John Morrell & Co. v. Local Union 304A of United Food and Commercial Workers, AFL-CIO
| Decision Date | 30 October 1986 |
| Docket Number | AFL-CIO,No. 86-5364,A,AFL-CIO and CL,86-5364 |
| Parties | 123 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 3084, 105 Lab.Cas. P 12,095 JOHN MORRELL & COMPANY, Appellee, v. LOCAL UNION 304A Of the UNITED FOOD AND COMMERCIAL WORKERS,; United Food and Commercial Workers International Union,ppellants. Dennis Foster, individually and in his capacity as president of defendant Local 304A; James R. Lyons, individually and in his capacity as Business Representative and Corresponding Secretary of defendant Local 304A; John Doe and Other Persons Unknown. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
Robert S. Bates, Jr., Chicago, Ill., for appellants.
Lawrence I. Kipperman, Chicago, Ill., for appellee.
Before LAY, Chief Judge, and FAGG and BOWMAN Circuit Judges.
Local Union 304A of the United Food and Commercial Workers, AFL-CIO (Local 304A) appeals the district court's 1 grant of John Morrell & Company's motion for a preliminary injunction. We reverse.
John Morrell & Co. (Morrell) is a meat processing business with facilities in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Arkansas City, Kansas (Ark City). Local 304A, an affiliate of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, AFL-CIO and CLC, represents employees at the Sioux Falls plant and negotiates collective bargaining agreements with Morrell on behalf of those employees. Local 340, a different local of the same international, represents and negotiates with Morrell on behalf of employees at the Ark City facility. Neither local is a party to the other local's contract with Morrell.
When Local 340's contract with Morrell expired on July 1, 1986, its members struck at the Ark City plant to exert pressure on Morrell to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement. On two separate occasions, August 4 and August 15, 1986, members of Local 340 also set up picket lines at the Sioux Falls facility. Local 340's business agent testified on cross-examination at the hearing on the preliminary injunction that Local 340's expectation was that if the Sioux Falls employees honored the picket lines, more pressure would be exerted on Morrell to negotiate favorably with the Ark City employees. On both dates, all but one to two percent of the Sioux Falls employees represented by Local 304A refused to cross Local 340's picket lines. While it appears that some officers of Local 304A spoke with Local 340 picketers, no evidence in the record indicates that any member of Local 304A carried picket signs or placards or engaged in any strike activity other than refusing to cross the picket line. The president of Local 304A testified before the district court that his intent as a member of Local 304A in refusing to cross Local 340's picket line was to show support for Local 340 in its contract negotiations with Morrell, and that there was no underlying dispute between Local 304A and Morrell.
Anticipating that Local 304A might take action in support of the Ark City employees, Morrell informed Local 304A by letter on July 30, 1986, that it believed that the no-strike clause 2 in their collective bargaining agreement prohibited Local 304A from honoring a picket line set up in Sioux Falls by Local 340. In that letter, Morrell stated that any Sioux Falls employees who participated in such a strike were subject to termination. On August 4, 1986, the first date Local 304A members refused to cross Local 340's picket line, Morrell sought a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction, and permanent injunction. That same day, before the issues could be addressed by the district court, Local 340 dismantled its picket line and Local 304A made an unconditional offer to return to work. 3 Although the Sioux Falls employees did return to work on the evening of August 4, Morrell took disciplinary action against the strike participants by noting each employee's absence on August 4 as "unexcused" in its files. In protest of Morrell's action, Local 304A filed a class grievance.
On August 15, when the members of Local 304A refused to cross a new picket line established by Local 340, Morrell applied for and obtained a temporary restraining order. After an evidentiary hearing on August 18, 1986, at which Local 304A moved the district court to vacate the TRO and deny Morrell further injunctive relief, the district court granted Morrell a preliminary injunction which prohibited Local 304A and all persons acting in concert with its members from participating in work stoppages at the Sioux Falls plant. The district court ordered that the issues raised in the court's memorandum opinion and order be submitted to arbitration. In its memorandum opinion, the district court found that the August 4 strike was a sympathy strike which could not properly be enjoined. However, relying on the fact that the second work stoppage occurred after the union had submitted an unconditional offer to return and had filed the class grievance, it concluded that the August 15 action was only in the guise of a sympathy strike and had been transformed into a dispute over underlying arbitrable issues. Because it had concluded that the second strike was over an arbitrable grievance covered by the terms of the parties' collective bargaining agreement, the district court determined that the second strike could be enjoined. After unsuccessfully seeking a stay from the district court pending appeal, Local 304A petitioned this court for an expedited hearing, which we granted.
To determine whether the district court properly enjoined Local 304A's strike activities, we start with the congressional limitation on a federal court's jurisdiction to issue orders enjoining a strike, set out in section 4 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 104. 4 A narrow exception to this statutory prohibition from enjoining strikes was established by the Supreme Court in Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerk's Union, 398 U.S. 235, 90 S.Ct. 1583, 26 L.Ed.2d 199 (1970), which allows an injunction to issue only if the strike is over a dispute which under the parties' collective bargaining agreement should be submitted to arbitration. In two subsequent cases, the Supreme Court emphasized the narrowness of the Boys Markets exception and held that a Boys Markets injunction may not issue unless the strike has been triggered by an arbitrable dispute. See Jacksonville Bulk Terminals, Inc. v. International Longshoremen's Ass'n., 457 U.S. 702, 102 S.Ct. 2672, 73 L.Ed.2d 327 (1982), and Buffalo Forge Co. v. United Steelworkers, 428 U.S. 397, 96 S.Ct. 3141, 49 L.Ed.2d 1022 (1976) ).
In gauging the intended scope of the Boys Markets exception to the anti-injunction rule, this court has observed that
[t]he Supreme Court's opinions in Buffalo Forge and Jacksonville Bulk Terminals analyze the Boys Markets exception as a means for effectuating the national policy favoring agreements to arbitrate, and not as an enforcement mechanism for no-strike clauses. Both Buffalo Forge and Jacksonville Bulk Terminals distinguish between strikes where the underlying dispute is arbitrable and those where the legality of the strike itself is arbitrable. Only in the former category are strikes subject to injunction, because only there does the strike represent a breach of the Union's agreement to arbitrate.
Purex Corp., 705 F.2d at 276; see also Peabody Coal Co. v. International Union, UMWA, 430 F.Supp. 205, 207 (E.D.Mo.1977). Moreover, even in Boys Markets, the Supreme Court cautioned that its views should not be construed to find "that injunctive relief is appropriate as a matter of course in every case of a strike over an arbitrable grievance." Boys Markets, 398 U.S. at 253-54, 90 S.Ct. at 1593-94.
Applied to the facts of this case, the anti-injunction principles just outlined require that the district court find that Local 304A's strike activity represented a union response to a dispute over a grievance which the union was contractually bound to arbitrate. See National Rejectors Indus. v. United Steelworkers, 562 F.2d 1069, 1075 (8th Cir.1977), cert. denied, 435 U.S. 923, 98 S.Ct. 1486, 55 L.Ed.2d 517 (1978), (citing Buffalo Forge, 428 U.S. at 409, 96 S.Ct. at 3148). In the findings of fact contained in its order granting a preliminary injunction, the district court found that "[t]he [August 4, 1986] picket line was honored to show support for Local 340 workers" and that on August 15, 1986 "the workers again refused to cross a second picket line established at the Sioux Falls plant by Local 340." These findings, which are supported by the record, identify the underlying cause of strike activity on both dates to be Local 304A's response to the appearance of Local 340 pickets, motivated by a desire to show support for the Ark City employees in Local 340's contract negotiations with Morrell. To the extent that the district court found that the first strike was a sympathy strike, that the parties' no-strike clause did not prohibit sympathy strikes, and that the August 4 strike could not be enjoined by a federal court, we agree with the district court's analysis. However, although the district court made no finding of fact that either strike at the Sioux Falls plant was motivated by a labor dispute between Local 304A and Morrell, and did not find that members of Local 304A struck at any time other than the two separate dates that Local 340 pickets appeared in Sioux Falls, the district court concluded as a matter of law that Local 304A's refusal on August 15 to cross Local 340's picket line was precipitated by the grievance filed by Local 304A to protest...
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