Brown v. Local No. 17, Amalgamated Lithographers
| Decision Date | 13 January 1960 |
| Docket Number | No. 38735.,38735. |
| Citation | 180 F. Supp. 294 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of California |
| Parties | Gerald A. BROWN, Regional Director of the Twentieth Region of the National Labor Relations Board for and on behalf of the National Labor Relations Board, Petitioner, v. LOCAL NO. 17, AMALGAMATED LITHOGRAPHERS OF AMERICA, and Amalgamated Lithographers of America (Ind.), Respondents. |
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Walter N. Moldawer, N. L. R. B., Washington, D. C., for petitioner.
Robinson, Silverman & Pearce, by Benjamin M. Robinson, and Matthew Silverman, New York City, Garry, Dreyfus, McTernan & Keller, by Francis J. McTernan, San Francisco, Cal., for respondents.
This proceeding is brought, pursuant to Section 10(l) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended (61 Stat. 146; 73 Stat. 544; 29 U.S.C.A. § 160(l), which provides that, whenever, after investigation, the Regional Director has reasonable cause to believe that a charge of unfair labor practice is true, and that a complaint should issue, he shall petition the United States District Court for appropriate injunctive relief, pending final adjudication of the Board, and that, upon the filing of any such petition the Court shall have jurisdiction to grant such injunctive relief as it deems just and proper.
On November 25, 1959, the Employing Lithographers, a division of the Graphic Arts Employers Association, and Lithographers and Printers National Association, Inc., filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that respondents Local No. 17, Amalgamated Lithographers of America, generally referred to as Local 17, and Amalgamated Lithographers of America, generally referred to as the International, were engaging in certain unfair labor practices within the meaning of the N. L. R. A., Section 8(b) (4) (i) and (ii), subparagraph (A) and of Section 8(e) of the Act, as amended by the last Congress in that part of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, popularly referred to as the Landrum-Griffin Bill, dealing with secondary boycott. Thereupon, on December 7, 1959, pursuant to Section 10(l), the Regional Director commenced this proceeding.
For the purposes of our discussion, we proceed in the following order: (1) the legislative history and background to the recent amendments of the new labor law; (2) the charges brought by petitioner as the basis for this proceeding; (3) the position of respondents in regard thereto; (4) the controversial clauses here sought to be enjoined; (5) the constitutionality of the statute; and, finally, (6) the scope of discretion in statutory injunction proceedings of this kind.
For an understanding of the new secondary boycott provisions here involved, it should be recalled that in 1947 Congress passed the Labor-Management Relations Act, 61 Stat. 146, 29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq., generally called the Taft-Hartley Act, enacting Section 8(b) (4) as an addition to the National Labor Relations Act, and making secondary boycott an unfair labor practice, to the extent that it became unlawful for a labor organization to engage in, or to induce or encourage employees to engage in, a strike or concerted refusal to handle goods or perform services with the object of forcing or requiring an employer or other person to cease handling the products of another or to cease doing business with any other person.
The declared purpose of this secondary boycott legislation was to narrow the area of industrial dispute, so as to confine its effects to those immediately interested, and to prevent its extension to employers and employees not directly involved—all in the public interest.
Since 1947, labor unions, for the purpose of avoiding violation of this secondary boycott provision of the Taft-Hartley Act, have developed the practice of bargaining with employers for inclusion in collective bargaining agreements of so-called "hot cargo" clauses whereby the employer agrees to refrain from requiring his employees to handle the products of other employers considered by the union to be unfair because produced under non-union conditions or in a plant struck by the union.
In the so-called "Sand Door" case, Local 1976, United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, A. F. L. v. N. L. R. B., 1958, 357 U.S. 93, 78 S.Ct. 1011, 2 L.Ed.2d 1186, the Supreme Court held that such clauses were not illegal, pointing out that under the then existing secondary boycott provisions, the legal prohibition was directed, not at any contractual agreement entered into on the part of the employer, but only at union inducement of employees to strike or refuse to handle goods with the object of forcing employers to cease doing business with third parties.
Late last year, the Congress considered and passed the Landrum-Griffin Bill, Pub.Law 86-257, September 14, 1959, which, so far as pertinent here, was designed to close what both House and Senate Committees described as a "loop hole" in the existing secondary boycott law.
Retaining the pre-existing secondary boycott provision (now Section 8(b) (4) (i), the Congress enacted amendments to the National Labor Relations Act, effective sixty days after enactment, Friday, November 13, 1959, which now provide:
The pending petition of the Regional Director, NLRB, alleges in substance as follows:
That on March 11, 1958, respondent union, Local 17, had entered into a collective bargaining contract with the Association.
That on August 17, 1959, Local 17 gave sixty days notice to the Association, and other independent lithographic employers, of its desire to terminate that contract at its expiration date, October 18, 1959, and called for negotiation of a new contract. An impasse was reached in these negotiations and since November 23, 1959, respondent union has engaged in a strike against the fifteen employer members of the Association.
That since October 12, 1959, Local 17 has demanded that the Association incorporate in a new collective bargaining agreement, certain clauses, claimed by the charging employers and by the NL RB, to be unlawful within the meaning of new Section 8(e) of the N.L.R.A.
That since the commencement of its strike on November 23, 1959, one of the objects of the strike against the Association members has been, and is, to force and require said employers to enter into these controversial clauses in violation of new Section 8(b) (4) (i) and (ii) subparagraph (A) of the N.L.R.A.
The petition further alleges that on November 25, 1959, respondent union, Local 17, entered into agreements with certain independent lithographic employers, who were not members of the Association, to the effect that these firms might continue to operate under the conditions of the old contract of March 11, 1958, upon assurance that all conditions in any new contract negotiated by Local 17 with the Association would be retroactive to October 19, 1959. Upon this understanding, Local 17 refrained from calling a strike against these independent lithographic firms.
It is admitted that the old contract contained certain secondary boycott clauses which, although lawful at the time the contract was made, became unlawful on November 13, 1959, the effective date of the new amendments. For that reason, petitioner further alleges that the arrangements made on November 25, 1959, by respondent union, Local 17, with these independent lithographic firms, concerning operations under the conditions of the old contract, constitute an unlawful agreement within the meaning of new Section 8(e).
With respect to the other respondent union, the International, it is alleged, established and admitted, that it has approved and participated in the acts and conduct of its Local 17.
Respondents raise two main defenses to the petition: First, they contend that the clauses proposed for inclusion in any new collective bargaining agreement between Local 17 and the Association are not, when properly interpreted, unlawful under Section 8(b) of the N.L.R.A. as amended.
Second, they contend that in any event the new amendment, particularly Section 8(e), is unconstitutional, and is violative of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment and of the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution, etc., for the reason that the Section exempts two industries from its application—the construction industry and the apparel industry—without any factual basis for differentiating these industries from the lithographic industry.
Respondents further contend that the...
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