Court Opinion

ID: 9725056
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 11:27:19.249519+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:09.461821
License: Public Domain

*670Dissenting Opinion
Arterburn, J.
The question here is whether or not the appellants’ unemployment was involuntary or voluntary. The facts show without dispute that appellants were not members of the union that was striking at the plants at which they were employed. There is no evidence that they sympathized with or cooperated with the strikers and pickets who were strung across the entrance of the plant to which the appellants desired entrance in order to continue their employment.
The evidence does show that the pickets across the entrance of the plant through which the appellants would have been required to pass, ranged from time to time from twenty to two hundred or more. At the time appellant’s work “shift” began, they approached the picket line to see if they could get through and asked if they could cross the line. The evidence shows the answer was “No, ... he wasn’t allowing nobody to cross.” The appellants waited a little while to see if anybody crossed the line; they saw no one go through and later left. Men from each shift on the first day attempted to go through the line but were denied the right. This occurred about seven times thereafter on succeeding days. The president of the striking union was even called by telephone to see if the appellants could go through the line, and his answer was “no”. The evidence shows that no production and maintenance employees were allowed through the line.
The majority opinion refers to the fact that some workers on the first day of the strike “drove their cars through the pickets and into the parking lot.” This referred to management employees, but it is significant *671that even in that ease, an automobile had to be used and the pickets “banged” on the side of the cars. The police, when cars were stopped at the entrance, insisted that the driver move on down the street.
The testimony in part is as follows:
“A. I normally report for work about twenty minutes past 7:00 and that particular morning, in order to drive one block, why it took about an hour, so it was approximately in the neighborhood of twenty after 8:00 when I got to the gate entrance. It was impossible to park or impossible to drive in, and the sheriff was standing there and kept motioning you on. You couldn’t go any place.
“Q. Did you attempt to drive — turn in the parking lot ?
“A. Yes.
“Q. Did—
“A. (Continuing) You just couldn’t do it — so many of them.
“Q. And so the sheriff didn’t leave you turn ?
“A. No, sir. Motioned to go on.”
Further testimony by this same witness:
“A. There were some threats. At one particular time one man did go — drive through the picket line and bumped, or knocked into one of the pickets and injured him. The man happened to be Howard (phonetic) ‘Minier’, who was injured in the leg where one of the cars hit him.
“Q. You mean hit one of the pickets with his car?
“A. Yes, and right about that time why the picket line was pretty tough and I don’t think anyone wanted to take a chance getting hurt or injured, although they made no direct threats, they were mad enough to.
*672“Q. You say they were mad ?
“A. They were mad.
One man in the course of going in, instead of going down the street, he shot up on the sidewalk and around in order to get into the plant and I don’t believe it is necessary to enter in that way where you have to.”
The Appeals Referee found that the appellants
“. . . did not voluntarily stop working because of sympathy with the striking union during the period of the work stoppage and labor dispute beginning November 13, 1958 and ending January 19, 1959. It is held that they were forceably restrained from working due to the mass picketing and that they had good grounds to fear an attempt to cross the picket lines.”
The majority opinion is not realistic. It should not be necessary, in order to establish an involuntary unemployment where picketing exists, that the employee actually use force to push aside pickets in order to get through the picket line, nor should it be necessary to use an automobile to break through the line. The majority opinion says that there was no evidence that any of the pickets were carrying weapons. Fear may be instilled and threats can be made without weapons and even without words.
It is no answer to say that “they had the legal right” to cross the picket line. The question is — could they have done so without physical contact with the pickets and without being put in fear of harm for themselves, their families and property? I do not believe the law requires that a workman, who is not a member of the striking organization, subject himself to such risks in crossing a picket line in order to show that his unemployment is involuntary, after he has asked to go through and been told he cannot by *673pickets who are actually blocking the entrance and maintaining an effective blockade.
Landis, J., concurs in dissent.
Note. — Reported in 179 N. E. 2d 873.