Opinion ID: 2100864
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: findings and declarations

Text: 1. The States of New Jersey and New York hereby find and declare that the conditions under which waterfront labor is employed within the Port of New York district are depressing and degrading to such labor, resulting from the lack of any systematic method of hiring, the lack of adequate information as to availability of employment, corrupt hiring practices and the fact that persons conducting such hiring are frequently criminals and persons natoriously lacking in moral character and integrity and neither responsive or responsible to the employers nor to the uncoerced will of the majority of the members of the labor organizations of the employees; that as a result waterfront laborers suffer from irregularity of employment, fear and insecurity, inadequate earnings, an unduly high accident rate, subjection to borrowing at usurious rates of interest, exploitation and extortion as the price of securing employment and a loss of respect for the law; that not only does there result a destruction of the dignity of an important segment of American labor, but a direct encouragement of crime which imposes a levy of greatly increased costs on food, fuel and other necessaries handled in and through the Port of New York district. 2. The States of New Jersey and New York hereby find and declare that many of the evils above described result not only from the causes above described but from the practices of public loaders at piers and other waterfront terminals; that such public loaders serve no valid economic purpose and operate as parasites exacting a high and unwarranted toll on the flow of commerce in and through the Port of New York district, and have used force and engaged in discriminatory and coercive practices including extortion against persons not desiring to employ them; and that the function of loading and unloading trucks and other land vehicles at piers and other waterfront terminals can and should be performed, as in every other major American port, without the evils and abuses of the public loader system, and by the carriers of freight by water, stevedores and operators of such piers and other waterfront terminals or the operators of such trucks or other land vehicles. 3. The States of New Jersey and New York hereby find and declare that many of the evils above described result not only from the causes above described but from the lack of regulation of the occupation of stevedores; that such stevedores have engaged in corrupt practices to induce their hire by carriers of freight by water and to induce officers and representatives of labor organizations to betray their trust to the members of such labor organizations. 4. The States of New Jersey and New York hereby find and declare that the occupations of longshoremen, stevedores, pier superintendents, hiring agents and port watchmen are affected with a public interest requiring their regulation and that such regulation shall be deemed an exercise of the police power of the two States for the protection of the public safety, welfare, prosperity, health, peace and living conditions of the people of the two States. (Emphasis supplied) In the light of these findings of the scope and nature of the local problem, and the decisional precedent of the Linehan and Staten Island Loaders cases that the compact is a reasonable exercise of the police powers of the states, neither inhibited by the guarantees of the Federal Constitution nor a prohibited trespass upon any area superseded by federal action, the lack of merit in appellant's attack on its constitutionality is fully demonstrated. And that attack gains no strength from the construction of section 32:23-80 to impose an absolute ban against the holding of the union office by the convicted criminal. A dispositive analogy is found in the decision in the Staten Island Loaders case. There the absolute prohibition against engaging in the calling of public loader was sustained upon the ground that it was not unreasonable or arbitrary since the proof shows that the exercise of this calling by public loaders in New York Harbor has been accompanied by such flagrant abuses that it is against the public interest to allow them to continue. There is no proof that these abuses will not continue in the future and the Legislature has found that they are inherent in the system itself. In our opinion these findings justify the legislation. 117 F. Supp., at page 310. Even more cogent are these observations to the matter of convicted criminals holding places as officers or agents of labor organizations representing waterfront workers in the Harbor. The record in the instant case is absolutely barren of any proofs that the conditions which so plainly justified N.J.S.A. 32:23-80 have in anywise changed. Too, it is not for us to pass judgment whether regulation rather than absolute disqualification from union offices would have met the need. That argument was also advanced in the Staten Island Loaders case as to the ban against public loaders and was rejected with the comment,    it is not for the judiciary to decide whether the legislature has chosen the best remedy to meet an evil. The court decides only whether the means chosen are constitutional and related to the evil sought to be abolished.    In making its decision to prohibit public loading it is to be presumed that the legislature made a conscious and careful choice, based on long study and consideration. We cannot say that the remedy chosen is unreasonable. 117 F. Supp., at pages 310-311. Appellant's argument that Local 1247's members are denied the equal protection of the laws because the statute has the effect of a limitation upon their rights under the National Labor Relations Act to select representatives of their own choosing is answered both by the Staten Island Loaders decision, and by the later decision in Bradley v. Waterfront Comm. of N.Y. Harbor, supra. In the Loaders case it was argued that the compact encroached upon the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress over maritime matters. The court said, 117 F. Supp., at page 311: But whether or not public loading comes within the maritime jurisdiction, it has always been clear that a State may legislate on matters affecting interstate commerce and the maritime industry which are purely local in nature.    a State may exercise its police power in the maritime field to protect the public health and safety. It is clear that the control and regulation permitted by the Compact over the waterfront in New York Harbor clearly concerns such public interests. Moreover, the registration of longshoremen and stevedores and the prohibition of public loading are matters of local concern in which the need for uniformity throughout the United States does not exist. In the Bradley case the provisions governing registration and hiring of longshoremen were attacked as restrictive of the rights guaranteed workers by the Wagner and Taft-Hartley Labor legislation. The argument was disposed of with the comment,    the Court is of the view that the Supremacy claim is insubstantial. It is to be noted that the very same claims of Supremacy, stated as such or in the guise of a `pre-emption' contention, were made in the Linehan and Staten Island cases. 130 F. Supp., at pages 311-312. O'Rourke v. Waterfront Commission, supra , should also be mentioned. There an attempt to have a three-judge statutory court convene was unsuccessful. This was an attack upon Article V of the compact, which requires that pier superintendents and hiring agents who respectively supervise and select the longshoremen for hire must be licensed by the Waterfront Commission. As noted earlier, there is a provision in the article that a license may be denied an applicant when he has without subsequent pardon been convicted of specified crimes, except that the Commission has discretion to remove the ineligibility of such convicted persons when warranted by the applicant's conduct for a period of at least five years. Noting that all of the constitutional infirmities advanced were presented to, considered and rejected by two statutory courts, in Linehan and Staten Island Loaders dealing with the registration of longshoremen under Articles VII and IX and the prohibition of public loading under Article VII, the court found no additional merit in the same attacks as related to Article V. It was particularly emphasized that In the Linehan case the discretionary power granted to the Waterfront Commission to refuse registration to a longshoreman based upon conviction of crime, as well as the other criteria specified in the Act, was held not to violate the Constitution and to be a reasonable exercise of the state's police power. 118 F. Supp., at page 237. Affirmed. For affirmance  Chief Justice VANDERBILT, and Justices HEHER, OLIPHANT, WACHENFELD, BURLING, JACOBS and BRENNAN  7. For reversal  None.