Piezonki v. National Labor Relations Board

• Decision Date: 26 February 1955
• Docket Number: No. 6894.,6894.
• Citation: 219 F.2d 879
• Parties: John A. PIEZONKI, d/b/a Stover Steel Service, Petitioner, v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Respondent.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

219 F.2d 879 (1955)

John A. PIEZONKI, d/b/a Stover Steel Service, Petitioner, v. NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD, Respondent.

No. 6894.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued January 8, 1955.

Decided February 26, 1955.

Sidney J. Barban and Earle K. Shawe, Baltimore, Md., for petitioner.

Norton J. Come, Atty., N.L.R.B., Washington, D. C. (David P. Findling, Associate Gen. Counsel, Marcel Mallet-Prevost, Asst. Gen. Counsel, and Rosanna A. Blake, Atty. N.L.R.B., Washington, D. C., on brief), for respondent.

Before PARKER, Chief Judge, and SOPER and DOBIE, Circuit Judges.

PARKER, Chief Judge.

This is a petition to review and set aside a decision of the National Labor Relations Board denying relief to a subcontractor on a construction project on a complaint that certain activities engaged in by labor unions amounted to a violation of secondary boycott provisions of section 8(b) (4) (A) of the Labor Management Relations Act. 29 U.S.C. A. § 158(b) (4) (A). The petitioner is John A. Piezonki, doing business as Stover Steel Service, who was one of the subcontractors on construction projects being carried on by Henry J. Knott, Inc., and the Garden Construction Company, an affiliated corporation, near Baltimore, Md. Knott and the Garden Construction Company were operating on an open shop basis. Petitioner and a number of other subcontractors on the projects were operating on the closed union shop basis. In an effort to force Knott and Garden to operate 100% union shop, the Baltimore Building and Construction Trades Council, an organization of labor unions, began an organizing campaign at the Claremont and Jessups projects of Knott and Garden and placed a picket line around the projects which the union employees of the union subcontractors refused to cross. Petitioner contends that the object of this picket line was to bring pressure on Knott and Garden to unionize their business by means of the pressure exerted on the subcontractors as a result of the stoppage of work by their employees. The trial examiner found the facts in accordance with this contention and recommended that petitioner be granted the relief prayed. The board refused to grant it, however, on the ground that the effect of the picketing on the union subcontractors was to be regarded as merely incidental to the organizing campaign conducted against Knott and Garden.

There is practically no dispute as to the facts, which are correctly summarized in the reports of the trial examiner and the board, and which may be stated briefly as follows: The Baltimore Builders Chapter of the Associated General Contractors of America, composed of contractors committed to the employment of union labor, had been urging the Trades Council, representing labor unions in the construction field, to organize the businesses of the non-union or open shop contractors in the Baltimore area; and early in 1953 the council decided to undertake the organization of Knott and Garden, who were constructing the Claremont and Jessups projects. An organizing campaign was accordingly commenced and a picket line was thrown around these projects, the pickets appearing at the time that the men went to work and bearing signs giving notice that the job was being picketed for purposes of organization. No notice was given that the picketing related only to Knott or Garden or that it was not directed towards union subcontractors.¹ The result was that, while the non-union employees of Knott and Garden and of non-union subcontractors paid no attention to the picket line, the employees of the union subcontractors, who constituted a substantial number of those working on the projects, refused to cross it. When they sought advice from their unions with regard to the matter, they either received no advice at all or such advice as caused them to refuse to work on the project so long as the picket line was maintained.² This was, of course, the result which was aimed at in establishing the picket line, for everyone knew that the union employees would not cross it and that their refusal to work thus brought about would result in pressure on the general contractors to yield to the demands of the unions. The matter was well put in the concluding findings of the trial examiner, wherein he said:

"The record shows that the Council had long been engaged in a campaign directed at the nonunion general contractors in the Baltimore area (including Knott and Garden) to require them to employ members of its affiliated building crafts unions. The Council\'s tactics included both purely persuasive efforts (e. g., the conferences between Ellis and Knott) and attempts to force the general contractors to capitulate by depriving them of the services, i. e., business, of union subcontractors by causing the removal of the latter\'s employees from the job.

"The object of the latter tactics was not only to force or require such subcontractors to cease doing business with the general contractors but in practical effect it prevented them from doing business on the job sites during the course of the dispute, since they were rendered helpless to proceed under their contracts in the absence of labor supplied by the crafts unions.

"The Council\'s minutes and the other evidence herein establish clearly that the activities which comprise the subject matter of this proceeding were only a part and a continuation of the Council\'s campaign to require open shop contractors to hire all their manpower through the Council\'s affiliated unions. Though the evidence shows that the Council set upon its new course of action with full awareness of the pitfalls and problems presented by the secondary boycott provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act, as interpreted by recent Supreme Court decisions, and that it sought, obtained, and acted upon the advice of counsel, yet its objectives remained as before. What was changed was the quality of the means it employed to attain them. I.B.E.W. case, supra.

"But the change in methods could not disguise the objects of the action which was sought to be induced. Plainly, those methods still envisioned one objective which was illegal, i. e., to force or require the union subcontractors, who were in no way involved in the dispute, to cease performance — indeed to prevent performance — of their contractual obligations to the general contractors. Thus the subcontractors, helpless and impotent neutrals, became the chief

...