Court Opinion

ID: 9629322
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 09:40:38.917699+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:07:17.886472
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brennan,
with whom Mr. Justice White and Mr. Justice Marshall join, dissenting.
NLRB v. Fruit Packers, 377 U. S. 58 (1964) (Tree Fruits), held that it was permissible under § 8 (b)(4) (ii)(B) of the *620National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)1 for a union involved in a labor dispute with a primary employer to conduct peaceful picketing at a secondary site with the object of persuading consumers to boycott the primary employer’s product. Today’s decision stunts Tree Fruits by declaring that secondary site picketing is illegal when the primary employer’s product at which it is aimed happens to be the only product which the secondary retailer distributes. I dissent.
The NLRA does not place the secondary site off limits to all consumer picketing over the dispute with the primary employer. Tree Fruits, supra, at 63. The Act only prohibits a labor union from picketing to “coerce” a secondary firm into joining the union’s struggle against the primary employer. § 8 (b) (4) (ii) (B). But inasmuch as the secondary retailer is, by definition, at least partially dependent upon the sale of the primary employer’s goods, the secondary firm will necessarily feel the pressure of labor activity pointed at the primary enterprise. Thus, the pivotal problem in secondary site picketing cases is determining when the pressure imposed by consumer picketing is illegitimate, and therefore deemed to “coerce” the secondary retailer.
Tree Fruits addressed this problem by focusing upon whether picketing at the secondary site is directed at the primary employer’s product, or whether it more broadly exhorts customers to withhold patronage from the full range of goods carried by the secondary retailer, including those goods originating from nonprimary sources. The Tree Fruits test reflects the distinction between economic damage sustained by the secondary firm solely by virtue of its dependence upon the primary employer’s goods, and injuries inflicted upon interests of the secondary firm that are unrelated to the primary dispute — injuries that are calculated to influence the secondary retailer’s conduct with respect to the primary dispute.
*621The former sort of harm is simply the result of union success in its conflict with the primary employer. The secondary firm is hurt only insofar as it entwines its economic fate with that of the primary employer by carrying the latter's goods. To be sure, the secondary site may be a battleground; but the secondary retailer, in its own right, is not enlisted as a combatant.
The latter kind of economic harm to the secondary firm, however, does not involve merely the necessary commercial fallout from the primary dispute. Appeals to boycott non-primary goods sold by a secondary retailer place more at stake for the retailer than the risk it has assumed by handling the primary employer’s product. Four considerations indicate that this broader pressure is highly undesirable from the standpoint of labor policy. First, nonprimary product boycotts distort the strength of consumer response to the primary dispute; the secondary retailer’s decision to continue purchasing the primary employer’s line becomes a function of consumer reaction to the primary conflict amplified by the impact of the boycott upon nonprimary goods. Tree Fruits, supra, at 72, and n. 20. Second, although it seems proper to compel the producer or retailer of an individual primary product to internalize the costs of labor conflict engendered in the course of the item’s production, a nonprimary product boycott may unfairly impose multiple costs upon the secondary retailer who does not wish to terminate his relationship with the primary employer. Third, nonprimary product boycotts attack interests of the secondary firm that are not derivative of the interests of the primary enterprise; because the retailer thereby becomes an independent disputant, the primary labor controversy may be aggravated and complicated. Finally, by affecting the sales of nonprimary goods handled by the secondary firm, the disruptive effect of the primary dispute is felt even by those businesses that manufacture and sell non-primary products to the secondary retailer.
These sound reasons support Tree Fruits’ conclusion that the legality of secondary site picketing should turn upon *622whether the union pickets urge only a boycott of the primary employer’s product. 377 U. S., at 63-64, 71-72.2 Concomitantly, Tree Fruits expressly rejected the notion that the coer-civeness of picketing should depend upon the extent of loss suffered by the secondary firm through diminished purchases of the primary product. Id., at 72-73. Nevertheless, the Court has now apparently abandoned the Tree Fruits approach, choosing instead to identify coerciveness with the percentage of the secondary firm’s business made up by the primary product.
The conceptual underpinnings of this new standard are seriously flawed. The type of economic pressure exerted upon the secondary retailer by a primary product boycott is the same whatever the percentage of its business the primary product composes — in each case, a decline in sales at the secondary outlet may well lead either to a decrease in purchases from the primary employer or to product substitution. To be sure, the damaging effect of this pressure upon individual secondary firms will vary, but it is far from clear that the harmfulness of a primary product boycott is necessarily correlated with the percentage of the secondary firm’s business the product constitutes. For example, a marginally profitable large retailer may handle a multiplicity of products, yet find the decrease in sales of a single, very profitable, primary product ruinous. A small healthy single product secondary retailer, on the other hand, might be able to sustain losses during a boycott, or substitute a comparable product.
*623Moreover, it is odd to treat the NLRA’s prohibition against coercion of neutral secondary parties as a means of protecting single product secondary firms from the effects of a successful primary product boycott. A single product retailer will always suffer a degree of harm incident to a successful primary product boycott, whether or not the retailer becomes the focus of union activity. Thus, a ban on coercion of neutral businesses is mismatched to the goal of averting that harm. Far more sensible would be to read the statutory ban on coercion of neutral parties as shielding secondary firms from the injuries that ensue precisely because of union conduct aimed at them. Nonprimary product boycotts fall within this category because they are specifically targeted at the secondary retailer.
Unlike the Tree Fruits rule, the test formulated by the Court in this case is not rooted in the policy of maintaining secondary firm neutrality with respect to the primary dispute. There is no ground to believe that a single product secondary retailer is more prone than a multiproduct retailer to react to a primary product boycott by joining the union in its struggle against the primary employer. On the contrary, the single product secondary firm is likely to be the primary employer’s strongest ally because of the alignment of their respective economic interests. Nor is it especially unfair to subject the single product retailer to a primary product boycott. Whatever the percentage of a retailer’s business that is constituted by a given item, the retailer necessarily assumes the risks of interrupted supply or declining sales that follow when labor conflict embroils the manufacturer of the item.
By shifting its focus from the nature of the product boycotted to the composition of the secondary firm’s business, today’s decision substitutes a confusing and unsteady standard for Tree Fruits’ clear approach to secondary site picketing. Labor unions will no longer be able to assure that their secondary site picketing is lawful by restricting advocacy of a boycott to the primary product, as ordained by Tree Fruits. *624Instead, picketers will be compelled to guess whether the primary product makes up a sufficient proportion of the retailer’s business to trigger the displeasure of the courts or the Labor Relations Board. Indeed, the Court’s general disapproval of “[p]roduct picketing that reasonably can be expected to threaten neutral parties with ruin or substantial loss . . . ,” ante, at 614, leaves one wondering whether unions will also have to inspect balance sheets to determine whether the primary product they wish to picket is too profitable for the secondary firm.
I continue to “disagree . . . that the test of ‘to threaten, coerce, or restrain’ ... is whether [the secondary retailer] suffered or was likely to suffer economic loss.” Tree Fruits, supra, at 72.3 I would adhere to the primary product test. Accordingly, I dissent.

 As amended by the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (Landrum-Griffin Act), §704 (a), 73 Stat. 542-543, 29 U. S. C. §158 (b)(4).

 Because a “merged product” consists in part of nonprimary products, the prohibition of “merged product” boycotts follows as a matter of logic and of policy from Tree Fruits’ primary product boycott test. Thus, “merged product” cases, see, e. g., American Bread Co. v. NLRB, 411 F. 2d 147, 154 (CA6 1969), do not support the Court’s view that certain purely primary product boycotts are proscribed by the National Labor Relations Act. In fact, “merged product” boycotts are wholly different than primary product boycotts against single product retailers. “Merged product” boycotts need not entail a total withholding of patronage from the secondary retailer, which may carry other, nonmerged, products.

 The only fragment of legislative history the Court musters in support of its holding forbidding picketing of single product secondary firms is Senator McClellan’s expression of concern that some secondary firms may have developed their business entirely on the basis of " 'a particular brand of product.’ ” Ante, at 615, n. 10, quoting 105 Cong. Rec. 6667 (1959), reprinted in 2 National Labor Relations Board, Legislative History of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, p. 1194 (1959). But that remark was offered in support of a proposed amendment restricting secondary boycotts that was rejected by the Senate. 2 Legislative History, supra, at IX. Section 8 (b) (4) as finally enacted was narrower than Senator McClellan’s proposed amendment. See Comment, 32 Stan. L. Rev. 631, 641-642, n. 61 (1980).