Court Opinion

ID: 9447044
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:23:41.551767+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:52.491727
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
In granting the injunction under appeal, which ordered the appellant railroads to reinstate their discharged diesel tug oilers pending resolution of the instant labor dispute by the appropriate statutory agency, Judge Bryan was particularly careful and thorough in supporting his action on grounds stated in a lengthy and reasoned opinion. Therein he set forth his basic conclusions that the precipitous abolition of these jobs by the railroads — with less than five days’ effective notice to the unions involved — was in violation of the Railway Labor Act, 45 U.S.C. § 151 et seq., and that temporarily reinstating the oilers was the only sure way to avoid a serious disruption of vital transportation services in the Port of New York. The order of injunction, thus so fully supported, seems to me an eminently sound and proper exercise of judicial power committed to a district judge’s discretion. I would affirm the decision below, D.C.S.D.N.Y., 176 F.Supp. 53, in its entirety, and not merely the part directed against the unions, as my brothers hold.
Far too much attention has been directed on this appeal to the question whether the arbitration or the mediation procedures of the Railway Labor Act' govern the instant labor dispute.1 With*93out question, federal district courts are broadly empowered to issue injunctions and other appropriate orders to carry out the policies and purposes of this Act. Brotherhood of R. R. Trainmen v. Chicago River & Indiana R. Co., 353 U.S. 30, 41-42, 77 S.Ct. 635, 1 L.Ed.2d 622; Virginian Ry. Co. v. System Federation No. 40, Railway Employees Department of American Federation of Labor, 300 U.S. 515, 57 S.Ct. 592, 81 L.Ed. 789; Railroad Yardmasters of America v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 3 Cir., 224 F.2d 226; see also Brotherhood of R. R. Trainmen v. Howard, 343 U.S. 768, 72 S.Ct. 1022, 96 L.Ed. 1283; Graham v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, 338 U.S. 232, 70 S.Ct. 14, 94 L.Ed. 22; Tunstall v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, Ocean Lodge No. 76, 323 U.S. 210, 65 S.Ct. 235, 89 L.Ed. 187; Steele v. Louisville & N. R. Co., 323 U.S. 192, 65 S.Ct. 226, 89 L.Ed. 173; Cunningham v. Erie R. Co., 2 Cir., 266 F.2d 411. And there is nothing in the statute or in the nature of Adjustment Board proceedings which demands that these powers be radically limited or changed whenever a labor dispute contains an issue cognizable by such a Board.
Nor do I find anything in the two cases particularly relied on by my brothers to require the overturning of these settled legal principles or to furnish definitive support for the unreal and unworkable reading of the Act here made; each rests primarily on its own particular facts governing the exercise of discretion by a court of equity and cannot properly be erected into a general proposition. In order of Ry. Conductors of America v. Pitney, 326 U.S. 561, 66 S.Ct. 322, 90 L.Ed. 318, the Court actually reversed a dismissal of an injunction suit to reinstate it, but coupled this reversal with a direction to the trial court to stay action until decision by an Adjustment Board, since it felt that a back pay award for interim wages lost would adequately compensate the employees and avoid irreparable injury. Justice Rutledge in dissenting thought that immediate action was necessary for the workers’ protection. In Missouri-Kansas-Texas R. Co. v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 5 Cir., 266 F.2d 335, the court vacated an injunction reinstating discharged employees, expressing concern lest the grant of an injunction involve a prejudgment on the merits before action by an Adjustment Board. In that case, as in the Pitney case, immediate action was not required to avoid a major disruption of transportation, and they should be thus differentiated from the present case. And I can see nothing amounting to a prejudgment of the merits by Judge Bryan more than might perhaps be equally argued from a denial of an injunction.2
Judge Bryan was clearly correct in holding that the railroads’ precipitous action violated their duties under the Railway Labor Act. Sec. 2 of the Act, 45 U.S.C. § 152, applicable to all types of labor disputes, both “major” and “minor,” provides:
“First. It shall be the duty of all carriers, their officers, agents, and employees to exert every reasonable effort to make and maintain *94agreements concerning rates of pay, rules, and working conditions, and to settle all disputes, whether arising out of the application of such agreements or otherwise, in order to avoid any interruption to commerce or to thé operation of any carrier growing out of any dispute between the carrier and the employees thereof.
“Second. All disputes between a carrier or carriers and its or their employees shall be considered, and, if possible, decided, with all expedition, in conference between representatives designated and authorized so to confer, respectively, by the carrier or carriers and by the employees thereof interested in the dispute.”
The instant controversy did not arise from one of the many situations where management may justifiably and in good faith take unilateral action without prior notice to or consultation with the representatives of its employees. Cf. Order of Ry. Conductors of America v. Pitney, supra, 326 U.S. 561, 66 S.Ct. 322, 90 L.Ed. 318. Such decisions are not effected with the elaborate legal preparations designed to bring off a fait accom-pli which preceded appellants’ abolition of the position of oiler here. It is clear from the objective evidence in the record of appellants’ careful planning — one appellant even made application for a temporary restraining order before it had received any communication from defendant unions in regard to the oilers it had discharged — that the management of the railroads well knew their action would evoke most forceful protests and make a work stoppage all but inevitable.
In comparable situations carriers have customarily given substantial advance notice of their intentions and fully negotiated the issues before taking definitive action. See In re Hudson & Manhattan R. Co., D.C.S.D.N.Y., 172 F.Supp. 329, affirmed on opinion below, Stichman v. General Grievance Committee of Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, 2 Cir., 267 F.2d 941; Norfolk & P. B. L. R. Co. v. Brotherhood of R. R. Trainmen, Lodge No. 514, 4 Cir., 248 F.2d 34, certiorari denied 355 U.S. 914, 78 S.Ct. 343, 2 L.Ed.2d 274; Brotherhood of R. R. Trainmen v. New York Cent. R. Co., 6 Cir., 246 F.2d 114, certiorari denied 355 U.S. 877, 78 S. Ct. 140, 2 L.Ed.2d 107.3 There is no reason why this could not have occurred here. Surely on the facts of this case the suggestion that no “dispute” existed and the railroads had no duty to negotiate or otherwise act in good faith until after the unions protested the discharges of the oilers is a strange and wonderful and wholly nullifying reading of the above quoted portions of the Railway Labor Act. These men have permanently lost their livelihood; it is an obvious solecism to require them to make some sort of formal protest before any dispute can become apparent to us.
Finally, the cold hard reality here is, as Judge Bryan found, that only if the oilers are reinstated can a work stoppage and transportation tie-up in the Port of New York be avoided with any certainty, since these displaced workers cannot be enjoined from individual picketing. This fact cannot properly be ignored or deemed irrelevant; it is at the core of the only matter which is the proper concern of this court or the court below. Our sole function here is to further the public interest in avoiding a disruption of interstate commerce, not to safeguard the financial position of the railroads or to punish the respondent unions for calling a strike. Only to this limited extent has Congress superseded the general prohibition against federal court interference in railway labor disputes. Virginian Ry. Co. v. System Federation No. 40, Railway Em*95ployees Department of American Federation of Labor, supra, 300 U.S. 515, 552, 57 S.Ct. 592, 81 L.Ed. 789; Order of Ry. Conductors of America v. Pitney, supra, 326 U.S. 561, 566, 66 S.Ct. 322, 90 L.Ed. 318. We should not reverse the sound decision of a conscientious district judge which clearly provides the best possible means of protecting this vital public interest.

. The designations “minor grievance” (or “dispute”) and “major dispute,” occasionally used to characterize these respective procedures, though these terms do not appear in the statutes, are particularly inapt here. It cannot be gainsaid that the instant controversy is in many respects of major importance irrespective of which statutory procedure *93is presently applicable to it; indeed, it is but a phase of the dispute as to dispensing with firemen on the dieselization of the railroads which has assumed major importance in this country and Canada. It would seem that these plaintiff railroads have jumped the gun on what may prove to be a nationwide crisis in a few months. See Barden, Railroad Labor Crisis, The Nation, Sept. 12, 1959, p. 128.

. My brothers also cite Norfolk & P. B. L. R. Co. v. Brotherhood of R. R. Trainmen, Lodge No. 514, 4 Cir., 248 F.2d 34, certiorari denied 355 U.S. 914, 78 S.Ct. 343, 2 L.Ed.2d 274, and Stichman v. General Grievance Committee of Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, 2 Cir., 267 F.2d 941, affirming In re Hudson & Manhattan R. Co., D.C.S.D.N.Y., 172 F.Supp. 329 — cases where the district court had granted an injunction enjoining a strike where after months of negotiation of a minor dispute the union had refused to follow the arbitration procedure. But these cases support that part of the judg*94ment which. I would join my brothers in affirming; they did not involve and do not consider the validity of an order requiring the employers to maintain the status quo during the proceeding.

. Even in Missouri-Kansas-Texas R. Co. v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 5 Cir., 266 F.2d 335, the railroad gave more than two weeks’ effective notice to the union.