Opinion ID: 1494500
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Jurisdiction for declaratory relief.

Text: The National Labor Relations Act in Section 9(c), 49 Stats. 453, 29 U.S.C.A. § 159(c), provides: (c) Whenever a question affecting commerce arises concerning the representation of employees, the Board may investigate such controversy and certify to the parties, in writing, the name or names of the representatives that have been designated or selected. In any such investigation, the Board shall provide for an appropriate hearing upon due notice, either in conjunction with a proceeding under section 10 [160 of this title] or otherwise, and may take a secret ballot of employees, or utilize any other suitable method to ascertin [sic] such representatives. Regulations promulgated by the Board since the decision below established the method by which both the employers and the employees are to petition the Board to have it determine which of the two unions is entitled to act as the bargaining agent. [1] There is no merit in the contention made that because both unions are members of the American Federation of Labor, the Board has no power to determine which union is the bargaining agent. If the word may as used in Section 9(c) of the Act means must, the Board cannot refuse to decide the question concerning the employers' duty to bargain with one or the other of the contending unions. If may is construed to confer a discretionary power on the Board, it is a legal discretion which in the instant case the Board should exercise to effectuate the declared purposes of the Act. The exercise of the Board's power cannot be avoided by a finding by the Board that the unions and Federation have contractual relations which, in the absence of the National Labor Relations Act, would require the dispute to be settled by the Federation. Congress makes no such reservation from the jurisdiction of the Board. On the contrary, one of the purposes of the Act was to afford both employer and employee a public tribunal in which a prompt decision would be given to determine with whom the employer should bargain. This purpose appears in that portion of the declaration of policy of the Act stating,    It is hereby declared to be the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection. National Labor Relations Act, § 1, 49 Stats. 449, 450, 29 U.S.C.A. § 151. As this court has held in refusing an intervention of a union for the purpose of showing that the right to strike was a matter of the Federation's concern and not that of the Board, The proposed interveners urge that the dispute, as to which union has jurisdiction, by virtue of the charter provisions should be determined by the Federation, and rely on cases where the courts have declined to enter into a dispute which could be settled by the union. The charter provisions cannot be permitted to control an exercise by Congress of the power to regulate commerce, and the contractual relationships arising under the charter provisions are subject to the exercise of that power. National Labor Relations Board v. Star Pub. Co., 9 Cir., 97 F.2d 465, 470. Nor is there merit in the contention that because the only unfair labor practices subject to Board prevention are those of the employer, the latter, in procuring from the Board the determination of which of two unions is the legally designated and selected agent, is doing nothing for the employees whose protection is the primary aim of the legislation. We do not believe Congress contemplated a necessary hostility between the employees and their employer and that the traditional amity of a group of human beings in an enterprise creating beer or bedsteads or beneficent surgical instruments hopelessly has disappeared in an eternal class war. It so happens that here all of the employees are members of one union. However, in the greater number of cases some of the employees belong to one union and some to another. While some of the employees of both groups are undoubtedly vitally and primarily concerned with the success of the particular union to which they belong in the controversy between the two unions, there is still a great body of employees who are anxious to serve their employers in a happy relationship and to have certainty in their incomes for the support and nurture of their families and the education of their children and, often, the payment of installments on their homes. These deprecate internecine union battles where both unions decline a governmental decision on their differences and have a policy of fighting it out by strike, boycotts and other methods, legal and illegal. They welcome the insistence of the employer in procuring peace and stability in the institution which at once yields wages to the laborer and payments of the other corporate indebtedness and may yield dividends to the stockholder. In such a situation it may well be that the employer owes a moral obligation to the employees to initiate the proceedings which will bring peace to all who are ground between the upper and nether stones of factional disputes. To construe the Act differently is to ignore the fact that laws are passed by human beings for human beings living in a world as it is and not in one of economic or logical abstractions. Nor is there merit in the contention that because it is clear what the decision of the Board will be on the issue raised by the Teamsters, a court has original jurisdiction merely because it may be certain what the Board will hold. Here is a violent controversy in all the producing units of a wide flung industry of the exact kind the National Labor Relations Act is purposed to settle. There is not excluded from the jurisdiction of the Board controversies which may be decided by holding that the pleadings of one or another of the contestants fails to state facts sufficient to maintain its contention. It has such jurisdiction just as a law court has jurisdiction to decide a controversy over the claimed nonpayment of a promissory note, even though the complaint alleges payment. Since both the Employees and the Brewery Workers Union and also the Breweries have an administrative tribunal established by Congress for the specific purpose of determining the controversy concerning the bargaining agent, the decision of that tribunal, and not the federal court, first should have been sought. Myers v. Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation, 303 U.S. 41, 50, 58 S.Ct. 459, 82 L.Ed. 638. Cf. Fur Workers Union, Local No. 72 v. Fur Workers Union, No. 21238, 70 App.D.C. 122, 105 F.2d 1, 12. It is argued that certification by the Board would not be a final order, would not be subject to review nor enforceable by the Board nor any one `aggrieved,' and, hence, would not be a remedy. Therefore, it is urged, there is no administrative remedy which the employee or union claiming representation rights first should seek. Whether or not certification by the Board be denominated a remedy, it is a determination which we must assume will be observed. However, if the relationship, the existence of which is certified by the Board, be unlawfully interfered with, and if the Board's powers afford inadequate protection to the employees and their union agent, it may well be that under the principles of equity the aid of the courts may be invoked. The decree declaring the Brewery Workers Union to be the bargaining agent of the brewery deliverymen and ordering the Brewers to deal with that union is reversed and the complaint and cross-complaint, other than the Teamsters', ordered dismissed as to their claims for declaratory relief. The dismissal of the cross-complaint of the Teamsters' is affirmed.