Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/364/573/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 16:14:05+00:00

Document:
Two labor unions were engaged in a jurisdictional dispute over a certain type of work for a certain employer. Both had collective bargaining agreements with the employer, and one was the certified bargaining agent for its members; but neither the certification nor the agreements clearly apportioned the disputed type of work between their respective members. The respondent union caused a work stoppage on a particular job because work of this type was assigned to members of the other union. The employer filed an unfair labor practice charge, claiming a violation of § 8(b)(4)(D) of the National Labor Relations Act. After a hearing under §10(k), the Board held that the respondent union was not entitled to have the work assigned to its members, but the Board refused to make an affirmative award of the work between the employees represented by the two unions. Respondent refused to comply with the decision, and the Board issued a cease and desist order to compel it to do so.
Held: the Board's order is not entitled to enforcement, because the Board had not discharged its duty under § 10(k) to "determine the dispute." It should have made an affirmative award of the work between the employees of the competing unions. Pp. 364 U. S. 574-586.
272 F. 2d 713 affirmed.
that it is more important to industrial peace that jurisdictional disputes be settled permanently than it is that unfair labor practice sanctions for jurisdictional strikes be imposed upon unions. Accordingly, § 10(k) offers strong inducements to quarrelling unions to settle their differences by directing dismissal of unfair labor practice charges upon voluntary adjustment of jurisdictional disputes. And even where no voluntary adjustment is made, "the Board is empowered and directed," by § 10(k), "to hear and determine the dispute out of which such unfair labor practice shall have arisen," and, upon compliance by the disputants with the Board's decision, the unfair labor practice charges must be dismissed.
§ 10(k) hearing would therefore accomplish little but a restoration of the preexisting situation, a situation already found intolerable by Congress and by all parties concerned. If this newly granted Board power to hear and determine jurisdictional disputes had meant no more than that, Congress certainly would have achieved very little to solve the knotty problem of wasteful work stoppages due to such disputes.
"to hear and determine the dispute out of which such unfair labor practice shall have arisen or to appoint an arbitrator to hear and determine such dispute. . . . [Footnote 21]"
entirely on the Board, not to eliminate the requirement that there be such a compulsory determination. The Board's view of its powers thus has no more support in the history of § 10(k) than it has in the language of that section. Both show that the section was designed to provide precisely what the Board has disclaimed the power to provide -- an effective compulsory method of getting rid of what were deemed to be the bad consequences of jurisdictional disputes.
able to do. It is true that this forces the Board to exercise under § 10(k) powers which are broad and lacking in rigid standards to govern their application. But administrative agencies are frequently given rather loosely defined powers to cope with problems as difficult as those posed by jurisdictional disputes and strikes. It might have been better, as some persuasively argued in Congress, to intrust this matter to arbitrators. But Congress, after discussion and consideration, decided to entrust this decision to the Board. It has had long experience in hearing and disposing of similar labor problems. With this experience and a knowledge of the standards generally used by arbitrators, unions, employers, joint boards, and others in wrestling with this problem, we are confident that the Board need not disclaim the power given it for lack of standards. Experience and common sense will supply the grounds for the performance of this job which Congress has assigned the Board.
The Board also contends that respondent's interpretation of § 10(k) should be avoided because that interpretation completely vitiates the purpose of Congress to encourage the private settlement of jurisdictional disputes. This contention proceeds on the assumption that the parties to a dispute will have no incentive to reach a private settlement if they are permitted to adhere to their respective views until the matter is brought before the Board and then given the same opportunity to prevail which they would have had in a private settlement. Respondent disagrees with this contention, and attacks the Board's assumption. We find it unnecessary to resolve this controversy, for it turns upon the sort of policy determination that must be regarded as implicitly settled by Congress when it chose to enact § 10(k). Even if Congress has chosen the wrong way to accomplish its aim, that choice is binding both upon the Board and upon this Court.
10(k), on the other. This argument ignores the fact that this Court has recognized the separate and distinct nature of these two approaches to the problem of handling jurisdictional strikes. [Footnote 26] Since we do not require a "substantive symmetry" between the two, we need not and do not decide what effect a decision of the Board under § 10(k) might have on actions under § 303(a)(4).
The Board's final contention is that, since its construction of § 10(k) was adopted shortly after the section was added to the Act, and has been consistently adhered to since, that construction has itself become a part of the statute by reason of congressional acquiescence. In support of this contention, the Board points out that Congress has long been aware of its construction, and yet has not seen fit to adopt proposed amendments which would have changed it. In the ordinary case, this argument might have some weight. But an administrative construction adhered to in the face of consistent rejection by Courts of Appeals is not such an ordinary case. Moreover, the Board had a regulation on this subject from 1947 to 1958 which the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit thought, with some reason, was wholly inconsistent with the Board's present interpretation. [Footnote 27] With all this uncertainty surrounding the eventual authoritative interpretation of the existing law, the failure of Congress to enact a new law simply will not support the inference which the Board asks us to make.
We conclude therefore that the Board's interpretation of its duty under § 10(k) is wrong, and that, under that section, it is the Board's responsibility and duty to decide which of two or more employee groups claiming the right to perform certain work tasks is right, and then specifically to award such tasks in accordance with its decision. Having failed to meet that responsibility in this case, the Board could not properly proceed under § 10(c) to adjudicate the unfair labor practice charge. The Court of Appeals was therefore correct in refusing to enforce the order which resulted from that proceeding.
Radio & Television Broadcast Engineers Union, Local 1212, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO.
Theatrical Protective Union No. 1, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Machine Operators of the United States and Canada, AFL-CIO.
"All three companies negotiating jointly here took the position that they could not do this. They could not give exclusive jurisdiction, because each of them had a conflicting claim from another union."
See also National Association of Broadcast Engineers, 105 N.L.R.B. 355.
This phrase was used by the Hearing Examiner to describe the position of Columbia as explained by its vice president in charge of labor relations.
See Theatrical Protective Union No. 1, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, 124 N.L.R.B. 249, for a report of a recent jurisdictional strike against Columbia by the same stage employees' union involved here which resulted from an assignment of remote lighting work favorable to the technicians.
Respondent, for the purposes of this proceeding only, concedes the correctness of a Board finding to this effect.
"(4) . . . to induce or encourage the employees of any employer to engage in, a strike or a concerted refusal . . . to perform any services, where an object thereof is: . . ."
"Whenever it is charged that any person has engaged in an unfair labor practice within the meaning of paragraph (4)(D) of section 8(b), the Board is empowered and directed to hear and determine the dispute out of which such unfair labor practice shall have arisen, unless . . . the parties to such dispute submit to the Board satisfactory evidence that they have adjusted, or agreed upon methods for the voluntary adjustment of, the dispute. Upon compliance by the parties to the dispute with the decision of the Board or upon such voluntary adjustment of the dispute, such charge shall be dismissed."
"to fail to hold as controlling . . . the contractual preemption of the work in dispute would be to encourage disregard for observance of binding obligations under collective bargaining agreements and invite the very jurisdictional disputes Section 8(b)(4)(D) is intended to prevent."
National Association of Broadcast Engineers, supra, n 3 at 364.
NLRB v. United Association of Journeymen, 242 F.2d 722.
NLRB v. United Brotherhood of Carpenters, 261 F.2d 166.
NLRB v. Local 450, International Union of Operating Engineers, 275 F.2d 413.
For a review and criticism of some of these efforts, see Dunlop, Jurisdictional Disputes, N.Y.U.2d Ann.Conference on Labor 477 at 494-504.
H.R.Rep. No. 245, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 23, I Legislative History of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1967 at 314 (hereinafter cited as Leg.Hist.).
The amendment was contained in a bill (S. 858) offered by Senator Morse, which also contained a number of other proposals. 93 Cong.Rec.1913, II Leg.Hist. 987.
I Leg.Hist. 241, 258-259. See also the Senate Committee Report on the bill, S.Rep. No. 105, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 8, I Leg.Hist. 414.
H.R.Conf.Rep. No. 510, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 57, I Leg.Hist. 561.
29 U.S.C. § 158(a)(3), (b)(2).
International Longshoremen's & Warehousemen's Union v. Juneau Spruce Corp., 342 U. S. 237.
"to certify the labor organization or the particular trade, craft, or class of employees, as the case may be, which shall perform the particular work tasks in issue, or to make other disposition of the matter."
(Emphasis supplied.) 29 CFR, 1957 Supp., § 102.73. This rule remained in effect until 1958.

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