Opinion ID: 1931324
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: invasion of a pre-empted field.

Text: The Company's first contention is that the statute is unconstitutional because it invades a field pre-empted by the Federal Government through the enactment of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C.A., § 151 et seq., and the Labor-Management Relations Act, 1947, 29 U.S.C.A., § 141 et seq. This question was fully explored and disposed of by this court in Van Riper v. Traffic Telephone Workers Federation of N.J., 2 N.J. 335 (1949), wherein we decided that our state statute was not in conflict with federal legislation. The Company argues, however, that since our decision on this point in the Van Riper case, supra, the United States Supreme Court, in International Union of U.A.A. & A. v. O'Brien, 339 U.S. 454, 94 L.Ed. ( Adv. Op. ) 659 (May 8, 1950), has decided that the right to strike peacefully for higher wages is established by the federal legislation, that the latter does not permit concurrent state regulation in this area, that since Congress has occupied this field it is closed to state regulation, and, ergo, that our state statute is unconstitutional. Our analysis of the O'Brien case, supra, does not lead us to the same conclusion. In that case the constitutionality of the strike vote provision of the Michigan labor mediation law was questioned. The union had struck against a private industrial organization, engaged in interstate commerce, without conforming to the prescribed state procedure; the state procedure differed from that provided in the federal legislation and the court decided that because of the conflict the state statute was unconstitutional. The court said that the regulation of the right to peacefully strike for higher wages had been pre-empted by Congress, but the case being decided by the court involved a statute regulating the right to strike against private industry. It was not a statute such as the New Jersey statute, in which a state, in the exercise of its sovereignty, seeks to maintain without interruption the supply of services, considered essential to the welfare and health of its people, being furnished by a public utility, operating under a franchise by the state, whose services furnished are primarily intrastate. It is significant that in the O'Brien case, supra, the court said, Even if some state legislation in this area could be sustained, the particular statute before us could not stand. For it conflicts with the Federal Act. Our examination of the federal act discloses no provision therein which prohibits a state, in the exercise of its police power, from protecting itself against strikes or lockouts in public utilities which would imperil the health and safety of its citizens. It is noted that the Labor-Management Relations Act, 1947, in sections 206-210, authorizes the Federal Government to proceed, pursuant thereto, to enjoin threatened strikes or lockouts which, if permitted to occur, might imperil the national health or safety. We find no authority in the federal act for the Federal Government to so act to prevent similar emergencies which may be state-wide only and which may be of insufficient magnitude to imperil the national health and safety. Since we find no provision in the federal act prohibiting a state from enjoining threatened strikes or lockouts in public utilities which, if permitted to occur, might imperil the health, welfare and safety of its people in an emergency of state-wide proportions only, since the federal act does not authorize the Federal Government to act in such cases, and since the intention of Congress to exclude states from exerting their police power must be clearly manifested, Allen-Bradley Local v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Board, 315 U.S. 740, 86 L.Ed. 1154 (1942), we conclude that the right of the states to prohibit strikes or lockouts in this sphere has not been pre-empted by Congress, and that the O'Brien case, supra, is inapplicable to the present situation. We reiterate the statement made in the Van Riper case, supra, that Thus the power still resides in the states in a proper case to prohibit strikes notwithstanding the existing federal legislation. We consider this a proper case within the foregoing statement and find nothing in the O'Brien case, supra, of a dissuasive nature.