Court Opinion

ID: 9422493
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:02:53.757166+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:37.136555
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
dissenting.
If we took here the approach we took in Labor Board v. Hearst Publications, 322 U. S. 111, we would reverse this judgment. The question there was whether “newsboys,” (who were indeed mature men, id., 116) whose compensation consisted of the difference between the price at which they bought their papers from the publisher and the price at which they sold them, were “employees” for purposes of the National Labor Relations Act. Though *109by common-law standards they were “independent contractors,” we held that they were “employees” under the Federal Act. We noted that numerous types of “independent contractors” had formed or joined unions for collective bargaining — musicians, actors, writers, artists, architects, engineers, and insurance agents. Id., 127, n. 26. We pointed out that there were marginal groups who, though entrepreneurial in form, lacked the bargaining power necessary to obtain decent compensation, decent hours, and decent working conditions. Id., 126-128. We emphasized that “the economic facts of the relation” (id., 128) may make it “more nearly one of employment than of independent business enterprise with respect to the ends sought to be accomplished by the legislation.” Ibid.
We know from our own cases (which are much closer on their facts to the present controversy than is Columbia River Co. v. Hinton, 315 U. S. 143) that the owner-driver-peddler system in the transportation and service trades has led to wage and job competition and to strife of one kind or another. Senn v. Tile Layers Union, 301 U. S. 468, sustained picketing of a tile contractor who did much of the manual labor himself but also hired a few nonunion helpers. In Bakery Drivers Local v. Wohl, 315 U. S. 769, a conflict arose between a union and small peddlers of baked goods who had increased ranks as a result of social security and unemployment compensation laws. Id., 770. We sustained under the First Amendment the union’s picketing of the peddlers. See also Local 24 v. Oliver, 358 U. S. 283.
Drivers’ Union v. Lake Valley Co., 311 U. S. 91, is even more in point for it presented, as does the present case, a question under the Norris-LaGuardia Act. Small milk peddlers who bought from wholesalers and sold to retailers grew so fast that union dairy employees lost their jobs and retailers started cutting prices. The result was a *110weakening of the union position. Picketing started and an injunction against it issued. We held that there was a “labor dispute” within the meaning of the Norris-LaGuardia Act and therefore that the federal courts had no power to issue an injunction. Cf. United States v. American Federation of Musicians, 318 U. S. 741.
It was stipulated in the present case that “Grease peddlers are independent businessmen who are engaged in the business of buying, transporting, and selling restaurant grease for their own account. They are not employees of the grease processors.”
This is the beginning not the end of the problem. And it is no answer to say, as did the District Court, that union members and these grease peddlers do not compete. That is, indeed, denied by the record which shows that union members drive trucks for grease producers and pick up and transport grease.
The record in American Trucking Assns. v. United States, 344 U. S. 298, 304-306, makes clear that marginal owner-drivers can demoralize large segments of the transportation industry. Moreover, the stark fact is that here, as in the “newsboys” case, the union's effort was to improve the economic status of the grease peddlers. This is made clear by the stipulated facts:
“These self-employed peddlers have no established places of business; no employees, except an occasional loader; no capital investment except a small equity in a truck; no skill or special qualifications except the ability to load, unload and drive a truck. . . . Their earnings represent the difference between the buy and sell price of the waste grease . . . .”
When the level of prices paid to peddlers by processors dropped in 1952-1954 to less than half of the previous price, the income of peddlers was substantially reduced. *111This led to intensive competition between peddlers. As a result, the unionization program was designed to increase the profits of the grease peddlers by allocating routes and customers between them and by increasing the margin between the price paid by the peddlers and the price they would receive.
The Court said many years before this age of enlightenment that unions were rightfully concerned with “the standard of wages of their trade in the neighborhood.” American Foundries v. Tri-City Council, 257 U. S. 184, 209. This fact underlies the present controversy. All who haul grease, whether “employees” or “peddlers,” are in the same boat. Protection of one protects all. The union plainly has a legitimate interest in the conditions in the industry which increase or reduce employment opportunities or increase or reduce labor’s rewards.* The *112fact that illegal acts were committed does not alter the fact that at heart we have here a “labor dispute” within the meaning of the Norris-LaGuardia Act. That definition is broad and includes “any controversy concerning terms or conditions of employment, or concerning the association or representation of persons in negotiating, fixing, maintaining, changing, or seeking to arrange terms or conditions of employment.” 29 U. S. C. § 113 (c). To the extent that the stipulations in this case tend to preclude the conclusion that there was a “labor dispute” those stipulations should not control. For other stipulations of fact compel the contrary conclusion, which is essentially a legal question. Estate of Sanford v. Commissioner, 308 U. S. 39. “We are not bound to accept, as controlling, stipulations as to questions of law.” Id., 51.
The fact that acts were committed which overstepped the bounds set by the interlacing Sherman, Clayton and Norris-LaGuardia Acts means that the full array of antitrust remedies can be brought against the grease peddlers, insofar as they combined with processors, a nonlabor group. See Allen Bradley Co. v. Local Union, 325 U. S. 797, 812. Yet that does not mean that they can be expelled from the union. Since there was a “labor dispute” within the meaning of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, federal courts have no power to' compel the grease peddlers to resign as members of the union. For that Act expressly bars a federal court from enjoining anyone from “Becoming or .remaining a member of any labor organization.” 29 U. S. C. § 104(b).
The fact that the grease peddlers may have committed federal offenses or otherwise shown themselves to be lawless, not law-abiding, in no way qualifies the absolute command of the Norris-LaGuardia Act. Indeed, we held in Allen Bradley Co. v. Local Union, supra, 812, that a *113union that combines with business interests to violate the antitrust laws could be enjoined only as respects “those prohibited activities.” Otherwise we said the injunction would run “directly counter” to the Norris-LaGuardia Act. Id., 812. When we sanction the addition of the penalty of expulsion from union membership, we qualify the Allen Bradley decision.

“The small owner-operator or 'gypsy’ needs only enough capital to make a down payment on a truck and is free to offer his services at whatever rates he may be willing to accept. In order to protect his equity in his truck he tends, under competitive pressures, to progressively lower his rates until he is taking a bare subsistence for his own wages and is providing inadequate reserves for repairs, maintenance, or replacement. He works long hours, attempts to do his own repair work, often disregards health and safety requirements and load restrictions. He is difficult to organize into trade associations for purposes of self-regulation of rates and standards; and he is likewise difficult to organize into a trade union. He often loses his truck through inability to maintain payments; or when it wears out he has no funds accumulated for another. But there are always new hopefuls to replace him, especially in a period of considerable unemployment (as in the thirties), when an attempt to create self-employment appears to be the only alternative to no employment whatever. Unless regulated in some manner, the small owner-operator constitutes a menace to employment conditions, standards, and in fact to the stability of the entire industry.” Gillingham, The Teamsters Union on the West Coast, Institute of Industrial Relations, U. of Calif. (1956), pp. 35-36.