Court Opinion

ID: 9445092
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:19:20.826745+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:06.244881
License: Public Domain

*457HUXMAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I would refuse to enforce the order of the Board on the ground that the action was barred by Section 10(b) of the Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 160(b), because not brought within six months from the commission of the unlawful act. There were two violations of the Act as found by the Board. One was the unlawful agreement between the Dennehy Construction Company and the Union under which no one was to be employed who had not been cleared by the Union. Such agreement constituted a violation of the provisions of the Act, participated in by both the Dennehy Construction Company and the Union. That was a continuing violation dating from the date of the execution of the agreement. An action could have been brought by anyone aggrieved thereby at any time after the date of its execution and so long as that agreement remained in force. That was not, however, the violation complained of by the Blacks upon which this proceeding is predicated. They complain of the denial of their right to employment when they applied for employment because of such unlawful agreement.
When the Blacks applied for employment on September 17, the employer could have refused to employ them for any reason other than because of the unlawful agreement. There were jobs available for which they were qualified. They were needed and Chapman, Dennehy’s foreman, wanted them; he promised them employment as soon as they could secure clearance from the Union. In other words, he refused to employ them at that time because of the unlawful agreement. This he could not do and this conduct on his part constituted a violation of their rights under the Act. This violation occurred on September 17. The subsequent acts of September 21, 25, 26 and 28 were but continuing steps in the denial of their right to employment because of the unlawful agreement. Both the Dennehy Construction Company and the Union were guilty of violations of the Act on September 17. Dennehy could no more deny employment to the Blacks until the unlawful agreement was complied with than the Union could insist that employment be denied until the conditions of the contract had been complied with. Since more than six months elapsed after the Blacks were denied employment on September 17 and before they began this action, the action is barred.
The facts in this case are indistinguishable to me from those in N. L. R. B. v. Pennwoven, Inc., 194 F.2d 521, in which the Third Circuit denied enforcement of an order because of the statutory limitation imposed by the Act. Neither do I find anything in the later case of N. L. R. B. v. United Hoisting Company, 198 F.2d 465, by the Third Circuit, which requires a different holding. No unlawful agreement such as we have here was involved in the Pennwoven case. The only question there was whether the right of the workers to be recalled was violated more than six months prior to the institution of the action by the Board. That was the identical question involved in the United Hoisting Company case. The only difference between the two cases was that in the United Hoisting Company case the employees were unlawfully discharged as a result of an unlawful agreement between the employer and the Union, and the only question was whether such unlawful discharge pursuant to the agreement occurred within the statutory time for the institution of an action. All the court held was that the running of the statute began from the date of the unlawful discharge under the agreement and not from the date of the execution thereof. This is the identical question we have hero. The difference in the result of the two cases is occasioned by the fact that in the United Hoisting Company case the unlawful discharge of the employees involved caused by the unlawful agreement was only three days prior to the institution of the action, while in our case I construe the violation of the *458Blacks’ rights resulting from the unlawful agreement to have occurred on the 17th day of September, more than six months before they took steps to institute this action.