Opinion ID: 110041
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Free Collective Bargaining and the New York Statute

Text: The plurality's opinion, after acknowledging that the payment of benefits financed ultimately by the employer was a substantial factor in the employees' decision to strike and remain on strike, ante, at 525, further concedesas it must that the New York law has altered the economic balance between management and labor. Ante, at 532. During the strike out of which the present controversy arose, the petitioners' employees collected more than $49 million in unemployment compensation. All but a small fraction of these benefits were paid from the petitioners' accounts in the New York unemployment insurance fund; because of these payments, the petitioners' tax rates were increased in subsequent periods. [6] The challenged provisions of the New York statute thus had a twofold impact on the bargaining process ( ante, at 526 n. 5, 531-532): they substantially cushioned the economic impact of the lengthy strike on the striking employees, and also made the strike more expensive for the employers. [7] Nothing in the NLRA or its legislative history indicates that Congress intended unemployment compensation for strikers, let alone employer financing of such compensation, to be part of the legal structure of collective bargaining. [8] The New York law therefore alters significantly the bargaining balance prescribed by Congress in that law. The decision upholding it cannot be squared with Morton and Machinists, where far less intrusive state statutes were invalidated because they upset the balance of power between labor and management expressed in our national labor policy. Morton, 377 U. S., at 260. [9] The plurality's opinion seeks to avoid this conclusion by ignoring the fact that the petitioners are not challenging the entire New York unemployment compensation law but only that portion of it that provides for benefits for striking employees. Although the plurality characterizes the State's unemployment compensation law as a law of general applicability that implement[s] a broad state policy that does not primarily concern labor-management relations, ante, at 533, 534, this description bears no relation to reality when applied to the challenged provisions of the law. Those provisions are of general applicability only if that term meanscontrary to what the plurality itself saysgenerally applicable only to labor-management relations. It would be difficult to think of a law more specifically focused on labor-management relations than one that compels an employer to finance a strike against itself. [10] Even if the challenged portion of the New York statute properly could be viewed as part of a law of general applicability, this generality of the law would have little or nothing to do with whether it is pre-empted by the NLRA. A state law with purposes and applications beyond the area of industrial relations nonetheless may impinge upon congressional policy when it is applied to the collective-bargaining relationship. [11] The Court has recognized accordingly that pre-emption must turn not on the generality of purpose or applicability of a state law but on the effect of that law when applied in the context of labor-management relations. The crucial inquiry regarding pre-emption is whether the application of the state law in question  `would frustrate effective implementation of the [NLRA's] processes.'  Machinists, 427 U. S., at 147-148, quoting Railroad Trainmen v. Jacksonville Terminal Co., 394 U. S. 369, 380 (1969). As the Court stated in Farmer v. Carpenters, 430 U. S. 290, 300 (1977): [I]t is well settled that the general applicability of a state cause of action is not sufficient to exempt it from pre-emption. `[I]t [has not] mattered whether the States have acted through laws of broad general application rather than laws specifically directed towards the governance of industrial relations.' Garmon, 359 U. S., at 244. Instead, the cases reflect a balanced inquiry into such factors as the nature of the federal and state interests in regulation and the potential for interference with federal regulation. (Footnote omitted.) Accord, Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Carpenters, 436 U. S. 180, 193, and n. 22 (1978). It is self-evident that the potential [of the New York law] for interference ( Morton, supra, at 260) with the federally protected economic balance between management and labor is direct and substantial. [12] The Court has identified several categories of state laws whose application is unlikely to interfere with federal regulatory policy under the NLRA. Farmer v. Carpenters, supra, at 296-297. Mr. Justice Frankfurter described one of these categories in broad terms in San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U. S. 236, 243-244 (1959): [States retain authority to regulate] where the regulated conduct touche[s] interests so deeply rooted in local feeling and responsibility that, in the absence of compelling congressional direction, we could not infer that Congress had deprived the States of the power to act. The plurality, attempting to draw support from the foregoing generalization, mistakenly treats New York's requirement that employers pay benefits to striking employees as state action deeply rooted in local feeling and responsibility. [13] But the broad language from Garmon has been applied only to a narrow class of cases. In Garmon, Mr. Justice Frankfurter identified, as typical of the kind of state law that would not be pre-empted, the traditional law of torts. Id., at 247; cf. id., at 244 n. 2. The Court has adhered to this understanding of the local feeling and responsibility exception formulated in Garmon. See Machinists, 427 U. S., at 136, and n. 2 (Policing of actual or threatened violence to persons or destruction of property has been held most clearly a matter for the States); id., at 151 n. 13; Farmer v. Carpenters, supra, at 296-300; cf. Sears, supra, at 194-197. The provisions of the New York law at issue here have nothing in common with the state laws protecting against personal torts or violence to property that have defined the local feeling and responsibility exception to pre-emption.