Court Opinion

ID: 9651101
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 16:05:48.655674+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:29.858108
License: Public Domain

BUFFINGTON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting). This ease involves a quarrel between two members of a labor union. It centers around application of union rules. Stripped of all contentions which becloud the case, the real question involved is an attempt by a Philadelphia union contractor, by these rules, to prevent a New York union contractor from competing with him on equal terms on work done in Philadelphia. Enforced as they will be by the affirmance of this ease, the rules shut out a-citizen of the United States from fair competition in Philadelphia business simply because he is a resident of New York State, and give to his competitor a monopoly of that business because he is a resident of Pennsylvania. This practical and devised effect of the rules stifles fair competition, is, in my judgment, unfair, and in common parlance is not a square deal between two competitors generally, but especially so between members of a common union, where fair play and equality of opportunity should prevail.
When the rights of the public, who, in the end, pay the increased cost incident to the restriction of fair competition, are considered, wider results of the injustice of the rules are apparent, and when it is further considered that the government of the United States — to say nothing of states and municipalities — in the construction of public buildings and other improvements, would by such rules be hampered, if not indeed hindered, in the government’s aim to afford citizens of all states an equality of competition in public work in any and every state, the widespread and serious evil of such competition-suppressing rules becomes a matter far beyond the personal injustice here effected by one member against a fellow member of his. union.
For these reasons, I respectfully record my dissent.