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Page Number: 41

20 

GLACIER NORTHWEST, INC. v. TEAMSTERS 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

persons, premises, and equipment that might otherwise be
caused by their sudden cessation of work.

The  Board  first  applied  this  “reasonable  precautions” 
principle to rank-and-file employees in Marshall Car Wheel 
&  Foundry  Co.,  Inc.,  107  N. L. R. B.  314,  315  (1953),  enf.
denied on other grounds, 218 F. 2d 409 (CA5 1955).  There, 
employees at a foundry walked off the job at a time when 
the foundry’s furnace was full of hot molten iron, threaten-
ing severe damage to the employer’s plant and equipment.
107 N. L. R. B., at 315.  The Board concluded that the em-
ployees’ strike conduct was not protected by the NLRA, be-
cause the employees had a “duty to take reasonable precau-
tions  to  protect  the  employer’s  physical  plant  from  such
imminent damage as for[e]seeably would result from their 
sudden cessation of work.”  Ibid. 

The Board has also applied this principle in other similar 
cases.  It determined, for example, that strikers who walked
out of a certain kind of chemical plant—a plant that han-
dled “extremely hazardous” chemicals that were “a hazard 
not only to employees but also to individuals living in the 
vicinity”—without  shutting  down  the  equipment  had  en-
gaged in unprotected conduct.  General Chemical Corp., 290 
N. L. R. B. 76, 77, 83 (1988).  Similarly, the Board held that 
the  strike  conduct  of  security  guards  whose  walkout  ex-
posed a federal building’s occupants to “imminent” danger
was  not  protected  by  the  NLRA.    International  Protective 
Servs., Inc., 339 N. L. R. B. 701, 703 (2003).

But  the  narrow  duty  that  Marshall  Car  Wheel  and  its 
progeny  impose  does  not—and  cannot—displace  the  gen-
eral  rule  that  labor  strikes  are  protected  even  when  the
workers’ withdrawal of their labor inflicts economic harm 
on the employer.  So the Board has also repeatedly held that
employees  have  no  duty  to  prevent  the  loss  of  perishable 
goods caused by their sudden cessation of work.

In a leading case, employees at a raw poultry plant de-