Court Opinion

ID: 7848462
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-08 17:15:50.418423+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:28:39.113818
License: Public Domain

NICHOLS, Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the result. We were confronted with what was essentially a very simple issue, whether the Congress has prohibited the ICC from approving agreements among railroads creating or continuing leasehold or trackage rights (as distinguished from mergers and consolidations), unless the labor protective conditions include requirements that the carriers notify the unions of the arrangement a fixed 90-days before it is to be effective, and negotiate the employee protections, with binding arbitrations in case of an impasse, all before the arrangement is put into effect. As to this, the ICC answered no and commented 360 I.C.C. at 603:
In these circumstances we find little justification for extending a blanket imposition of provisions requiring substantially advanced preconsummation notice and finalized preconsummation negotiations with “interested” employees when possibly there are no substantial number of employees likely to be adversely affected by a trackage rights or lease transaction. Typically, most of these transactions are not opposed by carriers or members of the shipping public and their expeditious consummation would be in the public interest.
In such circumstances, such a blanket requirement could encourage the raising and necessary resolution of matters hav*32ing no material relation to the particular trackage rights or lease proceeding involved, resulting in the abuse of the labor protection process. To delay possible improvements in preexisting service accruing from trackage rights or lease transactions, because of the delayed negotiation of unrelated matters, would not be in furtherance of the public interest. Of course, this does not preclude the consideration in particular cases of greater levels of protection to ensure the employees are not adversely impacted as a result of the transaction where the need therefor has been specifically established.
I agree. Far from the need being established, it seems quite plain in the cases ostensibly at bar that no need exists or ever did, save in one instance when the necessary negotiation in fact occurred, regardless of the absence of the provisions. I thought it an outrage to demand that this overworked court should overturn the ICC without a showing that the workers theoretically to be protected in the three cases needed or wanted these so-called protection provisions, or that even their representatives did except as showing who was boss. Our lengthy dissertation, not the product of a concrete adverse situation, will be pored over and nuggets extracted by parties having fish to fry we do not even imagine.
The intervenors, most of whom would have been amici in ordinary parlance, were the carriers involved in the three cases, many other carriers, and the Association of American Railroads. Their position superficially appeared paradoxical, in that they wanted us to affirm, and yet their brief and oral argument were harshly critical of the ICC. The explanation emerges that they think the labor protective provisions in ICC cases of all kinds have flourished like the green bay tree, only partly because of Congress, but mostly because of the fostering care of the ICC itself, and that the provisions now present a costly impediment to the adjustments to changing times that railroads, like other industries, must make. Thus they wanted us to affirm in these cases on grounds that would not tie their and our hands in future ICC cases where they might be the appealing parties. I do not understand why they did not endow themselves with more standing by cross-appealing some parts or all of the involved labor protective provisions adverse to them, but I am an ignoramus on ICC reviews and so am in no position to criticize their decision to do what they did. Since I am but a visiting judge, whatever I say will not be much help to them, but for the sake of my own integrity, I want to add this: my concurrence in the result is meant to be without prejudice to any party to an ICC proceeding who in the future may wish to challenge other labor protective provisions than those involved herein for notice, negotiation, and arbitration.