proceeded directly into federal court under § 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 185(a). It alleged that the company whose employees it represented and another company constituted a "single employer," and sought a declaratory judgment that the second company was bound by the union's collective-bargaining agreement with the first company. The District Court determined that it lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate this complaint. The Court of Appeals held that South Prairie necessarily implied that "single employer questions comprise two subsidiary issues": whether two companies constitute a single employer, and whether the employees form a single or appropriate bargaining unit. 693 F.2d 81, 82 (1982). Section 301 granted district courts jurisdiction to determine the first of these questions, but not the second. The appropriateness of a bargaining unit was a "representational question reserved in the first instance to the Board." Id., at 84. Accordingly, the Court of Appeals remanded to the District Court for an evidentiary hearing on the single employer issue only.

Two days later, a panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reached a contrary conclusion in a similar case. Carpenters Local Union No. 1846 v. Pratt-Farnsworth, Inc., 690 F.2d 489 (1982), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 932, 104 S.Ct. 335, 78 L.Ed.2d 305 (1983). The Fifth Circuit read South Prairie as being limited to the situation in which two claims are initially presented to the Board and only one of them is decided there. In the Fifth Circuit's view, South Prairie did not preclude a federal court with jurisdiction under § 301 from determining...