Court Opinion

ID: 9430145
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:29:04.211049+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:23.309932
License: Public Domain

Justice Rehnquist,
with whom The Chief Justice and Justice O’Connor join, dissenting.
It is not surprising that neither the opinion of the Court today, nor the body of the opinion in NLRB v. Longshoremen, 447 U. S. 490 (1980) (ILA I), contains the text of the *85Rules that the Court is called upon to consider. Nor is it surprising that §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e) of the National Labor Relations Act are not set out in full in the body of those two opinions. For if one were to set the provisions of the Rules side by side with the provisions of the Act one could not help but conclude that the Rules are proscribed by those sections. It is only by stringing together a series of highly questionable propositions that the Court has arrived at the contrary result. In my view, Congress did not intend the union activities at issue to be sanctioned by the National Labor Relations Act.
The Rules on Containers, an agreement entered into between various shipowners and the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), begin by proclaiming their intent to “preserve the work jurisdiction of longshoremen and all other ILA crafts . . . .” They move on to define certain classes of containers which “shall be loaded or discharged ... at a waterfront facility by deepsea ILA labor.” Among the containers which must be so handled are those described by Rule 1(a)(3) — “[cjontainers designated for a single consignee from which the cargo is discharged (deconsolidated) by other than its own employees,” provided that such unloading takes place within 50 miles of the port and that the cargo is not warehoused for more than 30 days. If the containers are first unloaded more than 50 miles from the port then they need not be unloaded by ILA labor.
Rule 7 sets forth sanctions to be imposed on employers and any other entity violating the Rules. Each time a container passes over the pier in violation of the Rules the shipping employer pays the union $1,000 in “liquidated damages”; in addition, Rule 7(d) states that both the employer and the ILA will cease doing business with “[a]ny facility operated in violation of the Container Rules.”
The effect of these Rules is well illustrated by their application to the trucking practice known as “shortstopping”— one of the classes of work with respect to which the Board found the Rules to be work acquisitive. Prior to contain*86erization, longshoremen unloaded cargo breakbulk from the ship and moved it to trucks for inland transport. Despite the fact that the trucks already had been loaded at the pier, truckers often stopped at nearby trucking terminals, where the trucks were unloaded and again carefully reloaded so as to meet gross weight and weight distribution requirements for long distance carrying. This practice is known as “short-stopping,” and it is quite clearly related to the needs of the trucking, not the shipping, business.
After containerization there was no longer a need for ILA unloading at the pier. The containers could be lifted directly from the ship’s hold and placed on a truck chassis. Nevertheless, the trucks might still be “shortstopped” for the same reasons as before. What the Rules —in this case Rule 1(a)(3) — do is to require that the containers be unloaded by ILA labor at the pier despite the fact that such unloading is now completely unnecessary. If the containers are subsequently shortstopped, unloading and loading which need be done only once is instead done twice. The result is that the principal advantage of containerization — that the cargo need not be handled breakbulk at the pier — is lost. And if the truckers shortstop a container that has not been unloaded by the ILA, they are subject to Rule 7 sanctions, including the refusal of the shippers to supply the truckers with containers.
Section 8(b) of the National Labor Relations Act provides, in pertinent part:
“It shall be an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents —
“(4)(ii) to threaten, coerce, or restrain any person engaged in commerce or in an industry affecting commerce where in either case an object thereof is —
“(B) forcing or requiring any person to cease using, selling, handling, transporting, or otherwise dealing in the products of any other producer, processor, or *87manufacturer, or to cease doing business with any other person . . . Provided, [t]hat nothing contained in this clause (B) shall be construed to make unlawful, when not otherwise unlawful, any primary strike or primary picketing. ...”
Section 8(e) of the National Labor Relations Act similarly states:
“It shall be an unfair labor practice for any labor organization and any employer to enter into any contract or agreement, express or implied, whereby such employer ceases or refrains or agrees to cease or refrain from handling, using, selling, transporting or otherwise dealing in any of the products of any other employer, or to cease doing business with any other person, and any contract or agreement entered into heretofore or hereafter containing such an agreement shall be to such extent unenforceable and void. ...”
It should be evident that the Rules violate the plain language of §8(e). The Rules constitute an “agreement” between an employer and a labor organization “whereby [the] employer . . . agrees ... to cease doing business with any other person. . . .” That is the import of Rule 7(d). Nor can it be doubted on the facts here that the union has transgressed the plain language of § 8(b)(4)(B) by seeking to enforce the agreement through coercing the shipowners to stop providing containers to certain entities that were violating the Rules. As a matter of plain language, one would not think that the union’s actions here fell within the statutory exception for “primary strikes or primary picketing.” Finally, I think it fairly obvious why Congress would seek to prohibit such activity by labor unions. As illustrated by this very case, absent such restrictions unions are free to exercise their considerable power, through concerted action, to manipulate the allocation of resources in our economy — even to the point where in the name of “work preservation” a union could literally halt technological advance.
*88One might well ask, then, how § § 8(e) and 8(b)(4)(B) have been construed so as not to preclude the actions at issue here. It has not been a simple process. Beginning with National Woodwork Manufacturers Assn. v. NLRB, 386 U. S. 612 (1967), this Court explained its understanding that the exception in § 8(b)(4)(B) for “primary strikes or primary picketing” indicated that Congress only intended to preclude “secondary activity” under that section. Then, relying only on the ambiguous legislative history of §8(e), the Court concluded that that section also was intended to preclude only “secondary” activity. Admittedly, at least with respect to § 8(b)(4)(B) this distinction has some support in the language of the statute, and even has some usefulness despite the fact that, as the Court recognizes, ante, at 81, the primary/secondary distinction is perhaps one of the gauziest of legal concepts. But assuming that Congress did not intend §8(e) to extend to certain kinds of agreements that could be described as “primary,” it does not follow from that concession that “work preservation” is one of the “primary” activities that the statutes do not prohibit.
Yet that is the conclusion that the Court reached in National Woodwork, and the work preservation/work acquisition distinction provides the basis for the conclusion the Court reaches today. As refined by the Court, it now appears that, at least where a particular union’s jobs are “threatened,” an agreement will be considered valid so long as the union’s subjective intent is to preserve union jobs and the union conducts its bargaining with an employer who has “control” over those jobs; it is only where the agreement is “tactically calculated to satisfy union objectives elsewhere,” ante, at 78, that the agreement will be considered work acquisitive. In applying this test, we are told first that we must look to “‘all the surrounding circumstances,”’ ante, at 75 (quoting National Woodwork), to determine whether the union’s objective was work preservation, or the acquisition *89of work traditionally done by others. In almost the same breath, however, we are told that here the Board committed fundamental error by “focusing on the effect that the Rules may have on ‘shortstopping’ truckers and ‘traditional’ warehouses,” because such “extra-unit effects” are “‘irrelevant’ to the analysis.” Ante, at 79 (quoting ILA /).
These directives appear contradictory, for it would seem difficult indeed to determine whether a particular agreement is “work acquisitive” without focusing, to some degree, on the work that is being acquired. It may be that the Court today ultimately resolves this problem by establishing that the only test is whether the union subjectively intended to do more than preserve work it had always done, but if so I cannot agree that the test accurately separates “primary” from “secondary” activity, nor can I agree that the resulting test comports with Congress’ intent in enacting §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e).
As to the relationship between the Court’s test and Congress’ intent, I note that today the Court forthrightly admits that a “work preservation” agreement will not be illegal despite the fact that its intent is to preserve work that has been entirely “eliminated” by technological change. As noted previously, such agreements can result in “preserving” work merely by requiring duplication, thereby forcing an employer to pay for labor that no longer has an economic use. Indeed, one of the reasons stated by the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for upholding the Rules as applied to “short-stopping” was that, given that under the Rules ILA labor would have to unload at the pier any container that was going to be shortstopped, there still was no indication in the record that the ILA had “acquired” any work, because there was no indication that the containers would not be shortstopped in any event when they reached the trucking terminal. American Trucking Assns., Inc. v. NLRB, 734 F. 2d 966, 979 (1984). As The Chief Justice noted in his dissent in ILA *90I, the upshot of allowing unions to enter into such agreements is that they may render change so difficult, by artificially raising the costs of a new system, that they stifle technological advance. ILA I, 447 U. S., at 526-527 (Burger, C. J., dissenting). It is hard to believe that the Congress which enacted a statute that by its plain terms would have prohibited such agreements nevertheless intended to sanction agreements requiring such make-work.
It is no answer to these objections that Congress intended the collective-bargaining process to take care of the various economic problems raised by union work preservation agreements such as those at issue. It is true that Congress established collective bargaining as the primary tool for resolving most labor disputes. But if private ordering were sufficient to alleviate all labor problems then there would be no need for labor laws. Instead, Congress enacted comprehensive labor legislation for the “establishment and maintenance of industrial peace to preserve the flow of interstate commerce.” First National Maintenance Corp. v. NLRB, 452 U. S. 666, 674 (1981). Obviously, in enacting §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e) Congress identified certain union conduct which should be prohibited whether or not the underlying dispute could be resolved through collective bargaining. With respect to these sections Congress targeted union activity which raised restraints on trade that, if not prohibited by the antitrust laws, must be addressed by other means. See National Woodwork, 386 U. S., at 656-657 (Stewart, J., dissenting).
A decent regard for stare decisis suggests that battle be not again joined on the question decided in National Woodwork, but to me the dubious correctness of that decision indicates that the Court should not expand it beyond its facts, and should now try to move in the direction of the plain language of the statutes in those cases not clearly covered by National Woodwork. I can agree that § 8(e) cannot be read *91with a slavish literalism, because many labor-management “agreements” will entail some secondary effects on the employer’s business relations that Congress would not have intended to proscribe. Similarly, I can concede that many “agreements” motivated by a desire for “work preservation” are lawful under the NLRA. Thus, a union faced with loss of jobs might agree to a pay cut to preserve the work of its members. But for me there is a difference between such “primary” activity and an agreement that an employer will refrain from doing business with a third party so that a union may retain its jobs. Through such agreements a union can extend its influence beyond the unit employer and the traditional bargaining issues of wages, hours, and working conditions, and expand the labor dispute to those “neutral” employers who participate in the employer’s markets. In the context of technological change, the union’s agreement may put the third party out of business before it ever begins. That is the “secondary” activity with which Congress was concerned.
The primary/secondary distinction is not, of course, capable of precise application. The classic “secondary” activity, whereby a union that has a dispute with employer A exerts economic pressure on employer B to further its goals with respect to employer A, is not really present in this case. Here the union’s direct contact has been with the primary employers, the shipowners. But as noted previously, there is little reason to believe that in enacting §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e) Congress intended to prevent only this type of influencing of secondary employers. Moreover, even meeting the Court on its own terms and applying its formulation of “secondary” activity, I believe that as applied to “shortstopping” and traditional warehouse work the Rules have an unlawful secondary objective.
There is no dispute that “shortstopping” occurred even when longshoremen regularly unloaded cargo breakbulk from the ships and the cargo was placed into trucks. Similarly, *92some ship cargo traditionally was taken to nearby warehouses for storage, awaiting ultimate distribution. As discussed previously, containerization made it possible to take entire truckloads directly from the ship’s hold to these warehouses and truck terminals, so that a loading and unloading process that used to take place twice now need be done only once. The Rules ensure that in these circumstances the containers will be unloaded once by ILA labor; it does not take much insight to recognize, therefore, that the natural tendency of the Rules will be to bring the truck terminals and warehouses to the pier, so that to the greatest extent possible the containers will only have to be unloaded once, with the “shortstopping” and warehousing being performed by ILA members. This will be the only means for these trucker and warehouse employers to compete with those who handle containers exempt from the Rules, and who have only the costs of one handling to pass along to their customers.
This scenario convinces me that the Rules constitute illegal secondary activity. Absent the Rules it would have been business as usual for the truckers and warehousemen; with the Rules they are subject to refusals to deal, to possible fines from the shippers who own the containers, and perhaps to difficult decisions concerning the course that their own businesses and employee relations will take. They are the “ ‘unoffending employers’ ” who have been mulcted in a labor dispute “‘not their own.’” National Woodwork, supra, at 626-627 (quoting NLRB v. Denver Bldg. Trades Council, 341 U. S. 675, 692 (1951)). Such pressures are what the statutes were intended to protect against. Moreover, from this standpoint the Rules are work acquisitive; however pure the motives of the union might be the result of the Rules is likely to be that the ILA receives work and the truckers and ware-housemen lose it.
The conclusion that the Rules are secondary — and work acquisitive — in the case before us is supported by a look at how the Rules actually are structured with respect to “short-*93stopping” and warehousing. For present purposes I accept the Court’s suggestion that when containers were first introduced the ILA could simply have boycotted all containers by refusing to unload any of them. It does not follow, however, that because the ILA could legally boycott all containers it therefore can single out which containers it is entitled to unload. Rule 1(a)(3) preserves for the ILA the right to unload any container destined for a single consignee which is unloaded within 50 miles of the port, and which is not unloaded by the employees of an ultimate consignee or warehoused for more than 30 days. The record does not indicate that this Rule applies to work done by any employers other than shortstopping truckers, short-term warehousemen, and “consolidators.” Of these, both the truckers and warehouse-men performed the unloading task prior to containerization. Given this history it should be clear that at least this part of the Rule must be considered secondary. Failing, for whatever reason, to preclude the advent of containers altogether, and recognizing that containers would eliminate a large portion of their work, the ILA apparently looked around for similar work close enough to the pier to claim as its own. It found it in the work performed by truckers and warehouse-men. I can only view Rule 1(a)(3), which is specifically directed at that work, as intentionally work acquisitive.
The Court avoids this conclusion by stating the test as whether the union’s objective was to preserve its traditional work, and by pretending to accept the AL J’s and the Board’s “findings” that “the ILA’s objective consistently has been to preserve longshore work . . . .” Ante, at 81-82. I, of course, agree with the Court that the Board’s factual findings must be accepted if supported by substantial evidence, and that deference is due to the Board’s construction of the Act, ante, at 78, but the Board did not make the findings the Court cites. The Board accepted the ALJ’s finding that the “ILA had an overall work preservation objective in negotiating the Rules,” see 266 N. L. R. B. 230, 236 (1983), but *94both the Board and the ALJ concluded that as applied to “shortstopping” and some warehousing the Rules were work-acquisitive. Although their rationales were articulated differently, I believe that both bodies were expressing the sentiments expressed above — both the intent and effect of this part of the Rules were to obtain work not traditionally done by longshoremen. In concluding otherwise the Court engages in nothing but a shell game — it hides the ILA’s work acquisition under one shell and then forces all attention on the limited question of the union’s intent in bargaining with its employer. By broadly defining the work traditionally done by longshoremen and refusing to allow a review of the larger economic scene, the Court manages to turn over only shells representing work preservation. This latest refinement moves even further from the language and intent of §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e). I would reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.