Opinion ID: 110041
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Policy of Free Collective Bargaining

Text: Free collective bargaining is the cornerstone of the structure of labor-management relations carefully designed by Congress when it enacted the NLRA. Of the numerous actions that labor or management may take during collective bargaining to bring economic pressure to bear in support of their respective demands, the NLRA protects or prohibits only some. The availability and usefulness of many others depend entirely upon the relative economic strength of the parties. [1] What Congress left unregulated is as important as the regulations that it imposed. It sought to leave labor and management essentially free to bargain for an agreement to govern their relationship. [2] Congress also intended, by its limited regulation, to establish a fair balance of bargaining power. That balance, once established, obviates the need for substantive regulation of the fairness of collective-bargaining agreements: whatever agreement emerges from bargaining between fairly matched parties is acceptable. [3] Thus, the NLRA's regulations not only are limited in scope but also must be viewed as carefully chosen to create the congressionally desired balance in the bargaining relationship. As the Court observed in Motor Coach Employees v. Lockridge, 403 U. S. 274, 286 (1971), the primary impetus for enactment of a comprehensive national labor law was the need to stabilize labor relations by equitably and delicately structuring the balance of power among competing forces so as to further the common good. [4] Because the NLRA's limits represent a clear congressional choice with respect to the freedom and fairness of the bargaining process, the Court has been alert to prevent interference with collective bargaining that is unwarranted by the NLRA. For example, in NLRB v. Insurance Agents, 361 U. S. 477 (1960), the Court rejected the conclusion of the National Labor Relations Board (Board) that certain on-the-job conduct undertaken by employees to support their bargaining demands was inconsistent with the union's duty to bargain in good faith. The Court, noting that the NLRA did not prohibit such actions, id., at 498, concluded that allowing the Board to regulate the availability of such economic weapons would intrude on the area deliberately left unregulated by Congress. [5] The Court employed the same analysis in reversing the Board's determination that the NLRA was violated by a lockout conducted to bring economic pressure to bear in support of the employer's bargaining position. American Ship Building Co. v. NLRB, 380 U. S. 300, 308 (1965). It rejected the Board's suggestion that, in enforcing the employer's duty to bargain in good faith, the Board could deny to the employer the use of certain economic weapons not otherwise proscribed by § 8. While a primary purpose of the National Labor Relations Act was to redress the perceived imbalance of economic power between labor and management, it sought to accomplish that result by conferring certain affirmative rights on employees and by placing certain enumerated restrictions on the activities of employers. . . . Having protected employee organization in countervailance to the employers' bargaining power, and having established a system of collective bargaining whereby the newly coequal adversaries might resolve their disputes, the Act also contemplated resort to economic weapons should more peaceful measures not avail. [The NLRA does] not give the Board a general authority to assess the relative economic power of the adversaries in the bargaining process and to deny weapons to one party or the other because of its assessment of that party's bargaining power. 380 U. S., at 316-317. The States have no more authority than the Board to upset the balance that Congress has struck between labor and management in the collective-bargaining relationship. For a state to impinge on the area of labor combat designed to be free is quite as much an obstruction of federal policy as if the state were to declare picketing free for purposes or by methods which the federal Act prohibits. Garner v. Teamsters, 346 U. S. 485, 500 (1953). In Teamsters v. Morton, 377 U. S. 252, 259-260 (1964), the Court held that a state law allowing damages for peaceful secondary picketing was pre-empted because the inevitable result [of its application] would be to frustrate the congressional determination to leave this weapon of self-help available, and to upset the balance of power between labor and management expressed in our national labor policy. Id., at 259-260. The Court followed the same approach in Machinists v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Comm'n, 427 U. S. 132 (1976), where it held pre-empted a state law under which the union had been enjoined from a concerted refusal to work overtime. Its prior decisions, the Court concluded, indicated that such activities, whether of employer or employees, were not to be regulable by States any more than by the NLRB, for neither States nor the Board is `afforded flexibility in picking and choosing which economic devices of labor and management shall be branded as unlawful.'  Id., at 149, quoting NLRB v. Insurance Agents, supra, at 498.