Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1449_d9eh.pdf
Page Number: 40

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

19 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

Our Fansteel decision stands for the principle that “em-
ployees ha[ve] the right to strike but they ha[ve] no license 
to commit acts of violence or to seize their employer’s plant.” 
Id., at 253.  The facts of that case involved 95 striking em-
ployees who effected a “sit-down strike by taking over and 
holding two of [their employer’s] key buildings.”  Id., at 248 
(internal quotation marks omitted).  The employees subse-
quently  engaged  in  “a  pitched  battle”  in  which  they  “re-
sisted the attempt by the sheriff to evict and arrest them.” 
Id., at 249.  We held that the NLRA did not condone this 
conduct,  which  would  “put  a  premium  on  resort  to  force”
and would “subvert the principles of law and order which
lie at the foundations of society.”  Id., at 253. 

Congress’s incorporation of Fansteel’s limitation into the 
NLRA establishes that, while employees have the right to 
withhold their labor peaceably, subsequent affirmative acts
of  violence,  or  seizure  of  an  employer’s  premises,  are  not 
protected labor practices. 

2 

As  a  general  matter,  the  dispute  in  this  case  is  over 
whether  employees  can  withhold  their  labor  if  doing  so 
risks  damage  to  their  employer’s  property.    As  explained
above,  by  carefully  restricting  limitations  on  the  right  to
strike in the NLRA itself, Congress has indicated that the
act of peacefully walking off the job is protected strike con-
duct  even  if  economic  harm  incidentally  results.  What  is 
not protected is any subsequent affirmative step to destroy
or seize the employer’s property.  This is the statutory back-
drop against which the Board has developed the narrow re-
quirement  that  striking  employees  must  take  reasonable 
precautions before or when they strike in order to forestall 
or address foreseeable, imminent, and aggravated injury to 

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other exceptions concern strikes for illegal objectives, strikes in breach 
of contract, and strikes in breach of other federal law.  See S. Rep. No.
105, at 28.