Court Opinion

ID: 9470295
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:01:48.282498+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:49.634013
License: Public Domain

*390COFFEY, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
While I concur in the result reached by the majority, I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the National Labor Relations Act affords protection to a non-unionized employee’s refusal to cross a picket line maintained against a third-party employer with whom that employee has no dispute. The cases which allegedly support the proposition that such a refusal is protected fail to articulate reasons which compel such a result. I agree with an author’s description of the case law as standing in “disarray.” Gorman, Labor Law at 324 (1976). It has also been noted that “[conspicuous by its absence in all the NLRB cases dealing with refusals, however, has been any thoughtful analysis of the policy considerations and alternatives involved or any attempt to weigh the opposing interests.” Carney and Florsheim, The Treatment of Refusals to Cross Picket Lines: “By-Paths and Indirect Crookt Ways”, 55 Cornell L.Rev. 940, 968 (1970).
In considering whether the BFI employees’ refusal to cross the International Harvester picket line was protected activity under the Act, this court should now begin to give adequate weight to the interest of employers, thereby fostering equality between employers and employees and promoting industrial harmony. Based on a careful weighing of the opposing interests of employers and employees in this fact situation, I believe that the BFI employees’ refusal to cross the International Harvester picket line is not entitled to the protection of the Act because any benefit accruing to the BFI employees would be at best remote, and the interest of the employer [BFI] to operate its business without unnecessary interruption clearly outweighs the employees’ remote interests.
Assuming that the refusal is “concerted” activity within the meaning of the Act, such activity achieves protected status under the Act only if it is for either collective bargaining, mutual aid, or protection. 29 U.S.C. § 157. Clearly, the purpose of the refusal here was not related to collective bargaining as the BFI drivers were not unionized. Nor do I see how the refusal allowed the BFI drivers to achieve any degree of protection for themselves as workers. Thus, the refusal can be “protected” activity in this situation only if it is for the “mutual aid” of both the striking International Harvester workers and the BFI drivers.
The actions of the BFI drivers clearly aided the striking International Harvester workers in their cause as the normal operations of International Harvester were somewhat disrupted by the drivers’ refusal to remove chemical wastes. Even if their refusal to pick up the wastes did not disrupt International Harvester’s operations, it was an unequivocal showing of support for the cause of the striking workers which helped strengthen the International Harvester employees’ position. But to become “mutual aid”, the BFI employees’ refusal to cross the picket line must in some way be intended to reciprocally benefit the BFI employees. See generally, Haggard, Picket Line Observance as a Protected Concerted Activity, 53 N.C.L.Rev. 43 (1974). The record on appeal, however, is devoid of any factual finding as to the existence of a reciprocal benefit which the BFI employees hoped to secure for themselves by refusing to cross the International Harvester picket line. Nevertheless, the majority speculates that the employees: (1) “may have felt that strengthening the union movement by honoring a union’s picket line would promote their own economic interests”; (2) “may have hoped to become [union] members— hoped that a union victory at the International Harvester plant would encourage a successful organizing effort at their own plant”; or (3) may have believed that a victory for the International Harvester strikers would put pressure on BFI to increase the wages of its employees. These three “possibilities” are, as the majority concedes, no more than mere “hypotheses.” Our role as an appellate court is not to hypothesize as to what the BFI drivers hoped to achieve through refusing to cross the International Harvester picket line, but rather to decide the case on the basis of facts in the record. Neu v. Grant, 548 F.2d 281 (10th Cir.1977). Based on the facts in the record, I am unable to ascertain how *391the BFI employees’ refusal to cross the International Harvester picket line was for the “mutual aid” of both the striking International Harvester workers and the BFI drivers.
Several reasons militate against a conclusion that the refusal to cross the picket line in this case is “protected” activity because of the BFI employees’ vague belief that by so doing they were “promoting their own interests as workers.” First, it defies logic to believe that the strike at International Harvester would provide any real long-term economic benefit to the BFI drivers. See Haggard, supra, at 94-98. The notion that all workers benefit as a class if a sub-class obtains higher wages or better working conditions fails to provide a sufficient basis for a finding of “mutual aid.” “Working class solidarity is at best a political slogan, not a viable economic theory.” Id. at 98. Second, allowing, and in so doing encouraging, such activity is contrary to an express policy against the spread of labor disputes. See H.R.Rep. No. 245, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. (1947) in 1 Legislative History of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947 at 292 (1948) . Finally, on balance, the interests of the employer in maintaining efficiency, avoiding lost time and reducing the risks of losing a valuable contract outweigh any remote interest which might accrue to the employees here. BFI was not a party to the controversy between International Harvester and its employees, but was rather merely going about its business in servicing its customers. BFI’s business should not be made a victim of the International Harvester labor dispute.
The Supreme Court has recognized “that some concerted activity bears a less immediate relationship to employees’ interests as employees than other such activity ... [and] that at some point the relationship becomes so attenuated that an activity cannot fairly be deemed to come within the ‘mutual aid or protection’ clause.” Eastex, Inc. v. NLRB, 437 U.S. 556, 567-568, 98 S.Ct. 2505, 2513, 57 L.Ed.2d 428 (1978).1 The refusal to cross the picket line by nonunion workers of a third-party employer in the name of “solidarity”, hoping to improve their status as workers, represents nothing more than an attenuated relationship unworthy of protection under § 7 of the Act. I recognize that in some narrowly drawn situations, there maybe a real economic benefit inuring to the employee who refuses to cross a picket line directed at other than his or her employer. However, in such a situation, the employee must be required to prove that he had good reason to believe that he would gain such a real economic benefit. See Haggard, supra, at 99.
In summary, I believe the Board, by finding that the BFI drivers were engaged in protected activity when refusing to cross the International Harvester picket line, has unfairly tipped the scales of justice against the legitimate interests of employers in efficiently operating their businesses. Accordingly, I would strike a proper balance between the interests of employers and employees, and hold that the Act afforded no protection to the two non-unionized BFI employees when refusing to cross the International Harvester picket line.

. While this case upheld the distribution within an organized plant of a union newsletter addressing topics not directly affecting the plant’s employees, there was no disruption of or refusal to engage in the employer’s business as in the present case.