United States v. United Steelworkers of America

• Decision Date: 27 October 1959
• Docket Number: No. 13056.,13056.
• Citation: 271 F.2d 676
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America v. UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA, Appellant, et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

271 F.2d 676 (1959)

UNITED STATES of America v. UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA, Appellant, et al.

No. 13056.

United States Court of Appeals Third Circuit.

Argued October 22, 1959.

Decided October 27, 1959.

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Arthur J. Goldberg, David E. Feller, Elliot Bredhoff, Jerry D. Anker, Washington, D. C., for appellant.

John C. Bane, Jr., Pittsburgh, Pa., for iron and steel producing companies.

William Kelly Montague, Duluth, Minn., for a number of independent ore companies.

George Cochran Doub, Donald MacGuineas, Washington, D. C., for Government.

Before BIGGS, Chief Judge, and GOODRICH and HASTIE, Circuit Judges.

BIGGS, Chief Judge.

The suit at bar was instituted by the United States, parens patriae, against United Steelworkers of America (the "Union"), an unincorporated labor union, representing among others, employees in the steel industry, which is engaged in trade, commerce, and transportation among the several States and with foreign nations and in the production of goods for commerce as defined by the Labor-Management Relations Act, 1947, as amended, 29 U.S.C.A. § 141 et seq., 61 Stat. 136 et seq. The defendants, ninety-six in number, (the "Steel Companies") are variously engaged in one or more of the stages of steel production, including the mining and transporting of iron ore, the operation of blast furnaces for the conversion of iron ore into pig iron, the production of steel ingots, the rolling and shaping of steel ingots into steel products and in the fabricating of finished products.

Collective bargaining agreements between the Union and the Steel Companies expired on June 30, 1959, and unresolved labor disputes between the Steel Companies and their employees represented by the Union as to the terms and conditions of new agreements resulted in strikes of the employees commencing on July 15, 1959 and continuing until the present time. On October 9, 1959, the President of the United States issued Executive Order No. 10843 creating a Board of Inquiry, 29 U.S.C.A. §§ 176 and 177, to inquire into the issues involved in the labor disputes, and in the Executive Order referred to, stated that in his "opinion" the strike was affecting a substantial part of an industry engaged in trade, commerce and transportation among the several States and with foreign nations and in the production of goods for commerce, and that, if permitted to continue the strikes would imperil the national health and safety. 29 U.S.C.A. § 176. The Board of Inquiry convened and inquired into the issues involved in the labor disputes and made its report as required by law on October 19, 1959. Upon its receipt the President filed the report with the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, making its contents available to the public, and instructed the Attorney General of the United States to institute the instant proceedings in the court below.

That court, after extensive arguments and stipulations by the parties whereby they waived service of process and submitted themselves to the jurisdiction of the court and also agreed that the hearing on the petition and affidavits without oral testimony should be a final one, entered an injunction which ordered the Union and its officers and agents to end the strike and also required the Steel Companies to make their plants available for the Union members so that they might resume work therein. This injunction by the terms of the Act must be dissolved in 80 days, 29 U.S.C.A. § 180. The Union has appealed from this injunction. The Judgment is a final one, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1291. No jurisdictional question in the ordinary sense is presented here.

The Constitutionality of the Statute.

We are met in limine, however, with a constitutional challenge asserted by the Union as to the capacity of the Court below to act in this matter.¹ The Union relies on Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution which limits the courts of the United States to the judicial function of adjudicating justiciable controversies, citing National Mutual Ins. Co. of District of Columbia v. Tidewater Transfer Co., 1949, 337 U.S. 582, 69 S. Ct. 1173, 93 L.Ed. 1556. Put shortly, it is the contention of the Union that there was no "case or controversy" before the court below which it could adjudicate in the sense required by the Constitution. In this connection the Union points out that Section 178, Title 29, U.S.C.A., states that the court "shall have jurisdiction to enjoin any such strike * * *" but, it contends, an injunction can issue lawfully only if it is employed as a remedy to enforce a preexisting legal duty; that here the injunction creates the right and also in the same breath, enforces it. The Union relies on the kind of classic equity proceedings where an injunction is issued to prevent the continuance of a tort, to compel performance of a contract, or to enforce a duty already imposed by statute. The Union concedes that both it and the Steel Companies had and have a duty to bargain collectively in good faith and if it had failed to do so sanctions could be imposed upon it under the National Labor Relations Act because of such failure. But the Union argues that while there is a controversy between it and the Steel Companies that controversy was not before the court below in constitutionally justiciable form.

Unfortunately, though the Act is over twelve years old, we have found but one reported case which directly adjudicates this issue of constitutionality under Article III, Section 2; viz., United States v. United Steelworkers of America, 2 Cir., 1953, 202 F.2d 132, 138-139, affirming United States v. American Locomotive Co., D.C.W.D.N.Y.1952, 109 F.Supp. 78, certiorari denied 1953, 344 U.S. 915, 73 S.Ct. 337, 97 L.Ed. 705 (Certiorari in this case was applied for and denied prior to the adjudication in the Court of Appeals.). Cf. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 1952, 343 U.S. 579, 586, 72 S.Ct. 863, 96 L.Ed. 1153.²

We think it desirable to examine this question de novo. It is clear that Sections 176-180 of the Act, 29 U.S.C.A., embody and attempt a legislative solution of problems rising from labor disputes which lead to strikes or lockouts and which, because of their serious impact on national health or safety, may give rise to national emergencies. There was a clear-cut recognition by Congress that labor strife affects adversely important economic and social interests of the public. This appears from the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq., itself enacted long prior to the Labor-Management Relations Act with which we are immediately concerned. The latter Act appears to have two major objectives and it is not necessary to decide here which has primary or secondary status. Congress intended the Labor-Management Relations Act to operate by its terms when a strike "affects an entire industry or a substantial part thereof * * *" and "will imperil the national health or safety * * *." 29 U.S.C.A. § 178.

The purposes of the Act are set out in Section 141(b) as follows: "Industrial strife which interferes with the normal flow of commerce and with the full production of articles and commodities for commerce, can be avoided or substantially minimized if employers, employees, and labor organizations * * * recognize under law that neither party has any right in its relations with any other to engage in acts or practices which jeopardize the public health, safety, or interest.", and "It is the purpose and policy of this * * * Act, in order to promote the full flow of commerce, to prescribe the legitimate rights of both employees and employers in their relations affecting commerce, to provide orderly and peaceful procedures for preventing the interference by either with the legitimate rights of the other, to protect the rights of individual employees in their relations with labor organizations whose activities affect commerce, to define and proscribe practices on the part of labor and management which affect commerce and are inimical to the general welfare, and to protect the rights of the public in connection with labor disputes affecting commerce."

The Congressional intent shown here is, first, to protect the rights of both employers and employees and, second, to bring to an end industrial strife which affects commerce to such a degree as to menace the general welfare. See 29 U.S. C.A. §§ 178 and 179. Whether or not the injunction appealed from has or can have the effect of settling the instant labor dispute depends on the proof offered and goes to the issue of the sound exercise of legal discretion on the part of the court below. This phase of the case is discussed at a later point in this opinion.

It may be helpful to restate in a few concrete sentences our conception of the congressional intent as expressed in the Act. The underlying concept is one of tort, tortious conduct which affects the national health or safety. See Section 141(b), quoted supra. That tortious conduct consists of permitting a labor dispute to continue to the point where national health or safety is imperiled. In point of time the action or non-action of employers and employees becomes wrongful when national health or safety is imperiled. The President then states his opinion that such is the case and constitutes a Board of Inquiry which proceeds as required by law but without recommendations, the making of recommendations being expressly prohibited by Section 176, 29 U.S.C.A. The United States then brings a suit such as that at bar and it becomes the duty of the District Court to find or not to find that the circumstances are such, as prescribed in Section 178, that the national health or safety is imperiled. It would, of course, be impossible ordinarily to fix the exact point in time at which the provisions of the Labor-Management Relations Act become operative. The peril must exist at the time the jurisdiction of the United States District Court is invoked and it is the duty of the...