Court Opinion

ID: 9461471
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:15:12.566955+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:04.736926
License: Public Domain

McCREE, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the opinion of the court that the introduction into evidence of the determination of the National Labor Relations Board was error and that it was not cured by the district court’s admonition to the jury that this determination was not binding or conclusive.
Since a new trial is ordered, I wish to make an observation about the nature of and the relationship between section 502 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 143 and section 8(b)(4) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 158(b)(4). Section 8(b)(4) prohibits unions from adopting specified sanctions against employers in order to achieve enumerated impermissible objects broadly described as secondary boycotts. Section 502, on the other hand, is intended to prevent employer reprisals against employees who refuse to work because of unsafe working conditions and does not, by its terms, apply to labor unions.
In instructing the jury at the new trial, the district court should focus its attention on the question whether appellant adduced evidence sufficient to prove that the union intended to effect an objective forbidden by section 8(b)(4). It is not impermissible under 8(b)(4) for a union to communicate to workers that a construction job is unsafe, when its purpose is to bring about the correction of such conditions. See Gateway Coal Co. v. United Mine Workers of America, 414 U.S. 368, 385, 94 S.Ct. 629, 38 L.Ed.2d 583 (1974). The determination of the purpose or purposes for which picketing is undertaken is, of course, a question for resolution by the jury.