Court Opinion

ID: 9595684
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:42:39.697529+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:30.181288
License: Public Domain

Robert W. Hansen, J.
(dissenting). The five Milwaukee area bricklayers here appealing lost their employment in Racine and were denied unemployment compensation benefits.1 The basis of this denial was that they belonged to a Milwaukee area union local. If they had belonged to a Racine area union local their unemployment compensation benefits would have been granted. The only reason given for this distinction is that because of a laborers’ union strike, bricklayers had been locked out on construction jobs in Milwaukee, Wash*454ington, Waukesha and Ozaukee counties. This bizarre result, it is claimed, is required by the statute providing:
“Labor dispute. An employe who has left (or partially or totally lost) his employment with an employing unit became of a strike or other bona fide labor dispute shall not be eligible for benefits from such (or any previous) employer’s account for any week in which such strike or other bona fide labor dispute is in active progress in the establishment in which he is or was employed.”2 (Emphasis supplied.)
Adopting the “but for” test3 as to eligibility for benefits, the majority states that, having “completed what work there was in the Racine area,” the five members of the Milwaukee bricklayers’ union “would naturally look first to the Milwaukee area” for a new job assignment. (With no work available in the Racine area, the Racine-based bricklayers might well be expected to do the same.) And, the majority concludes: “Because of the labor dispute, however, they could not take up this work, and thus, at this point, they became unemployed because of a labor dispute.” (Emphasis supplied.) The writer submits that, at an earlier point in time, to wit, when they were laid off at the Racine job sites because there was no more work for them to do, the five bricklayers here had ceased working and had become unemployed. For under the “but for” test, as one authority has noted, “The work stoppage ‘exists because of a labor dispute’ *455only if it would not have existed but for that dispute.”4 In this case what the author terms the “work stoppage” and what our labor dispute statute terms “lost his employment” took place in Racine when these five bricklayers finished the projects on which they had been working and were laid off for the sole reason that there was no more work for them to do in Racine county.
The approach taken by the majority blurs the distinction between the reason for the initial layoff in Racine and the subsequent inability to secure a new job assignment in the Milwaukee area. The statute does not. The labor dispute section applies only to an employee who has “lost his employment” with an employing unit “because of a strike or other bona fide labor dispute.” The unemployment compensation statute also requires a laid-off employee to “report for work actually available” when by due notice called upon so to do “by his current employing unit,” or he will become ineligible for benefits.5 But such employee duty to report to a new job assignment when an earlier job assignment has ended does not reach back to change the status of an employee who has been laid off solely because there was no more work for him to do on the job to which he was assigned. Where an employee goes off the employer’s payroll, solely because there is no further need for his services on the job that he has completed, he does not lose his eligibility for unemployment benefits because a new job assignment in another county is not available because of a lockout in such other county.
*456Even if the lockout in Milwaukee could be made the cause of the layoff or loss of employment in Racine, and even if sec. 108.04 (10), Stats., could be thus made applicable, the denial of benefits here would encounter the “in the establishment” limitation of such section. Not every layoff occasioned by strike or lockout comes within the section.6 The section operates to bar recovery of benefits only where the strike or labor dispute takes place in the particular “establishment” in which the particular employee is or was employed.7 In determining- whether a -particular strike is in the particular “establishment” in which the particular laid-off employee is employed, our court has held that three factors are to be considered and weighed: (1) functional integrality; (2) general unity; and (3) physical proximity.8
Thus where ground employees of Northwest Airlines were laid off because of a nationwide pilots’ strike, our court held that the ticket sellers and airport ground crews were entitled to unemployment compensation benefits. There was no dispute that the strike caused the lay*457off.9 The two stations, one in Madison and one in Milwaukee, where the employees claiming benefits worked, were closed down.10 The threefold test was applied. As to functional integrality,11 the interdependency of the operations and locations was found to be present. As to the factor of physical proximity,12 our court found a separateness between the work areas of the ground employees and the pilots’ base of operations, relying on an earlier case holding truck terminals in this state not to be part of a single “establishment” with the main terminal in Chicago.13 As to the factor of general unity,14 our *458court found no unity of employment, again citing and following the truck terminal case finding no unity of employment between truck terminals in this state and the main terminal in Chicago.15
Even if it could be said that these five bricklayers lost their jobs in Racine because of the lockout in Milwaukee, as did the airport employees when the pilots went on strike, the threefold test as to there being a single “establishment” would still have to be met. These bricklayers were not locked out from the Racine job because of the laborers’ strike in Milwaukee. That lockout did not extend to or affect work done in Racine county. So, even with the cause of their unemployment found to be the lockout, we deal with “separated work areas or stations of a single employer.” As to the first of the three factors in the test, functional integrality, the writer would not find, as to work done in Racine being linked to work not being done in Milwaukee, that “degree of interdependency and synchronization between the operations and locations involved,”16 that would make them functionally integral. As to the second factor, physical proximity, while the distance between work areas involved is not here as great as the 88 miles in the truck terminal case,17 the writer would find the work done in Racine not at all physically proximate to work in Milwaukee particularly insofar as the lockout is concerned. As to *459the third factor, general unity, the writer would find some unity of management, but no unity of employment, the completion of the construction in Racine being entirely separate and distinct from the undertaking or completing of work on Milwaukee construction projects. Finally, if airport ground crews can get unemployment benefits when they are laid off because of a pilots’ strike, the writer would hold that bricklayers laid off in Racine where there was no lockout can receive unemployment benefits despite a lockout of bricklayers in Milwaukee county. The writer sees no reason to make fish out of one and fowl out of the other.
The writer would conclude that the five appellant bricklayers were laid off the job in Racine solely because that job had been completed and there was no more work for them in the Racine work area. The writer would hold that the lockout of bricklayers in Milwaukee, a lockout that did not extend to Racine county, did not make applicable sec. 108.04 (10), Stats. The writer would hold that, even if such statute could be stretched to be here applicable, these five bricklayers working in Racine were not in a single “establishment” of this employer as to work in the Milwaukee area covered by the lockout. The writer would reverse, holding that these five appellant bricklayers are entitled to unemployment compensation benefits, holding that “but for” there being no more work for them to do in Racine they would not have been laid off from their jobs in the Racine work area.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Roland B. Day joins in this dissent.

 Under ch. 108, UNEMPLOYMENT RESERVES AND COMPENSATION, Stats.

 Sec. 108.04 (10), Stats.

 For statement of this rule, see: Jerre S. Williams, The Labor Dispute Disqualification—A Primer and Some Problems, 8 Vanderbilt L. Rev. (1955), 338, 344, the author stating: “. . . it is now generally accepted in most jurisdictions that the requisite causal relationship between the stoppage of work and labor dispute is a ‘but for’ relationship. This means that the employee is disqualified only in those cases in which he would be working ‘but for’ the existence of the labor dispute.”

 Milton I. Shadur, Unemployment Benefits and the “Labor Dispute’’ Disqualification, 17 U. Chi. L. Rev. (1949), 294, 313, the author also stating: “Denial of compensation for any week depends on the additional finding that the stoppage [of work] exists because of the dispute during that week.”

 Sec. 108.04 (1) (a) and (2) (a), Stats., dealing with eligibility for benefits and requirements as to registering and reporting for work actually available.

See: Schaeffer v. Industrial Comm. (1960), 11 Wis. 2d 358, 364, 105 N. W. 2d 762, this court stating: “We are of the opinion that the legislature must have had something in mind besides mere interdependence of production when it employed the term ‘establishment,’ in enacting sec. 108.04 (10), Stats. This is because it is difficult to visualize a situation where a strike in one plant will result in the closing down of another plant of the same employer except where there is interdependence of production. Therefore, if the legislature had intended that in all such cases of closing down, because of a strike or labor dispute involving a particular employer, an employee should be barred from unemployment compensation, there would have been no necessity for limiting the location of the strike, or labor dispute, to the particular ‘establishment in which he is or was employed.’ ”

 Abendroth v. ILHR Department (1975), 69 Wis. 2d 754, 758, 233 N. W. 2d 343.

 Id. at page 759.

 Id. at page 760, this court observing: “While the Milwaukee reservations facility did stay open 11 days after the pilots’ strike began, there is not much point or purpose to selling tickets or maintaining ground crew services for an airline when the pilots are on strike and its planes are not flying.”

Id. at page 757 (statement of facts): “At the time of the strike Northwest operated two stations in Wisconsin, one at Madison and the other at Milwaukee. Both were intermediate stations —i.e., ‘a place where you land and take off to discharge and take on passengers.’ Both these stations were closed as a result of the pilots’ strike.”

 Id. at page 759, this court holding, as to factor of functional integrality, “. . . this element relates to the degree of interdependency and synchronization between the operations and locations involved.”

 Id. at page 760, this court holding, as to factor of physical proximity, “. . . we give weight not only to the actual mileage between the strikebound work area and the place of employment of the workers .claiming' benefits, but also to the reason for the separateness of the two locations.”

 Id. at page 761, citing Liberty Trucking Co. v. ILHR Department (1973), 57 Wis. 2d 331, 204 N. W. 2d 457, and saying of it: “While the Liberty holding notes that there is ‘no measuring stick’ as to the significances of distances involved, it clearly reinstates the factor of physical proximity as one to be given considerable weight.”

 Id. at page 762, as to factor of general unity, this court holding:
“This element, our court has held, ‘. . . involves a consideration of both unity of employment and unity of- management, with the *458former deserving more weight than the latter.’ ” (Quoting Liberty Trucking Co. v. ILHR Department, supra, footnote 13, at page 337.)

 Id. at page 762 (referring to the Liberty Trucking Co. Case at page 341) :
“There our court concluded that: ‘While the nature of the product, i.e., transportation, and the nature of the business may make terminals a part of the whole system, it still does not make the terminals one “establishment.” ’ ”

 Id. at page 759.

 Id. at page 761.