Jacksonville Maritime Ass'n v. International Longshoremen's Ass'n

• Decision Date: 17 April 1978
• Docket Number: No. 77-1029,77-1029
• Citation: 571 F.2d 319
• Parties: 98 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2184, 83 Lab.Cas. P 10,535 JACKSONVILLE MARITIME ASSOCIATION, INC., etc., et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN'S ASSOCIATION, etc., et al., Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 319

571 F.2d 319

98 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2184, 83 Lab.Cas. P 10,535

JACKSONVILLE MARITIME ASSOCIATION, INC., etc., et al Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN'S ASSOCIATION, etc., et al Defendants-Appellants.

No. 77-1029.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

April 17, 1978.

Lacy Mahon, Jr., Joseph S. Farley, Jr., Jacksonville, Fla., for defendants-appellants.

Gary A. Bubb, Jacksonville, Fla., for plaintiffs-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Before JONES, GODBOLD and GEE, Circuit Judges.

GEE, Circuit Judge:

This case concerns the propriety of a preliminary injunction against a labor stoppage. More generally, it concerns the limits of the national policy prohibiting labor injunctions, and of the narrow exception to that prohibition, through which some labor injunctions are permitted in order to enforce peaceful arbitration procedures agreed upon by the parties.

The plaintiff, Jacksonville Maritime Association (JMA), is a multi-employer bargaining association that bargains with unions on behalf of its members in the Jacksonville, Florida, maritime industry. One of these unions is the defendant, International Longshoremen's Association Local 1408-A (ILA). The present case stems from certain difficulties between the ILA local and two employer members of the JMA. On October 19, 1976, one of these employers, Jacksonville Port Authority (JPA), requested from the ILA hiring hall that two men, a "header" (union contact man) and a forklift operator, be sent to one of its warehouses the following day. The next day three men arrived, the two ordered plus a warehouse laborer; by direction of the ILA local president, each refused to work unless all three were employed. The JPA would not permit them to work under these circumstances, and they left. This scenario was repeated the following two days.

Meanwhile, another JMA employer, Eller & Company, apparently ordered six men and was sent eight. All eight were put to work, but two of the forklift operators refused to do warehouse work that they had done in the past; and indeed it soon appeared that, by instructions of the ILA local president, none of the men would perform any work except that of his specific job title. At this juncture, Eller's manager directed the foreman to pay off the men and let them go. Here too, much the same scene was repeated over the next two days, the ILA men refusing to work except in their specific job categories.

What appears to have been at issue in both sets of incidents was the union's desire to prevent employers from requiring men in certain wage categories to perform work in lower wage categories, even though paid at the higher wage rate. The collective bargaining agreement listed four separate wage categories but said nothing specific either way about individual employees working at tasks assigned lower job classifications. The contract did contain clauses, reprinted in the margin, ¹ that reserved to employers the rights to designate the number of laborers employed and to direct the work force; it also prohibited lockouts, strikes, or work suspensions and provided for arbitration of grievances.

On the third day of these incidents, the JMA secured a temporary restraining order from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida prohibiting the ILA local from overfilling labor orders, from directing workers to disobey work assignments, or from engaging in any other work stoppages. Upon the expiration of the temporary restraining order, the district court granted a preliminary injunction to the same effect and ordered both parties to arbitrate their grievances. The union appeals.

The grant of a preliminary injunction rests in the discretion of the district court, and we review solely for abuse of that discretion. See, e. g., State of Texas v. Seatrain International, S.A., 518 F.2d 175, 179 (5th Cir. 1975); Canal Authority of State of Florida v. Callaway, 489 F.2d 567, 572 (5th Cir. 1974); DiGiorgio v. Causey, 488 F.2d 527, 528 (5th Cir. 1973); Johnson v. Radford, 449 F.2d 115, 116 (5th Cir. 1971). Nevertheless, a preliminary injunction remains an extraordinary remedy, and the district court may exercise its discretion only within certain well-established guidelines. In every case the court must conclude that the movant has met four prerequisites for this drastic remedy. These are: (1) a substantial likelihood that the movant will ultimately prevail on the merits; (2) a showing that the movant will suffer irreparable injury unless the injunction issues; (3) proof that the threatened injury to the movant outweighs whatever damage the proposed injunction may cause the opposing party; and (4) a showing that the injunction, if it is issued, would not be adverse to the public interest. See Seatrain, supra at 179, and cases cited therein.

A labor injunction raises questions of special delicacy and places still further limitations on the court's discretion. The Norris-La Guardia Act, 29 U.S.C. § 104, largely removes the jurisdiction of federal courts to issue injunctions against labor stoppages, whereas section 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 185(a), provides legal remedies to the parties for breach of collective bargaining agreements, including no-strike provisions. In Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerks Union Local 770, 398 U.S. 235, 90 S.Ct. 1583, 26 L.Ed.2d 199 (1970), the Supreme Court accommodated these two statutory provisions in the light of the national policy favoring peaceful arbitration of labor disputes. See the Steelworkers Trilogy, United Steelworkers of America v. American Manufacturing Co., 363 U.S. 564, 80 S.Ct. 1343, 4 L.Ed.2d 1403 (1960); United Steelworkers of America v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 574, 80 S.Ct. 1347, 4 L.Ed.2d 1409 (1960); United Steelworkers of America v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 80 S.Ct. 1358, 4 L.Ed.2d 1424 (1960); see also Gateway Coal v. United Mine Workers of America, 414 U.S. 368, 94 S.Ct. 629, 38 L.Ed.2d 583 (1974). The Court held that federal courts may issue injunctions against labor stoppages in those instances in which the violation of the no-strike clause occurs over an issue that the parties have agreed to arbitrate. In Amstar Corp. v. Amalgamated Meat Cutters, 468 F.2d 1372 (5th Cir. 1972), cited with approval in Buffalo Forge Co. v. United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO, 428 U.S. 397, 96 S.Ct. 3141, 3145, 49 L.Ed.2d 1022 (1976), this court ruled that the Boys Markets case established three prerequisites for a federal district court's jurisdiction to enjoin a strike: (1) the strike must be in breach of a no-strike obligation under an effective collective bargaining agreement; (2) the strike must be over an arbitrable grievance; and (3) both parties must be contractually bound to arbitrate the underlying grievance caused by the strike.

Thus, before exercising its discretion to issue a preliminary injunction against a labor stoppage, the district court must first find that the movant's case meets a total of seven criteria: four derived from the traditional equitable requirements governing all preliminary injunctions, and three derived from the Boys Markets ruling specifically concerning labor injunctions. The district court considered all seven of these criteria, and the appellant contests its findings only with respect to three. Two of these contested findings are Boys Markets/Amstar issues: the finding that there was a breach of the no-strike provision of the contract and the finding that the strike was over an arbitrable issue. The third concerns a traditional equitable prerequisite: the finding of irreparable injury. We consider these objections in order.

1. Breach of the contractual no-strike provision. The collective bargaining contract between the parties contains no definition of a forbidden strike or work stoppage. In the absence of such a contractual definition, the district court turned to the definition of "strike" contained in the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 142(2):

The term "strike" includes any strike or other concerted stoppage of work by employees (including a stoppage by reason of the expiration of a collective-bargaining agreement) and any concerted slowdown or other concerted interruption of operations by employees.

On the basis of this definition, the district court concluded that the union members' refusal to work under direction constituted a strike in violation of the contractual no-strike clause. We cannot say that this conclusion, or the method by which the district court arrived at it, was erroneous. Certainly federal law permeates the relationships between the parties, and in the absence of specific contractual provisions the federal statutory definition is strong evidence of the understanding of the parties about the meaning of "strike." We note that the district court's conclusion is by no means the definitive answer to the question of violation of the contractual no-strike provision; the court's conclusion on this point speaks only to the jurisdictional prerequisite under Boys Markets. The final decision as to whether there was a "strike" in violation of the contract is a matter for arbitration, since according to the contract itself the arbitrators have final authority to settle contractual grievances.

2. Arbitrable dispute. Neither party contends that the subject of the dispute was anything but an arbitrable issue, since the dispute clearly concerned a question arising under the contract, that is, whether employees could be directed to perform work below their job classifications. The district court concluded and neither party contests the conclusion that the subject matter of the underlying dispute was an arbitrable issue. But the ILA local continues with a somewhat subtler argument: not only must the subject matter of the dispute be arbitrable, it says, but the...