Williams v. Yellow Cab Co. of Pittsburgh, Pa.

• Decision Date: 08 December 1952
• Docket Number: No. 10760.,10760.
• Citation: 200 F.2d 302
• Parties: WILLIAMS et al. v. YELLOW CAB CO. OF PITTSBURGH, PA., et al. Appeal of DARGAN.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

200 F.2d 302 (1952)

WILLIAMS et al. v. YELLOW CAB CO. OF PITTSBURGH, PA., et al. Appeal of DARGAN.

No. 10760.

United States Court of Appeals. Third Circuit.

Argued October 6, 1952.

Decided December 8, 1952.

Hymen Schlesinger, Pittsburgh, Pa., for appellants.

Harold E. McCamey, Pittsburgh, Pa. (Richard O'N. Duff and Dickie, McCamey, Chilcote, Reif & Robinson, Pittsburgh, Pa., on the brief), for Yellow Cab Co. of Pittsburgh.

Ben Paul Jubelirer, Pittsburgh, Pa., for Union and Charles Weber.

Before MARIS, KALODNER and HASTIE, Circuit Judges.

MARIS, Circuit Judge.

The plaintiffs, Negro taxicab drivers now or formerly employed by the Yellow Cab Company of Pittsburgh, an operator of a fleet of taxicabs in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, brought suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania on their own behalf and on behalf of other Negro taxicab driver-employees, against the Cab Company and Taxicab Drivers Local Union No. 128 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, of which union they were members, and two individuals, one an officer of the Cab Company and the other an officer of the Union. They charged the Cab Company and the Union, which was their collective bargaining representative, with a conspiracy to discriminate against them and to segregate them because of their race by means of certain working regulations. They sought an injunction restraining the continuation of the discriminatory practices, a declaratory judgment that the working regulations in question were illegal and void, compensatory damages and reinstatement of those plaintiffs discharged for violations of the regulations. The defendants filed motions to dismiss the complaint upon the ground that the district court had no jurisdiction to entertain it. The court sustained the motions and dismissed the complaint. 103 F.Supp. 847. Thomas H. Dargan, one of the plaintiffs, has appealed.

The appellant alleges that the Union was recognized by the Cab Company as the exclusive bargaining agent for all of its taxicab drivers. Agreements were negotiated by the Union covering rates of pay and working conditions "between the company and its drivers * * * on a uniform and equal basis and without discrimination." In October 1947 the Cab Company established its uptown garage and employed only Negroes to operate taxicabs from that garage. All these Negro taxicab drivers joined the Union. At a meeting attended by the representatives of the Cab Company, the Union and a committee which represented the Negro drivers of the uptown garage, certain additional working regulations were promulgated. The appellant claims that the defendants conspired by means of these additional working regulations to deprive the plaintiffs of rights equal to those which the white taxicab driver-employees enjoyed by prohibiting them from cruising to pick up passengers; by relegating them to inferior, discriminatory status in picking up passengers; by requiring them to leave a railroad station or cab stand if another cab driven by a white driver arrived; by denying them equal rights under a general seniority list in assignments to new taxicabs, days off and selection of another garage; by unfairly relegating them to one garage in a particular section of Pittsburgh inhabited largely by Negroes and by imposing discriminatory penalties upon them.

On this appeal the appellant relies, as the plaintiffs did in the district court, upon two basis for asserting federal jurisdiction. The first basis for jurisdiction relied upon by the appellant is Section 1331 of Title 28, United States Code, which gives the district courts original jurisdiction of all civil actions wherein the matter in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $3000 and arises under the laws of the United States. The appellant's proposition is that this case arose under Section 9(a) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended,¹ a law of the United States, and was, therefore, cognizable by the district court under Section 1331. The appellant contends that the Union was granted by this section of the act the right to represent as their exclusive bargaining representative all the drivers of the defendant company, both union and non-union members, white and Negro, in connection with the negotiation of collective agreements governing rates of pay and working conditions and that the grant of this right was conditioned by an obligation to bargain fairly and without discrimination. By agreeing to the additional working regulations under which the plaintiffs were employed and segregated in the uptown garage the Union, argues the appellant, violated this federal statutory obligation.

The appellant relies primarily upon the cases of Steele v. Louisville & N. R. Co., 1944, 323 U.S. 192, 65 S.Ct. 226, 89 L.Ed. 173, and Tunstall v. Brotherhood, 1944, 323 U.S. 210, 65 S.Ct. 235, 89 L.Ed. 187, to sustain his proposition. In these cases the Supreme Court held that the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, when exercising the power granted by the Railway Labor Act to act as the statutory representative of the craft of firemen, composed of white members of the Brotherhood and Negro non-members, was under a duty imposed by the act to protect equally the interests of all the members of the craft in behalf of whom it acted. The court said that the power conferred on the Brotherhood by the act must be exercised fairly and without discrimination between its own member employees and those employees who were not its members. This rule does not preclude the statutory representative of a craft from making contracts the terms of which vary in their application to individual employees by reason of differences in seniority, competence, type of work done, or other relevant factors, but the court pointed out that discrimination based on race alone is irrelevant, invidious and unauthorized. It is clear that the duty thus imposed upon a statutory collective bargaining representative by the Railway Labor Act is likewise imposed by the National Labor Relations Act upon representatives exercising similar power by virtue of that act.²

The Supreme Court has said that Congress, by those acts, has created the relationship of principal and agent between the members of the craft and the bargaining representatives.³ Thus in Wallace Corp. v. Labor Board, 1944, 323 U.S. 248, 255-256, 65 S.Ct. 238, 241, 89 L.Ed. 216, the court stated:

"The duties of a bargaining agent selected under the terms of the Act extend beyond the mere representation of the interests of its own group members. By its selection as bargaining representative, it has become the agent of all the employees, charged with the responsibility of representing their interests fairly and impartially. Otherwise, employees who are not members of a selected union at the time it is chosen by the majority would be left without adequate representation."⁴

It does not follow, however, that the National Labor Relations Act imposed such a duty upon the Union in this case. For even if we assume that the Cab Company was engaged in interstate commerce, the act contains no general prohibition of discriminatory practices by unions engaged in collective bargaining with employers. On the contrary, as we have pointed out, the prohibition is merely an implied condition upon the grant of power to bargain collectively which Section 9(a) of the act confers. The question, therefore, narrows down to whether the Union in this case derived its bargaining powers from the act and was, therefore, subject to the implied condition that those powers be exercised without discrimination.

In considering this question we must bear in mind that the plaintiffs were all members of the Union.⁵ This is the distinguishing factor which makes the rule of the Steele case inapplicable to the facts of this case. In the Steele case the Supreme Court pointed out: 323 U.S. at page 199, 65 S.Ct. at page 230.

"Since petitioner and the other Negro members of the craft are not members of the Brotherhood or eligible for membership, the authority to act for them is derived not from their action or consent but wholly from the command of the Act."

The right of a labor union to engage in collective bargaining on behalf of its members is a right which was not conferred by the National Labor Relations Act but was recognized long prior thereto.⁶ In exercising its powers to bargain collectively for its members as in all its other activities on their behalf a labor union acts, through its authorized officers, as agent of the entire membership within the authority conferred by its constitution and bylaws.⁷ In exercising these bargaining powers the labor union has the corresponding duty of an agent to represent all its members fairly, in good faith and without discrimination. This duty, however, being one imposed by the law of the state in which the Union operates, cannot be made the basis for invoking federal jurisdiction under Section 1331, even though it might well form the basis for action in the state courts.⁸ As we have said, the plaintiffs here were all members of the Union. We are compelled to conclude that the authority of the Union to act for them in collective bargaining was derived from their consent as evidenced by their membership and not from Section 9(a) of the National Labor Relations Act.

The appellant relies upon the recent decision of the Supreme Court in Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen v. Howard, 1952, 343 U.S. 768, 72 S.Ct. 1022, as authority for the proposition that a union bargaining only for its own employees is nonetheless subject to the statutory duty to bargain in a way so as not to discriminate against other employees on grounds of race alone. That case arose under the Railway Labor Act, as amended,⁹ the provisions of which provide in great detail for the manner and course of collective bargaining between the railroads and their...