Court Opinion

ID: 9753623
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 19:20:32.727196+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:38.442491
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Roberts,
dissenting. The majority has asserted that “[t]here is no constitutionally protected fundamental right to strike.” Moreover, the majority states that since there is no constitutional right to strike, the teachers must obtain this right in a clear and *106unmistakable grant from the Legislature. From these contentions, I must dissent.1
The right to strike was never explicitly granted to any employees, public or private. The labor union and the strike arose out of economic struggle and not by the action of any legislature. Chief Justice Taft recognized the right of employees to strike long before the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 29 U.S.C.A. §151. et seq., was passed. He described the development of the strike as follows:
“Is interference of a labor organization by persuasion and appeal to induce a strike against low wages under such circumstances without lawful excuse and malicious? We think not. Labor unions are recognized by the Clayton Act as legal when instituted for mutual help and lawfully carrying out their legitimate objects. They have long been thus recognized by the courts. They were organized out of the necessities of the situation. A single employee was helpless in dealing with an employer. He was dependent ordinarily on his daily wage for the maintenance of himself and family. If the employer refused to pay him the wages that he thought fair, he was nevertheless unable to leave the employ and to resist arbitrary and unfair treatment. Union was essential to give laborers opportunity to deal on equality with their employer. They united to exert influence upon him and to leave him in a body in order by this inconvenience to induce him to make better terms with them. They were withholding their labor of economic value to make him pay what they thought it was worth. The right to combine for such a lawful purpose has in many years not been denied by any court. The strike became a law*107ful instrument in a lawful economic struggle or competition between employer and employees as to the share or division between them of the joint product of labor and capital.” American Steel Foundries v. Tri-City Central Trades Council, 257 U. S. 184, 208-09, 42 S.Ct. 72, 78, 66 L.Ed. 189, 199-200 (1921).
Nowhere in the NLRA or other labor legislation does Congress expressly grant to employees the right to strike. Rather, in my opinion, this legislation was enacted for the protection of a right already possessed. Such protection was necessary to curb the repressive attitude of many state courts toward labor organizations and their activities. I reiterate that the legislation did not create any new rights for employees, for such rights would still exist if §7 of the NLRA were repealed. Allen Bradley Local No. 1111 v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Board, 237 Wis. 164, 177, 295 N.W. 791, 797 (1941), aff'd 315 U. S. 740, 62 S.Ct. 820, 86 L.Ed. 1154 (1942). The fact is that §7 of that act makes no mention of the right to strike. In §13 thereof reference is made to the right to strike as follows: “Nothing in this Act, except as specifically provided for herein, shall be construed so as either to interfere with or impede or diminish in any way the right to strike, or to affect the limitations or qualifications on that right.” Obviously, §13 is a rule of construction. Local 232, UAW v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Bd., 336 U. S. 245, 259, 69 S.Ct. 516, 524, 93 L.Ed. 651, 665-66 (1949). It is my opinion that the NLRA recognized the rights which labor already had and was intended to afford those rights extensive legislative protection.
Having concluded that the right to strike accrues to labor, not by legislative grant, but by the irresistible thrust of socio-economic forces, I turn to the question of whether the right to strike is within the protection of the constitutional guarantees. The Supreme Court has long recognized that the right of labor to organize and to bargain collectively is a fundamental right with constitutional protec*108tion. NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U. S. 1, 33-34, 57 S.Ct. 615, 622-23, 81 L.Ed. 893, 909 (1937). Obviously, the right to strike is essential to the viability of a labor union, and a union which can make no credible threat of strike cannot survive the pressures in the present-day industrial world. If the right to strike is fundamental to the existence of a labor union, that right must be subsumed in the right to organize and bargain collectively. Bayonne Textile Corp. v. American Federation of Silk Workers, 116 N.J.Eq. 146, 152-53, 172 A. 551, 554-55 (1934).
I am persuaded that if the right to organize and to bargain collectively is constitutionally protected, then the right to strike, that is, for persons similarly situated to act in concert to promote and protect their economic welfare, must be an integral part of the collective bargaining process. That being so, it follows that it must be within the protection of the constitutional guarantees of the First Amendment. The collective bargaining process, if it does not include a constitutionally protected right to strike, would be little more than an exercise in sterile ritualism.2
*109I find further support for the proposition of the right of employees to strike in the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech and freedom of association have been extended to union organizational activities. Thomas v. Collins, 323 U. S. 516, 532, 65 S.Ct. 315, 323-24, 89 L.Ed. 430, 441 (1945); Hague v. CIO, 307 U. S. 496, 59 S.Ct. 954, 83 L.Ed. 1423 (1939). Moreover, the right to select bargaining representatives has been declared to be a property interest protected by the Clayton Act. Texas & N.O. R.R. v. Brotherhood of Ry. & S.S. Clerks, 281 U. S. 548, 571, 50 S.Ct. 427, 434, 74 L.Ed. 1034, 1046-47 (1930). Such property interest would also be protected by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. In view of the fact that the protection of the First and Fifth Amendments is not alien to labor activity, I would conclude that the penumbra of those amendments protects individual workers while acting in concert to further their economic goqls. Such activity by necessity includes the right to strike.
Being of the opinion that the right to strike is constitutionally protected, I turn to the question whether public employees, by reason of such employment, have forfeited that right. I think not. No waiver of constitutional rights is contemplated by public employment. Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U. S. 589, 605-06, 87 S.Ct. 675, 685, 17 L.Ed.2d 629, 642 (1967); Garrity v. New Jersey, 385 U. S. 493, 500, 87 S.Ct. 616, 620, 17 L.Ed.2d 562, 567 (1967).
In the first place, I cannot agree that every strike by public employees necessarily threatens the public welfare and governmental paralysis. Merely because a group of em*110ployees is working for the government, it does not follow that their collective withholding of the services performed will have a substantial adverse effect upon the interests of society. The fact is that in many instances strikes by private employees pose the far more serious threat to the public interest than would many of those engaged in by public employees. It is elementary that the services performed by people employed in the private sector are in many instances so essential to the orderly operation of society that the health, safety, and welfare of the community would be substantially endangered were they to strike. It is not difficult to visualize the adverse effect on the public interest of a strike by the employees of a privately operated hospital or of a public utility. On the other hand, it could be extremely difficult to conjure up such a threat to the public interest arising out of a strike of the employees of a recreation department of a municipality or of the clerical staff of a state agency. In short, it appears to me that to deny all public employees the right to strike because they are employed in the public sector would be arbitrary and unreasonable.
Underlying the argument of those who say public employees have no right to strike is the notion that one cannot strike against the sovereign. This idea finds its basis in the same philosophy which dictates that one cannot sue the sovereign. The doctrine emanates from the concept of English law that the King could do no wrong and that the sovereign was above the courts. In recent years, sovereign immunity in tort law has been extensively criticized as an anachronism, and many states, including Rhode Island, have through their highest courts abandoned the doctrine in whole or in part. Becker v. Beaudoin, 106 R. I. 562, 261 A.2d 896 (1970). Perpetuation of the doctrine of sovereign immunity in tort law led to a great many inequities, its application effecting many incongruous results. Simi*111larly, the application of the doctrine that one cannot strike against the sovereign leads to unfair results. Clinging to a doctrine that prohibits employees of the government the right to strike denies those individuals their constitutional right while applying an idea that is archaic and no longer logically supportable.
In asserting my conviction that public employees have a constitutionally protected right to strike, I am not overlooking the police power of the state. I am fully aware that the Legislature has the inherent power to exercise the police power to protect the health, safety, and welfare of society. The police power may be invoked not only to prohibit strikes on the part of public employees but, where the effect of a strike would be to threaten the public interest, to forbid strikes by employees in the private sector. But surely the police power may be exercised where a strike on the part of public employees would curtail an essential public service.
In Local 232, UAW v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Bd., supra, at 259, 69 S.Ct. at 524, 93 L.Ed. at 666, the Court said: “The right to strike, because of its more serious impact upon the public interest, is more vulnerable to regulation than the right to organize and select representatives for lawful purposes of collective bargaining which this Court has characterized as a 'fundamental right’ and which, as the Court has pointed out, was recognized as such in its decisions long before it was given protection by the National Labor Relations Act. Labor Board v. Jones & Laughlin, 301 U. S. 1, 33.” Obviously, the Court in that case was recognizing the susceptibility of the right to strike to regulation by the state or, in other words, that where the public interest would be adversely affected by employees exercising the right to strike, the state may, by a valid exercise of the police power, prohibit such a group from striking.
In so doing, however, the Legislature must be cognizant *112of the guarantees of due process and equal protection. Thus, Congress enacted the Taft-Hartley Law and the Railway Mediation Act, which empower the President to enjoin strikes temporarily when national security is threatened. Included in those laws, however, are provisions for federal arbitration and mediation. The Legislature of this state has demonstrated its awareness that the police power can be used most efficaciously to prohibit striking by public employees where such a strike could affect adversely the public safety and welfare. It in the past has granted to policemen and firefighters, in prohibiting these groups from striking, a system of compulsory binding arbitration “* * * to provide some alternative mode of settling disputes where employees must, as a matter of public policy, be denied the usual right to strike.” General Laws 1956 (1968 Reenactment) §§28-9.1-2 and 28-9.2-2. In short, where the public welfare demands a curtailment of the right of certain public employees to strike, the General Assembly may act, but it must provide a quid pro quo which effectuates those employees’ right to act in concert to protect their economic well-being.
Vincent J. Piccirilli, Robert A. Liguori, Town Solicitor, for plaintiff-respondent.
I subscribe, then, to the proposition that the right to strike is fundamental and is an integral part of the collective bargaining process. I further hold that the right to strike as an inherent component of the collective bargaining process is constitutionally protected for the benefit of those employed in the public sector as well as those employed in the private sector. I recognize, however, that the state may, by a valid exercise of the police power, proscribe an exercise of the right to strike with respect to those employed in areas of the public service where to permit its exercise would be to make probable an adverse effect on the public health, safety, or welfare.
*113Natale L. Urso, Robert H. Chanin (National Education Association), for defendant-petitioner.
Julius C. Michaelson, Richard A. Skolnik, (on behalf of Amicus Curiae-American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, and Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO).

 I am aware of the authorities cited by the majority for the proposition that there is no constitutional right to strike and, more particularly, no such right for public employees. However, I must concur with Chief Justice DeBruler of Indiana in that these authorities offer no compelling reasoning supporting a per se rule against strikes by public employees. Local 519, Anderson Federation of Teachers v. School City of Anderson, 252 Ind. 558, 566, 251 N.E.2d 15, 19 (1969).

I attach great significance to the language used by J. Skelly Wright, Circuit Judge, in his concurring opinion in United Federation of Postal Clerks v. Blount, 325 F.Supp. 879 (D.D.C. 1971). The majority of the three-judge court in that case held that no employee, public or private, at common law had a constitutional right to strike and further held that public employees, in the absence of a statute, do not possess the right to strike. However, Judge Wright in his concurrence said at 885: “It is by no means clear to me that the right to strike is not fundamental. The right to strike seems intimately related to the right to form labor organizations, a right which the majority recognizes as fundamental and which, more importantly, is generally thought to be constitutionally protected under the First Amendment — even for public employees. * * * If the inherent purpose of a labor organization is to bring the workers’ interests to bear on management, the right to strike is, historically and practically, an important means of effectuating that purpose. A union that never strikes, or which can make no credible threat to strike, may wither away in ineffectiveness. That fact is not irrelevant to the constitutional cal*109culations. Indeed, in several decisions, the Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment right of association is at least concerned with essential organizational activities which give the particular association life and promote its fundamental purposes.”