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NLRB V. INT'L LONGSHOREMEN'S ASSN., 473 U. S. 61 (1985) - US SUPREME COURT DECISIONS ON-LINE
US Supreme Court Decisions - On-Line> Volume 473 > NLRB V. INT'L LONGSHOREMEN'S ASSN., 473 U. S. 61 (1985)
NLRB V. INT'L LONGSHOREMEN'S ASSN., 473 U. S. 61 (1985)
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NLRB v. Int'l Longshoremen's Assn., 473 U.S. 61 (1985)
No. 84-861
(a) National Woodwork, supra, concluded that §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e) were intended by Congress to "reach only secondary pressures," and that agreements negotiated with the objective of preserving work in the face of a threat to union members' jobs are lawful primary activity. These conclusions were reaffirmed in NLRB v. Pipefitters, 429 U. S. 507, and ILA I, supra. Pp. 473 U. S. 74-78. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 62
BRENNAN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which WHITE, MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ., joined. REHNQUIST, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BURGER, C.J.,and O'CONNOR, J., joined, post, p. 473 U. S. 84. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 63
"focus on the work of the bargaining unit employees, not
Page 473 U. S. 64
on the work of other employees who may be doing the same or similar work."
447 U.S. at 447 U. S. 495. As we explained in some detail in ILA I, the advent of containerization some 25 years ago profoundly transformed this traditional pattern, by reducing the cost of ocean cargo transport and "largely eliminat[ing] the need for cargo handling at intermediate stages." Id. at 447 U. S. 509. [Footnote 1] chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 65
The Rules do not require that all containers be loaded or unloaded by longshoremen at the pier. Instead, they apply only to containers that would otherwise be loaded or unloaded within the local port area, defined for convenience as chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 66
anywhere within a 50-mile radius of the port. Rule 1(a). [Footnote 3] Containers directly coming from or going to points beyond the 50-mile radius are not affected by the Rules. Rule 2. Even within the 50-mile area, containers that go directly to the owner of the cargo or to "bona fide" warehouses are exempted from the Rules. Rules 1(a)(2) and (3), 2(B)(4). [Footnote 4] To ensure compliance, a fine of $1,000 is levied against a marine shipping company for each of its containers that it allows to be handled in violation of the Rules. Rule 7(c). As we noted in ILA I:
Although the marine shipping companies and longshoremen have accepted the various compromises that the Rules represent, three groups of non-ILA employers are unhappy chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 67
All these facts were before the Court in ILA I. We did not find that any of them required invalidation of the Rules. Instead, because we found that the Board had erred as a matter of law in defining the "work" in controversy, we remanded to the Board for further proceedings. 447 U.S. at chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 68
473 U. S. 512-513. Nine cases involving charges of unfair labor practices filed by consolidators, truckers, or warehousers against the ILA were then consolidated by the Board and sent to an Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) for factfinding and disposition. [Footnote 6] The charging parties claimed generally that the Rules constitute an unlawful agreement in violation of § 8(e), [Footnote 7] and that enforcement of the Rules, which has resulted in marine transport companies not dealing with certain off-pier chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 69
employers, constitutes secondary boycotting illegal under § 8(b)(4)(B). [Footnote 8]
266 N.L.R.B. at 247. He rejected the argument that containerization has so changed the character of the cargo transportation industry that this work has simply disappeared. [Footnote 9] Noting that the Rules are chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 70
"narrowly tailored" to preserve only the work of loading and unloading containers, and that "[n]o other work is sought," id. at 251, the ALJ also found that "the Rules merely restore to the unit work traditionally performed by the ILA." Id. at 252. With regard to the alleged secondary nature of the Rules, the ALJ found that the Rules have a clear work-preserving objective, and that no secondary motivation was shown:
"to the extent that the Rules seek to compensate longshoremen for losses at the expense of inland employees whose jobs did not derive from containerization, a
Page 473 U. S. 71
proscribed 'work-acquisition' objective would attach."
First, the Board provided a definition of "the work in dispute," because the ALJ had not done so explicitly. Id. at 236. Second, the Board rejected the ALJ's "findings that an illegal work acquisition objective is revealed in the Rules," chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 72
because his analysis "appear[ed] to conflict" with the direction in ILA I to focus on the work of longshoremen, not off-pier laborers. 266 N.L.R.B. at 236-237.
The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the Board's general validation of the Rules, concluding that the Board's crucial dual findings -- that the shipping companies have the "right to control" container work and that the Rules had a bona fide work preservation objective -- were supported by substantial evidence. American Trucking Assns., Inc. v. NLRB, 734 F.2d 966, 977-978 (1984). For chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 73
First, in concluding that a partial objective of the Rules is "work acquisition," the Board had failed to make any factual finding that the Rules actually operate to deprive "shortstopping" truckers or "traditional" warehousers of any work. Id. at 979. Second, the Court of Appeals concluded that, as a matter of law, an agreement that preserves duplicative or technologically "eliminated" work simply does not constitute "work acquisition." National Woodwork had approved as lawful primary activity a collective bargaining agreement whose objective was "protection of union members from a diminution of work flowing from changes in technology." 386 U.S. at 386 U. S. 648 (Harlan, J., concurring). The ALJ and the Board both had found that the same work-preserving purpose underlies the Rules on Containers. The Rules do not "in any way prevent the identical off-pier work," and although such work may be economically inefficient, "it is not our function as a court of review to weigh the economic cost of the Rules." 734 F.2d 979. The Court of Appeals therefore concluded that "the Rules are lawful in their entirety, and may be enforced." Id. at 980.
We have labored in the past to determine Congress' will as expressed in §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e) -- this case requires no new development. In light of the Board's factual findings, chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 74
we believe the Court of Appeals' conclusion that the Rules do not violate these provisions flows as a matter of course from National Woodwork and ILA I. [Footnote 12]
In National Woodwork, after reviewing in detail the relevant legislative and judicial history, we concluded that "Congress meant that both § 8(e) and § 8(b)(4)(B) reach only secondary pressures." 386 U.S. at 386 U. S. 638; accord, Houston Contractors Assn. v. NLRB, 386 U. S. 664, 386 U. S. 668 (1967). [Footnote 13] In this regard, the prohibitory scope of § 8(e) was found to be no broader than that of § 8(b)(4)(B). 386 U.S. at 386 U. S. 635, 386 U. S. 638. The purpose of § 8(e) had been to close a "loophole" in the labor laws that allowed unions to employ "hot cargo" agreements chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 75
to pressure neutral employers not to handle nonunion goods. Id. at 386 U. S. 634-637; see Carpenters v. NLRB, 357 U. S. 93 (1958) (Sand Door). However, we concluded, "Congress, in enacting § 8(e), had no thought of prohibiting agreements directed to work preservation." 386 U.S. at 386 U. S. 640. [Footnote 14] Such agreements "are not used as a sword" to achieve secondary objectives, but as "a shield carried solely to preserve the members' jobs." Id. at 386 U. S. 630. Because the labor laws do not prohibit bona fide primary activity, we stated that the central inquiry for evaluating claims of work preservation is
Id. at 386 U. S. 644-645. We expressly noted that a different case might be presented if a union engaged in activity "to reach out to monopolize jobs chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 76
or acquire new job tasks when their own jobs are not threatened. . . ." Id. at 386 U. S. 630-631 (emphasis added). [Footnote 15]
We reaffirmed the National Woodwork analysis in ILA I, and noted that "a lawful work preservation agreement must pass two tests:" the objective of the agreement must be preservation of work for members of the union, rather than some secondary goal, and the "right of control" test of NLRB v. Pipefitters, 429 U. S. 507 (1977), must be satisfied. 447 U.S. at 447 U. S. 504. [Footnote 16] We ruled, however, that the Board had chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 77
erred as an initial matter by defining the "work in dispute" as "off-pier" container loading and unloading. Id. at 447 U. S. 506. Because technological innovation may significantly change the character of an industry, work preservation agreements negotiated to address such change "typically come into being when employees' traditional work is displaced." Id. at 447 U. S. 505. Consequently, the place where work is to be done often lies at the heart of the controversy, and is seldom relevant to the definition of the work itself. See id. at 477 U. S. 506-507. [Footnote 17] The Board's focus on the container work performed off-pier by nonlongshoremen was erroneous, because it ignored the question whether "the parties have tailored their agreement to the objective of preserving the essence of the traditional work patterns," id. at 447 U. S. 510, n. 24, and
ILA I concluded, however, that collective bargaining agreements designed to "accommodate change" while still preserving some type of work for union members may nevertheless be lawful primary agreements; the work preservation doctrine does not require that unions block progress by refusing to permit any use at all of new technology in order to avoid the prohibitions of §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e). Id. at 447 U. S. 506. The inquiry is whether "the objective of the agreement was work preservation, rather than the satisfaction of union goals elsewhere," id. at 447 U. S. 510, and the analytical focus must be "on the work of the bargaining unit employees, not on the work of chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 78
other employees . . . doing the same or similar work." Id. at 447 U. S. 507.
We accept the Board's factual findings as supported by substantial evidence, Universal Camera Corp. v. NLRB, 340 U. S. 474 (1951), and are mindful of the rule that the Board's construction of the Act is due our deference. See, e.g., Beth Israel Hospital v. NLRB, 437 U. S. 483, 437 U. S. 500-501 (1978); NLRB v. Erie Resistor Corp., 373 U. S. 221, 373 U. S. 236 (1963). We are in agreement with the Board's basic statutory conclusions: §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e) prohibit secondary, but not chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 79
primary, union activity, and bona fide work preservation agreements and their enforcement may constitute protected primary goals. Now that the Board has fully developed the factual record regarding the Rules, the only question presented is whether, as a matter of law, the Board applied the "work preservation" doctrine consistently with our prior cases.
In our view, the Board committed two fundamental errors. First, by focusing on the effect that the Rules may have on "shortstopping" truckers and "traditional" warehousers, the Board contravened our direction that such extra-unit effects, "no matter how severe," are "irrelevant" to the analysis. 447 U.S. at 447 U. S. 507, n. 22. "So long as the union had no forbidden secondary purpose" to disrupt the business relations of a neutral employer, ibid., such effects are "incidental to primary activity." Pipefitters, 429 U.S. at 429 U. S. 526. Here the ALJ, Board, and Court of Appeals all have agreed that the Rules were motivated entirely by the longshoremen's understandable desire to preserve jobs against "the steadily dwindling volume" of cargo work at the pier. 734 F.2d 978. Given this clear primary objective to preserve work in the face of a threat to jobs, extra-unit effects of a work preservation agreement alone provide an insufficient basis for concluding that the agreement has an unlawful secondary objective. Absent some additional showing of an attempt "to reach out to monopolize jobs," National Woodwork, supra, at 386 U. S. 630, that is, proof of an attempt "not to preserve, but to aggrandize," Pipefitters, supra, at 429 U. S. 528-530, n. 16, such an agreement is lawful. [Footnote 19] chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 80
Second, we believe the Board misconstrued our cases in suggesting that "eliminated" work can never be the object of a work preservation agreement. Technological innovation will often, by design, eliminate some aspect of an industry's work. For example, in National Woodwork, the agreement at issue strove to preserve carpentry work done by hand at the job site, even though new off-site machining techniques had eliminated the necessity for much of this work. Yet the jobs of carpenters were no less threatened, nor was their attempt to preserve them any less primary, than if the contractor had decided to subcontract the cutting and fitting of doors to nonunion workers. Cf. Fibreboard Corp. v. NLRB, 379 U. S. 203, 379 U. S. 209 (1964). Similarly, containers have eliminated some of the work of loading and unloading cargo by hand for all participants in the industry -- longshoremen, truckers, and warehousers alike. [Footnote 20] "Elimination" of work chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 81
in the sense that it is made unnecessary by innovation is not, of itself, a reason to condemn work preservation agreements under §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e); to the contrary, such elimination provides the very premise for such agreements.
It must not be forgotten that the relevant inquiry under §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e) is whether a union's activity is primary or secondary -- that is, whether the union's efforts are directed at its own employer on a topic affecting employees' wages, hours, or working conditions that the employer can control, or, instead, are directed at affecting the business relations of neutral employers and are "tactically calculated" to achieve union objectives outside the primary employer-employee relationship. See National Woodwork, 386 U.S. at 386 U. S. 644-645; Pipefitters, 429 U.S. at 429 U. S. 528-529, and n. 16. The various linguistic formulae and evidentiary mechanisms we have employed to describe the primary/secondary distinction are not talismanic, nor can they substitute for analysis. See generally Railroad Trainmen v. Jacksonville Terminal Co., 394 U. S. 369, 394 U. S. 386-390 (1969). The inquiry is often an inferential and fact-based one, at times requiring the drawing of lines "more nice than obvious." Electrical Workers v. NLRB, 366 U. S. 667, 366 U. S. 674 (1961); see Pipefitters, supra, at 429 U. S. 531 ("common sense inference"). In this case, however, the ALJ, Board, and Court of Appeals all found that the ILA negotiated the Rules on Containers with the sole object of preserving work for its members, and that there is no evidence of "any significant ILA interest in the labor relations of the class of employers boycotted by the Rules." 266 N.L.R.B. at 249. Furthermore, as the Fourth Circuit noted, this is not a case in which an avowed work preservation agreement "seeks to claim work so different from that traditionally performed by the bargaining unit employees" that a secondary objective might be inferred. 734 F.2d 980. [Footnote 21] When the objective of an agreement and its enforcement chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 82
is so clearly one of work preservation, the lawfulness of the agreement under §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e) is secure absent some other evidence of secondary purpose.
In ILA I, it was argued that the Rules preserve work made "utterly useless" by containerization and thus are "nothing less than an invidious form of featherbedding' to block full implementation of modern technological progress." Id. at 447 U. S. 526-527 (BURGER, C.J.,dissenting). Similar arguments are repeated today, see post at 473 U. S. 89, 473 U. S. 90, and were presented in National Woodwork as well. See 386 U.S. at 386 U. S. 644. Our response is no different than it was 18 years ago: "Those arguments are addressed to the wrong branch of government." Ibid. [Footnote 22] Justice Harlan wrote separately in National Woodwork to underscore the Court's reasoning on this point: chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 83
"[B]oth sides of today's division in the Court agree that we must be especially careful to eschew a resolution of the issue according to our own economic ideas, and to find one in what Congress has done."
"In view of Congress' deep commitment to the resolution of matters of vital importance to management and labor through the collective bargaining process, and its recognition of the boycott as a legitimate weapon in that process, it would be unfortunate were this Court to attribute to Congress, on the basis of such an opaque legislative record, a purpose to outlaw the kind of collective bargaining and conduct involved in these cases. Especially at a time when Congress is continuing to explore methods for meeting the economic problems increasingly arising in this technological age from scientific advances, this Court should not take such a step until Congress has made unmistakably clear that it wishes wholly to exclude collective bargaining as one avenue of approach to solutions
Page 473 U. S. 84
in this elusive aspect of our economy."
"(4) . . . (ii) to threaten, coerce, or restrain any person engaged in commerce or in an industry affecting commerce where in either case an object thereof is -- "
Associated Transport ("shortstopping"); Terminal Corp. (warehousing); Beck Arabia (warehousing). 266 N.L.R.B. at 268, 269-270. Unfair labor charges also were sustained in Custom Brokers, but on a finding that the Rules had been employed in an unlawful attempt to organize two nonunion off-pier employers. 266 N.L.R.B. at 270-271. This finding was not challenged on appeal, 734 F.2d 976, n. 7, and the Customs Brokers violations are not before us.
The dissent apparently agrees with this assessment of our precedents, as its criticisms are directed largely at the rationales of National Woodwork and ILA I. See post at 473 U. S. 88-90. The rationale of our third major precedent in this area, NLRB v. Pipefitters, 429 U. S. 507 (1977), is not directly implicated in this case. Pipefitters held that activity taken to enforce a valid work preservation agreement will violate § 8(b)(4)(B) if the primary employer "does not have control over the assignment of the work sought by the union." Id. at 429 U. S. 510-511. In this case, the ALJ, Board, and Court of Appeals have unanimously concluded that the longshoremen's employers, marine shipping companies, have the "right to control" container loading and unloading work by virtue of their ownership or leasing control of the containers. See 734 F.2d 978; 266 N.L.R.B. at 234, 260-267. Thus the Pipefitters test is satisfied here.
It is not surprising that neither the opinion of the Court today nor the body of the opinion in NLRB v. Longshoremen, 447 U. S. 490 (1980) (ILA I), contains the text of the chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 85
Rules that the Court is called upon to consider. Nor is it surprising that §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e) of the National Labor Relations Act are not set out in full in the body of those two opinions. For if one were to set the provisions of the Rules side by side with the provisions of the Act, one could not help but conclude that the Rules are proscribed by those sections. It is only by stringing together a series of highly questionable propositions that the Court has arrived at the contrary result. In my view, Congress did not intend the union activities at issue to be sanctioned by the National Labor Relations Act.
The effect of these Rules is well illustrated by their application to the trucking practice known as "shortstopping" -- one of the classes of work with respect to which the Board found the Rules to be work acquisitive. Prior to containerization, chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 86
longshoremen unloaded cargo breakbulk from the ship and moved it to trucks for inland transport. Despite the fact that the trucks already had been loaded at the pier, truckers often stopped at nearby trucking terminals, where the trucks were unloaded and again carefully reloaded so as to meet gross weight and weight distribution requirements for long-distance carrying. This practice is known as "shortstopping," and it is quite clearly related to the needs of the trucking, not the shipping, business.
"(4)(ii) to threaten, coerce, or restrain any person engaged in commerce or in an industry affecting commerce where in either case an object thereof is -- "
"(B) forcing or requiring any person to cease using, selling, handling, transporting, or otherwise dealing in the products of any other producer, processor, or
Page 473 U. S. 87
manufacturer, or to cease doing business with any other person . . . Provided, [t]hat nothing contained in this clause (B) shall be construed to make unlawful, when not otherwise unlawful, any primary strike or primary picketing. . . ."
It should be evident that the Rules violate the plain language of § 8(e). The Rules constitute an "agreement" between an employer and a labor organization "whereby [the] employer . . . agrees . . . to cease doing business with any other person. . . ." That is the import of Rule 7(d). Nor can it be doubted on the facts here that the union has transgressed the plain language of § 8(b)(4)(B) by seeking to enforce the agreement through coercing the shipowners to stop providing containers to certain entities that were violating the Rules. As a matter of plain language, one would not think that the union's actions here fell within the statutory exception for "primary strikes or primary picketing." Finally, I think it fairly obvious why Congress would seek to prohibit such activity by labor unions. As illustrated by this very case, absent such restrictions, unions are free to exercise their considerable power, through concerted action, to manipulate the allocation of resources in our economy -- even to the point where, in the name of "work preservation," a union could literally halt technological advance. chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 88
One might well ask, then, how §§ 8(e) and 8(b)(4)(B) have been construed so as not to preclude the actions at issue here. It has not been a simple process. Beginning with National Woodwork Manufacturers Assn. v. NLRB, 386 U. S. 612 (1967), this Court explained its understanding that the exception in § 8(b)(4)(B) for "primary strikes or primary picketing" indicated that Congress only intended to preclude "secondary activity" under that section. Then, relying only on the ambiguous legislative history of § 8(e), the Court concluded that that section also was intended to preclude only "secondary" activity. Admittedly, at least with respect to § 8(b)(4)(B), this distinction has some support in the language of the statute, and even has some usefulness despite the fact that, as the Court recognizes, ante at 473 U. S. 81, the primary/secondary distinction is perhaps one of the gauziest of legal concepts. But assuming that Congress did not intend § 8(e) to extend to certain kinds of agreements that could be described as "primary," it does not follow from that concession that "work preservation" is one of the "primary" activities that the statutes do not prohibit. Yet that is the conclusion that the Court reached in National Woodwork, and the work preservation/work acquisition distinction provides the basis for the conclusion the Court reaches today. As refined by the Court, it now appears that, at least where a particular union's jobs are "threatened," an agreement will be considered valid so long as the union's subjective intent is to preserve union jobs and the union conducts its bargaining with an employer who has "control" over those jobs; it is only where the agreement is "tactically calculated to satisfy union objectives elsewhere," ante at 473 U. S. 78, that the agreement will be considered work-acquisitive. In applying this test, we are told first that we must look to "all the surrounding circumstances,'" ante at 473 U. S. 75 (quoting National Woodwork), to determine whether the union's objective was work preservation, or the acquisition chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 89
of work traditionally done by others. In almost the same breath, however, we are told that here the Board committed fundamental error by "focusing on the effect that the Rules may have on `shortstopping' truckers and `traditional' warehousers," because such "extra-unit effects" are "`irrelevant' to the analysis." Ante at 473 U. S. 79 (quoting ILA I).
As to the relationship between the Court's test and Congress' intent, I note that today the Court forthrightly admits that a "work preservation" agreement will not be illegal despite the fact that its intent is to preserve work that has been entirely "eliminated" by technological change. As noted previously, such agreements can result in "preserving" work merely by requiring duplication, thereby forcing an employer to pay for labor that no longer has an economic use. Indeed, one of the reasons stated by the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for upholding the Rules as applied to "shortstopping" was that, given that, under the Rules, ILA labor would have to unload at the pier any container that was going to be shortstopped, there still was no indication in the record that the ILA had "acquired" any work, because there was no indication that the containers would not be shortstopped in any event when they reached the trucking terminal. American Trucking Assns., Inc. v. NLRB, 734 F.2d 966, 979 (1984). As THE CHIEF JUSTICE noted in his dissent in ILAI, chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 90
the upshot of allowing unions to enter into such agreements is that they may render change so difficult, by artificially raising the costs of a new system, that they stifle technological advance. ILA I, 447 U.S. at 447 U. S. 526-527 (BURGER, C.J.,dissenting). It is hard to believe that the Congress which enacted a statute that, by its plain terms, would have prohibited such agreements nevertheless intended to sanction agreements requiring such make-work.
A decent regard for stare decisis suggests that battle be not again joined on the question decided in National Woodwork, but, to me, the dubious correctness of that decision indicates that the Court should not expand it beyond its facts, and should now try to move in the direction of the plain language of the statutes in those cases not clearly covered by National Woodwork. I can agree that § 8(e) cannot be read chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 91
with a slavish literalism, because many labor-management "agreements" will entail some secondary effects on the employer's business relations that Congress would not have intended to proscribe. Similarly, I can concede that many "agreements" motivated by a desire for "work preservation" are lawful under the NLRA. Thus, a union faced with loss of jobs might agree to a pay cut to preserve the work of its members. But for me there is a difference between such "primary" activity and an agreement that an employer will refrain from doing business with a third party so that a union may retain its jobs. Through such agreements, a union can extend its influence beyond the unit employer and the traditional bargaining issues of wages, hours, and working conditions, and expand the labor dispute to those "neutral" employers who participate in the employer's markets. In the context of technological change, the union's agreement may put the third party out of business before it ever begins. That is the "secondary" activity with which Congress was concerned.
There is no dispute that "shortstopping" occurred even when longshoremen regularly unloaded cargo breakbulk from the ships and the cargo was placed into trucks. Similarly, chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 92
some ship cargo traditionally was taken to nearby warehouses for storage, awaiting ultimate distribution. As discussed previously, containerization made it possible to take entire truckloads directly from the ship's hold to these warehouses and truck terminals, so that a loading and unloading process that used to take place twice now need be done only once. The Rules ensure that, in these circumstances, the containers will be unloaded once by ILA labor; it does not take much insight to recognize, therefore, that the natural tendency of the Rules will be to bring the truck terminals and warehouses to the pier, so that, to the greatest extent possible, the containers will only have to be unloaded once, with the "shortstopping" and warehousing being performed by ILA members. This will be the only means for these trucker and warehouse employers to compete with those who handle containers exempt from the Rules, and who have only the costs of one handling to pass along to their customers.
The conclusion that the Rules are secondary -- and work-acquisitive -- in the case before us is supported by a look at how the Rules actually are structured with respect to "shortstopping" chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 93
and warehousing. For present purposes, I accept the Court's suggestion that, when containers were first introduced, the ILA could simply have boycotted all containers by refusing to unload any of them. It does not follow, however, that, because the ILA could legally boycott all containers, it therefore can single out which containers it is entitled to unload. Rule 1(a)(3) preserves for the ILA the right to unload any container destined for a single consignee which is unloaded within 50 miles of the port, and which is not unloaded by the employees of an ultimate consignee or warehoused for more than 30 days. The record does not indicate that this Rule applies to work done by any employers other than shortstopping truckers, short-term warehousemen, and "consolidators." Of these, both the truckers and warehousemen performed the unloading task prior to containerization. Given this history, it should be clear that at least this part of the Rule must be considered secondary. Failing, for whatever reason, to preclude the advent of containers altogether, and recognizing that containers would eliminate a large portion of their work, the ILA apparently looked around for similar work close enough to the pier to claim as its own. It found it in the work performed by truckers and warehousemen. I can only view Rule 1(a)(3), which is specifically directed at that work, as intentionally work-acquisitive.
The Court avoids this conclusion by stating the test as whether the union's objective was to preserve its traditional work, and by pretending to accept the ALJ's and the Board's "findings" that "the ILA's objective consistently has been to preserve longshore work. . . ." Ante at 473 U. S. 81-82. I, of course, agree with the Court that the Board's factual findings must be accepted if supported by substantial evidence, and that deference is due to the Board's construction of the Act, ante at 473 U. S. 78, but the Board did not make the findings the Court cites. The Board accepted the ALJ's finding that the "ILA had an overall work preservation objective in negotiating the Rules," see 266 N.L.R.B. 230, 236 (1983), but chanroblesvirtualawlibrary
Page 473 U. S. 94
both the Board and the ALJ concluded that, as applied to "shortstopping" and some warehousing, the Rules were work-acquisitive. Although their rationales were articulated differently, I believe that both bodies were expressing the sentiments expressed above -- both the intent and effect of this part of the Rules were to obtain work not traditionally done by longshoremen. In concluding otherwise, the Court engages in nothing but a shell game -- it hides the ILA's work acquisition under one shell and then forces all attention on the limited question of the union's intent in bargaining with its employer. By broadly defining the work traditionally done by longshoremen and refusing to allow a review of the larger economic scene, the Court manages to turn over only shells representing work preservation. This latest refinement moves even further from the language and intent of §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e). I would reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.