Court Opinion

ID: 9459761
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:31:18.346286+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:19.741879
License: Public Domain

THORNBERRY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
I concur in the majority’s decision on all issues except the last one, the validity of the agency shop clause; I would hold that the district court properly applied Texas law and declared the clause invalid.
In terms of the language of § 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act1 the issue is whether the collective bargaining agreement between the employer and the union applies to “employment in any state” whose right-to-work laws would invalidate the agency shop clause, i. e. whether the agreement applies to “employment in” Texas. As the majority opinion points out, the problem of deciding where the “employment” is located when the situs of the work performed is not the same as the location of the employer’s headquarters or the place where the employees are hired and fired is one which we encounter here for the first time. The majority apparently accepts the district court’s approach to the problem, which entails examining and weighing the various contacts of the employer and its employees with the state whose laws are said to apply, but it disagrees with the district court’s conclusion that the employment contacts with Texas were sufficient to warrant considering the employment to be “in” that state. Reversal is predicated primarily on the conclusion that “[u]nder the facts of this case the job situs of the employees is the most important and logical factor.”
I, too, accept the district court’s significant-contacts approach, but would *611hold the district court properly concluded under it that the collective agreement in this case applied to “employment in” Texas. Beyond noting the location of the employer’s headquarters in Texas, the district court found that the employer “employs, or approves the employment of, all unlicensed seamen at its headquarters in Beaumont, Texas.” Pay records are maintained in Texas 'and funds are placed on board the ships at Texas ports for disbursements to the employees. All final hiring decisions are made in Texas, and unemployment taxes are paid to the State of Texas. Finally, a majority of the employees list Beaumont as their shipping port, and almost half reside in Texas. These contacts with Texas seem to me more than sufficient to give that State a strong interest in applying its laws to the collective agreement between the employer and the union and to warrant considering the employment to be “in” Texas within the meaning of § 14(b).
The majority argues that if location of the employer’s headquarters were regarded as the decisive criterion, employers might choose headquarters locations in states with right-to-work laws and thereby defeat national labor policy. In response, it should be pointed out initially that the district court did not designate the location of the employer’s headquarters as the decisive factor, but considered the full range of employer and employee contacts with Texas. More basically, an employer’s choice of a location for its headquarters to obtain the benefit of local right-to-work laws would not contravene national labor policy. Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act expressly permits states to enact and apply right-to-work laws, and it certainly implies no limitation on employer’s freedom to choose to locate in any of the various states. The effect of the majority’s opinion is to carve out collective’ bargaining contracts between maritime employers and employees as a special class, not subject to state laws in the same way that, for example, collective contracts between an interstate trucking or busing business with its employees would be. The majority’s emphasis' on the geographical situs of work performed outside the state’s boundaries seems to me to unduly discount other substantial aspects of the employment relationship, and I do not discern a basis in the statute or in national labor policy for the maritime exemption which the majority establishes.

. § 14(b) is quoted in note 3 to the majority opinion.