Bud Antle, Inc. v. Barbosa
| Decision Date | 17 January 1995 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 93-15002,93-15642 and 93-15652,s. 93-15002 |
| Citation | 45 F.3d 1261 |
| Parties | 148 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2319 BUD ANTLE, INC., dba Bud of California, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. J. Antonio BARBOSA, personally and in his official capacity as Executive Secretary of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board; Bruce J. Janigan, personally and in his official capacity as Chairman of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board; Ivonne Ramos Richardson, personally and in her official capacity as a member of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board; and Linda A. Frick, personally and in her official capacity as a member of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Scott A. Wilson, Theodore R. Scott, Littler, Mendelson, Fastiff, Tichy & Mathiason, San Diego, CA, for plaintiff-appellant.
Sharon M. Shiller Hartwell, Gregory L. Hartwell, Hartwell & Hartwell, Sacramento, CA; J. Antonio Barbosa, Executive Secretary, Susan P. Underwood, Sol., Agricultural Labor Relations Bd., Sacramento, CA, for defendants-appellees.
Frederick L. Feinstein, Gen. Counsel, Linda R. Sher, Acting Associate Gen. Counsel, Eric G. Moskowitz, Deputy Asst. Gen. Counsel for Sp. Litigation, Nancy E. Kessler
Platt, Atty., N.L.R.B., Washington, DC, for amicus curiae.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
Before: CHOY, REINHARDT, and LEAVY, Circuit Judges.
The petition for rehearing is denied.
The opinion filed September 9, 1994, 35 F.3d 1355, is ordered amended as follows.
At p. 1361 n. 11, change the first full paragraph to read:
Four of the company's six causes of action potentially involve theories other than Garmon preemption. We conclude that the district court properly dismissed the company's third and sixth causes of action. However, the district court's dismissal order makes no mention of the fourth and fifth causes of action. Therefore, we remand these two claims to the district court for its consideration.
At p. 1361, delete the third paragraph.
This case involves several complicated questions regarding the preemptive effect of the National Labor Relations Act ("NLRA" or "the Act"). Bud Antle, Inc., ("Bud" or "the company") appeals the district court's Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal of its action against the members and executive secretary of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board ("ALRB" or "state board"). 1 The company claims that the National Labor Relations Act ousts the ALRB of jurisdiction to adjudicate various unfair labor practice charges which are now pending before the state board. It seeks injunctive relief to prohibit the ALRB from continuing its proceedings. The district court concluded that the NLRA does not preempt ALRB jurisdiction over the charges. It also held that it was required to abstain pursuant to Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971). Bud challenges both of these decisions on appeal, and we reverse.
The ALRB, a state agency, is organized in a similar manner to the NLRB. It administers a statute (the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, or ALRA) that, in its form but not its scope, is nearly identical to the NLRA. For purposes of this case, there is only one difference, fundamental as it is, between the NLRA and the ALRA: the NLRA expressly excludes "agricultural laborers" from coverage, see 29 U.S.C. Sec. 152(3), while the ALRA applies only to agricultural employees excluded from NLRA coverage. See Cal.Labor Code Secs. 1140.4, 1148. This case revolves around several unfair labor practice charges which were filed against Bud and are currently pending before the state board. These charges arose from a dispute which occurred during 1989 contract negotiations between Bud and Local 78-B of the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Workers ("FFVW" or "the union"), the representative of Bud's employees who handled or processed agricultural goods at several cooling facilities in California ("the bargaining unit"). The basic question is whether as of 1989 the employees involved were agricultural laborers who were clearly excluded from coverage under the NLRA. Only if they were not actually or arguably covered under that act, would they have been subject to the jurisdiction of the ALRB.
Bud markets about 40 million cartons of fresh vegetables each year, giving it the largest volume of any producer of fresh vegetables in the United States. At one time, the company functioned as a fully integrated operation and used its own employees and equipment to grow, harvest, cool, pack, transport and market the crops it produced. However, beginning in approximately 1981 or 1982, it began to change its mode of operation by divesting itself of its primary growing operations. Bud has turned instead to a variety of contracting-out arrangements in order to secure produce for marketing. Under these arrangements, the company agrees with independent growers to purchase crops raised on the growers' land. 2 Although Bud oversees various aspects of the growers' operations and may participate in transplanting and harvesting crops, the growers are responsible for cultivation and often bear the risk of any crop failure during the growing season. The company relied more and more heavily on these arrangements throughout the 1980s, and it grew its last crop in 1989. Thus, it now relies exclusively on these contracting-out practices to obtain its products.
The unfair labor practice charges in this case involve employees in Bud's cooling facilities. These facilities are located away from the farms on which the produce is grown. The ALRB certified the union as the exclusive representative of the bargaining unit employees in 1976. Between 1976 and 1986, Bud and the union negotiated four collective bargaining agreements. Each collective bargaining agreement expressly based recognition of the union on the ALRB certification.
On March 31, 1989, the final collective bargaining agreement between Bud and the union expired. Although the company and the union actively negotiated for a new contract, negotiations broke down over the summer. On August 28, 1989, the union went on strike. The company responded by unilaterally implementing its "last and final offer" on September 11, and then locking out the striking employees and hiring replacements nine days later. During this time, the company filed with the state board five sets of unfair labor practice charges against the union. In one instance, it invoked the assistance of the ALRB to obtain a temporary restraining order against what it alleged was unlawful secondary picketing. 3
The union also filed unfair labor practice charges with the ALRB. The issue before us is whether the state board has jurisdiction to adjudicate these charges. Seven sets of charges are involved. They were filed between September 1, 1989 and June 15, 1990. In those charges, the union alleged that Bud had committed numerous violations of the ALRA over the period from February of 1989 to August of 1990. The bulk of the violations allegedly occurred during the breakdown of negotiations in the summer of 1989. 4 The ALRB began investigating the union's charges, but it did not place them on the same expedited schedule as the company's secondary picketing charges.
On December 18, 1989, the company for the first time raised a question regarding the ALRB's authority in a letter to the ALRB's Regional Field Examiner. Bud invoked NLRB jurisdiction for the first time on January 18, 1990, when it filed unfair labor practice charges with the Board against the union. 5 However, the company did not formally challenge ALRB jurisdiction until April 17, 1990, in a letter to the Salinas ALRB Regional Director. The letter stated that the company had come to realize that "none of the employees working at the Company's cooling facilities can be agricultural employees under the Agricultural Labor Relations Act," because their work was too attenuated from agricultural activity to be exempt from the NLRA.
Despite Bud's challenge, the ALRB continued its investigation and prosecution of the union's charges against Bud. The company responded by seeking a remedy in the NLRB. On September 7, 1990, Bud filed a unit clarification petition with the Board. That petition sought a determination that the employees at the company's California cooling facilities were not "agricultural laborers" exempt from the Act. Although the Regional Director initially dismissed this petition, the Board ordered it reinstated and granted the ALRB amicus curiae status in the unit clarification proceeding. 6
On January 7, 1991, two weeks after the Board reinstated the unit clarification petition, on January 7, 1991, Bud filed a motion with the ALRB to hold the complaint in abeyance pending resolution of the jurisdictional issues currently before the NLRB. The ALRB's Executive Secretary denied this motion three weeks later. Because the NLRB unit clarification proceedings involved only the current status of the bargaining unit employees, while the ALRB unfair labor practice proceedings involved the employees' status as of 1989, the state board concluded that the actions were not duplicative. The ALRB denied Bud's request for review of the Executive Secretary's decision on March 1, 1991.
Thwarted in its earlier attempts to force the state board to suspend its proceedings, Bud sought relief in federal court. On March 7, 1991, the company filed an amended complaint in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California. This complaint sought declaratory and injunctive relief to prevent the state board from proceeding with the charges against Bud, as well as damages. The company requested a preliminary injunction against the ALRB, but ...
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