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Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 10', '§ 160', '§ 303', '§ 187', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 160', '§ 303', '§ 187', '§ 303', '§ 8', '§ 303', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 303', '§ 187', '§ 303', '§ 187', '§ 303', '§ 303', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 303']

CONNELL CONSTR. CO., INC. V. PLUMBERS & STEAMFITTERS, 421 U. S. 616 - Volume 421 - 1975 - Full Text - US Supreme Court Center - USSC Cases - Nolo
US Supreme Court Center > Volume 421 > CONNELL CONSTR. CO., INC. V. PLUMBERS & STEAMFITTERS, 421 U. S. 616 (1975) > Full Text
The nonstatutory exemption has its source in the strong labor policy favoring the association of employees to eliminate competition over wages and working conditions. Union success in organizing workers and standardizing wages ultimately will affect price competition among employers, but the goals of federal labor law never could be achieved if this effect on business competition were held a violation of the antitrust laws. The Court therefore has acknowledged that labor policy requires tolerance for the lessening of business competition based on differences in wages and working conditions. See Mine Workers v. Pennington, supra at 381 U. S. 666; Jewel Tea, supra at 381 U. S. 692-693 (opinion of WHITE, J.). Labor policy clearly does not require, however, that a union have freedom to impose direct restraints on competition among those who employ its members. Thus, while the statutory exemption allows unions to accomplish some restraints by acting unilaterally, e.g., Federation of Musicians v. Carroll, 391 U. S. 99 (1968), the nonstatutory exemption offers no similar protection when a union and a nonlabor
The multiemployer bargaining agreement between Local 100 and the Association, though not challenged in this suit, is relevant in determining the effect that the agreement between Local 100 and Connell would have on the business market. The "most favored nation" clause in the multiemployer agreement promised to eliminate competition between members of the Association and any other subcontractors that Local 100 might organize. By giving members of the Association a contractual right to insist on terms as favorable as those given any competitor, it guaranteed that the union would make no agreement that would give an unaffiliated contractor a competitive advantage over members of the Association. [Footnote 1] Subcontractors in the Association thus
Section 8(e) was part of a legislative program designed to plug technical loopholes in § 8(b)(4)'s general prohibition of secondary activities. In § 8(e), Congress broadly proscribed using contractual agreements to achieve the economic coercion prohibited by § 8(b)(4). See National Woodwork Mfrs. Assn., supra at 386 U. S. 634. The provisos exempting the construction and garment industries were added by the Conference Committee in an apparent compromise between the House bill, which prohibited all "hot cargo" agreements, and the Senate bill, which prohibited them only in the trucking industry. [Footnote 5] Although the garment industry proviso was supported by detailed explanations in both Houses, [Footnote 6] the construction industry proviso was explained only by bare references to "the pattern of collective
bargaining" in the industry. [Footnote 7] It seems, however, to have been adopted as a partial substitute for an attempt to overrule this Court's decision in NLRB v. Denver Building Construction Trades Council, 341 U. S. 675 (1951). [Footnote 8] Discussion of "special problems" in the construction industry, applicable to both the § 8(e) proviso and the attempt to overrule Denver Building Trades, focused on the problems of picketing a single nonunion subcontractor on a multiemployer building project, and the close relationship between contractors and subcontractors
Drivers Local 696 v. NLRB, 124 U.S. App. D.C. 93, 99, 361 F.2d 547, 553 (1966). See also Denver Building Trades, 341 U.S. at 341 U. S. 692-693 (DOUGLAS, J., dissenting); Essex County & Vicinity
If we agreed with Local 100 that the construction industry proviso authorizes subcontracting agreements with "stranger" contractors, not limited to any particular jobsite, our ruling would give construction unions an almost unlimited organizational weapon. [Footnote 10] The unions
It is highly improbable that Congress intended such a result. One of the major aims of the 1959 Act was to limit "top-down" organizing campaigns, in which unions used economic weapons to force recognition from an employer regardless of the wishes of his employees. [Footnote 11] Congress accomplished this goal by enacting § 8(b)(7), which restricts primary recognitional picketing, and by further tightening § 8(b)(4)(b), which prohibits the use of most secondary tactics in organizational campaigns. Construction unions are fully covered by these sections. The only special consideration given them in organizational campaigns is § 8(f), which allows "prehire" agreements in the construction industry, but only under careful safeguards preserving workers' rights to decline union representation. The legislative history accompanying § 8(f) also suggests that Congress may not
industry proviso and therefore is illegal under § 8(e), it cannot be the basis for antitrust liability because the remedies in the NLRA are exclusive. This argument is grounded in the legislative history of the 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments. Congress rejected attempts to regulate secondary activities by repealing the antitrust exemptions in the Clayton and Norris-LaGuardia Acts, and created special remedies under the labor law instead. [Footnote 15] It made secondary activities unfair labor practices under § 8(b)(4), and drafted special provisions for preliminary injunctions at the suit of the NLRB and for recovery of actual damages in the district courts. § 10(1) of the NLRA, 49 Stat. 453, as added, 61 Stat. 149, as amended, 29 U.S.C. § 160(l), and § 303 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 61 Stat. 158, as amended, 29 U.S.C. § 187. But whatever significance this legislative choice has for antitrust suits based on those secondary activities prohibited by § 8(b)(4), it has no relevance to the question whether Congress meant to preclude antitrust suits based on the "hot cargo" agreements that it outlawed in 1959. There is no legislative history in the 1959 Congress suggesting that labor law remedies for § 8(e) violations were intended to be exclusive, or that Congress thought allowing antitrust remedies in cases like the present one would be inconsistent with the remedial scheme of the NLRA. [Footnote 16]
Although we hold that the union's agreement with Connell is subject to the federal antitrust laws, it does not follow that state antitrust law may apply as well. The Court has held repeatedly that federal law preempts state remedies that interfere with federal labor policy or with specific provisions of the NLRA. E.g., Motor Coach Employees v. Lockridge, 403 U. S. 274 (1971); Teamsters v. Morton, 377 U. S. 252 (1964); Teamsters v. Oliver, 358 U. S. 283 (1959). [Footnote 17] The use of state antitrust law to
In this area, the accommodation between federal labor and antitrust policy is delicate. Congress and this Court have carefully tailored the antitrust statutes to avoid conflict with the labor policy favoring lawful employee organization, not only by delineating exemptions from antitrust coverage, but also by adjusting the scope of the antitrust remedies themselves. See Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader, 310 U. S. 469 (1940). State antitrust laws generally have not been subjected to this process of accommodation. If they take account of labor goals at all, they may represent a totally different balance between labor and antitrust policies. [Footnote 18] Permitting state antitrust law to operate in this field could frustrate the basic federal policies favoring employee organization and allowing elimination of competition among wage earners, and interfere with the detailed system Congress has created for regulating organizational techniques.
For a period of 15 years, from passage of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 47 Stat. 70, in 1932 [Footnote 2/1] until enactment of
In Conference, the House members agreed to eliminate the provisions of the Hartley bill which, like the Ball amendment, provided that the Norris-LaGuardia Act should have no application to private suits for unlawful secondary activity. See H.R.Conf.Rep. No. 510 80th Cong., 1st Sess. (House Managers' statement), 58-59, 1 Leg.Hist. of LMRA 562-563. With only "clarifying changes," H.R.Conf.Rep. No. 510, supra at 67, 1 Leg.Hist. of LMRA 571, the House-Senate Conferees and then both Houses of Congress agreed to regulate Union secondary activity by making specified activity an unfair labor practice under § 8(b)(4) of the National Labor Relations Act, authorizing the Board to seek injunctions against such activity, 29 U.S.C. § 160(l), and providing for recovery of actual damages in a suit by a private party under Senator Taft's compromise proposal, which became § 303 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 187. [Footnote 2/4] Congress in 1947 did not prohibit all
Contrary to the assertion in the Court's opinion, ante at 421 U. S. 634, the deliberate congressional decision to make § 303 the exclusive private remedy for unlawful secondary activity is clearly relevant to the question of Local 100's antitrust liability in the case before us. The Court is correct, of course, in noting that § 8(e)'s prohibition of "hot cargo" agreements was not added to the Act until 1959, and that § 303 was not then amended to cover § 8(e) violations standing alone. But as part of the 1959 amendments designed to close "technical loopholes" perceived in the Taft-Hartley Act, Congress amended § 8(b)(4) to make it an unfair labor practice for a labor organization to threaten or coerce a neutral employer, either directly or through his employees, where an object of the secondary pressure is to force the employer to enter into an agreement prohibited by § 8(e). [Footnote 2/5] At the same
to subcontract mechanical work on a competitive basis. [Footnote 2/7] If, as the Court today holds, the subcontracting agreement is not within the construction industry proviso to § 8(e), then Local 100's picketing to induce Connell to sign the agreement constituted a § 8(b)(4) unfair labor practice, and was therefore also unlawful under § 303(a), 29 U.S.C. § 187(a). [Footnote 2/8] Accordingly, Connell has the right to sue Local 100 for damages sustained as a result
of Local 100's unlawful secondary activity pursuant to § 303(b), 29 U.S.C. § 187(b). Although "limited to actual, compensatory damages," Teamsters v. Morton, 377 U.S. at 377 U. S. 260, Connell would be entitled under § 303 to recover all damages to its business that resulted from the union's coercive conduct, including any provable damage caused by Connell's inability to subcontract mechanical work to nonunion firms. Similarly, any nonunion mechanical contractor who believes his business has been harmed by Local 100's having coerced Connell into signing the subcontracting agreement is entitled to sue the union for compensatory damages; for § 303 broadly grants its damages action to "[w]hoever shall be injured in his business or property" by reason of a labor organization's engaging in a § 8(b)(4) unfair labor practice. [Footnote 2/9]
The Landrum-Griffin bill, H.R. 8400, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., which, as amended, was enacted as the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, [Footnote 2/10] by contrast, clearly provided that the new secondary boycott
The House-Senate Conferees made some substantive changes in the language of the amendments to § 8(b)(4), and also added the construction and garment industry provisos to § 8(e). See generally Cox, The Landrum-Griffin Amendments to the National Labor Relations Act, 44 Minn.L.Rev. 257. But no change was made in the nature of the sanctions authorized for violations of either section by the House-passed Landrum-Griffin bill: An injured party could either seek relief from the Board or bring suit for damages under § 303 against unions that violate the revised secondary boycott prohibitions. No provisions were made for exposing proscribed union secondary activity or "hot cargo" agreements to antitrust liability. See H.R.Conf.Rep. No. 1147, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., 1 Leg.Hist. of LMRDA 934. [Footnote 2/11]