Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1449_d9eh.pdf
Page Number: 47

26 

GLACIER NORTHWEST, INC. v. TEAMSTERS 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

some obligation on the drivers to strike in the middle of the
night or before the next day’s jobs had started.  To the con-
trary,  it  was  entirely  lawful  for  the  drivers  to  start  their 
workday per usual, and for the Union to time the strike to
put “maximum pressure on the employer at minimum eco-
nomic  cost  to  the  union.”  NLRB  v.  Insurance  Agents,  361 
U. S. 477, 496 (1960); see also Lumbee Farms Co-op., 285 
N. L. R. B., at 506. 

Nor was the onus of protecting Glacier’s economic inter-
ests if a strike was called in the middle of the day on the
drivers—it was, instead, on Glacier, which could have taken 
any number of prophylactic, mitigating measures.10  What 
Glacier seeks to do here is to shift the duty of protecting an
employer’s property from damage or loss incident to a strike 
onto the striking workers, beyond what the Board has al-
ready  permitted  via  the  reasonable-precautions  principle.
In my view, doing that places a significant burden on the 
employees’ exercise of their statutory right to strike, unjus-
tifiably  undermining  Congress’s  intent.  Workers  are  not 
indentured servants, bound to continue laboring until any 
planned work stoppage would be as painless as possible for 
their  master.  They  are  employees  whose  collective  and 
peaceful decision to withhold their labor is protected by the
NLRA even if economic injury results. 

* 

* 
Today,  the  majority  fails,  in  multiple  respects,  to  heed
Congress’s intent with respect to the Board’s primary role 
in adjudicating labor disputes, despite ostensibly applying 
—————— 

* 

10 For example, Glacier could have instituted a lockout, see American 
Ship Building Co. v. NLRB, 380 U. S. 300, 310 (1965), used nonstriking 
employees to deliver the batched concrete, or had temporary replacement
drivers lined up and ready to go.  Glacier was on notice that a strike was 
possible because the Union was statutorily required to give 60-days ad-
vance notice of the proposed termination or modification of the collective-
bargaining  agreement,  §158(d),  and  because  negotiations  had  broken 
down.