National Labor Relations Board v. Radio and Television Broadcast Engineers Union, Local 1212, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Afl 8212 Cio

• Decision Date: 09 January 1961
• Docket Number: No. 69,69
• Citation: 5 L.Ed.2d 302,81 S.Ct. 330,364 U.S. 573
• Parties: NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner, v. RADIO AND TELEVISION BROADCAST ENGINEERS UNION, LOCAL 1212, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS, AFL—CIO
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

364 U.S. 573

81 S.Ct. 330

5 L.Ed.2d 302

NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Petitioner,

v RADIO AND TELEVISION BROADCAST ENGINEERS UNION, LOCAL 1212, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS, AFL—CIO.

No. 69.

Argued Nov. 10 and 14, 1960.

Decided Jan. 9, 1961.

Mr. Dominick L. Manoli, Washington, D.C., for petitioner.

Mr. Robert Silagi, New York City, and Mr. Louis Sherman, Washington, D.C., for respondent.

Mr. Justice BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case, in which the Court of Appeals refused to enforce a cease-and-desist order of the National Labor Relations Board, grew out of a 'jurisdictional dispute' over work assignments between the respondent union, composed of television 'technicians,'¹ and another union, composed to 'stage employees.'² Both of these unions had collective bargaining agreements in force with the Columbia Broadcasting System and the respondent union was the certified bargaining agent for its members, but neither the certification nor the agreements clearly apportioned between the employees represented by the two unions the work of providing electric lighting for television shows. This led to constant disputes, extending over a number of years, as to the proper assignment of this work, disputes that were particularly acrimonious with reference to 'remote lighting,' that is, lighting for telecasts away from the home studio. Each union repeatedly urged Columbia to amend its bargaining agreement so as specifically to allocate remote lighting to its members rather than to members of the other union. But, as the Board found, Columbia refused to make such an agreement with either union because 'the rival locals had failed to agree on the resolution of this jurisdictional dispute over remote lighting.'³ Thus feeling itself caught 'between the devil and the deep blue,'⁴ Columbia chose to divide the disputed work between the two unions according to criteria improvised apparently for the sole purpose of maintaining peace between the two. But, in trying to satisfy both of the unions, Columbia has apparently not succeeded in satisfying either. During recent years, it has been forced to contend with work stoppages by each of the two unions when a particular assignment was made in favor of the other.⁵

The precise occasion for the present controversy was the decision of Columbia to assign the lighting work for a major telecast from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City to the stage employees. When the technicians' protest of this assignment proved unavailing, they refused to operate the cameras for the program and thus forced its cancellation.⁶ This caused Columbia to file the unfair labor practice charge which started these proceedings, claiming a violation of § 8(b)(4)(D) of the National Labor Relations Act.⁷ That section clearly makes it an unfair labor practice for a labor union to induce a strike or a concerted refusal to work in order to compel an employer to assign particular work to employees represented by it rather than to employees represented by another union, unless the employer's assignment is in violation of 'an order or certification of the Board determining the bargaining representative for employees performing such work * * *.'⁸ Obviously, if § 8(b)(4)(D) stood alone, what this union did in the absence of a Board order or certification entitling its members to be assigned to these particular jobs would be enough to support a finding of an unfair labor practice in a normal proceeding under § 10(c) of the Act.⁹ But when Congress created this new type of unfair labor practice by enacting § 8(b)(4)(D) as part of the Taft-hartley Act in 1947, it also added § 10(k) to the Act.¹⁰ Section 10(k), set out below,¹¹ quite plainly emphasizes the belief of Congress that it is more important to industrial peace that jurisdictional disputes be settled permanently than it is that unfair labor practice sanctions for jurisdictional strikes be imposed upon unions. Accordingly, § 10(k) offers strong inducements to quarrelling unions to settle their differences by directing dismissal of unfair labor practice charges upon voluntary adjustment of jurisdictional disputes. And even where no voluntary adjustment is made, 'the Board is empowered and directed,' by § 10(k), 'to hear and determine the dispute out of which such unfair labor practice shall have arisen,' and upon compliance by the disputants with the Board's decision the unfair labor practice charges must be dismissed.

In this case respondent failed to reach a voluntary agreement with the stage employees union so the Board held the § 10(k) hearing as required to 'determine the dispute.' The result of this hearing was a decision that the respondent union was not entitled to have the work assigned to its members because it had no right to it under either an outstanding Board order or certification, as provided in § 8(b)(4)(D), or a collective bargaining agreement.¹² The Board refused to consider other criteria, such as the employer's prior practices and the custom of the industry, and also refused to make an affirmative award of the work between the employees represented by the two competing unions. The respondent union refused to comply with this decision, contending that the Board's conception of its duty to 'determine the dispute' was too narrow in that this duty is not at all limited, as the Board would have it, to strictly legal considerations growing out of prior Board orders, certifications or collective bargaining agreements. It urged, instead, that the Board's duty was to make a final determination, binding on both unions, as to which of the two unions' members were entitled to do the remote lighting work, basing its determination on factors deemed important in arbitration proceedings, such as the nature of the work, the practices and customs of this and other companies and of these and other unions, and upon other factors deemed relevant by the Board in the light of its experience in the field of labor relations. On the basis of its decision in the § 10(k) proceeding and the union's challenge to the validity of that decision, the Board issued an order under § 10(c) directing the union to cease and desist from striking to compel Columbia to assign remote lighting work to its members. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit refused to enforce the cease-and-desist order, accepting the respondent's contention that the Board had failed to make the kind of determination that § 10(k) requires.¹³ The Third¹⁴ and Seventh¹⁵ Circuits have construed § 10(k) the same way, while the Fifth Circuit¹⁶ has agreed with the Board's narrower conception of its duties. Because of this conflict and the importance of this problem, we granted certiorari.¹⁷

We agree with the Second, Third and Seventh Circuit that § 10(k) requires the Board to decide jurisdictional disputes on their merits and conclude that in this case that requirement means that the Board should affirmatively have decided whether the technicians or the stage employees were entitled to the disputed work. The language of § 10(k), supplementing § 8(b)(4)(D) as it does, sets up a method adopted by Congress to try to get jurisdictional disputes settled. The words 'hear and determine the dispute' convey not only the idea of hearing but also the idea of deciding a controversy. And the clause 'the dispute out of which such unfair labor practice shall have arisen' can have no other meaning except a jurisdictional dispute under § 8(b)(4)(D) which is a dispute between two or more groups of employees over which is entitled to do certain work for an employer. To determine or settle the dispute as between them would normally require a decision that one or the other is entitled to do the work in dispute. Any decision short of that would obviously not be conducive to quieting a quarrel between two groups which, here as in most instances, is of so little interest to the employer that he seems perfectly willing to assign work to either if the other will just let him alone. This language also indicates a congressional purpose to have the Board do something more than merely look at prior Board orders and certifications or a collective bargaining contract to determine whether one or the other union has a clearly defined statutory or contractual right to have the employees it represents perform certain work tasks. For, in the vast majority of cases, such a narrow determination would leave the broader problem of work assignments in the hands of the employer, exactly where it was before the enactment of § 10(k)—with the same old basic jurisdictional dispute likely continuing to vex him, and the rival unions, short of striking, would still be free to adopt other forms of pressure upon the employer. The s 10(k) hearing would therefore accomplish little but a restoration of the pre-existing situation, a situation already found intolerable by Congress and by all parties concerned. If this newly granted Board power to hear and determine jurisdictional disputes and meant no more than that, Congress certainly would have achieved very little to solve the knotty problem of wasteful work stoppages due to such disputes.

This conclusion reached on the basis of the language of § 10(k) and § 8(b)(4) (D) is reinforced by reference to the history of those provisions. Prior to the enactment of the Taft-Hartley Act, labor, business and the public in general had for a long time joined in hopeful efforts to escape the disruptive consequences of jurisdictional disputes and resulting work stoppages. To this end unions had established union tribunals, employers had established employer tribunals, and both had set up joint tribunals to arbitrate such disputes. ¹⁸ Each of these efforts had helped some but none had achieved complete success. The result was a continuing and widely expressed dissatisfaction with jurisdictional strikes. As one of the forerunners to these very provisions of the Act, President Truman...