Court Opinion

ID: 9454516
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:48:48.69836+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:09.072563
License: Public Domain

EDWARDS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The District Judge found a secondary-boycott in violation of § 303 of the LMRA. His general assessment of damages included damages for the secondary boycott. This court’s opinion affirms both the secondary boycott finding and the damage award partially based thereon.
The facts primarily relied upon to justify the secondary boycott finding relate to UMW activities (or activities attributed to the UMW) directed toward keeping truck drivers from loading coal at the struck mine site. Clearly, some of these activities were illegal under the laws of Kentucky, and where clear proof is available as to appellant UMW’s responsibility therefor, an award of damages, is justified.
But the truck drivers were directly engaged in the primary activity against which the strike was called. This work could not be called “unrelated to the normal operations of the employer.” Local 761, International Union of Electrical Workers v. NLRB, 366 U.S. 667, 681, 81 S.Ct. 1285, 1294, 6 L.Ed.2d 592 (1961); see NLRB v. Denver Building & Construction Trades Council, 341 U.S. 675, 686-687, 71 S.Ct. 943, 95 L.Ed. 1284 (1951). The truck drivers were within the jurisdiction of the union which called the strike. Many of them were members of the UMW. Absent acts of violence the strike was a lawful labor dispute.
The Supreme Court has squarely held that acts of violence (rendered both unlawful and remediable under state law) do not serve to change primary labor activity into illegal secondary activity:
“[W]e reject Carrier’s argument that whatever the rule may be in the ordinary case of separate gate picketing, the picketing of the railroad gate in this case was violative of § 8(b) (4) because it was accompanied by threats and violence. Under § 8(b) (4) the distinction between primary and secondary picketing carried on at a separate gate maintained on the premises of the primary employer, does not rest upon the peaceful or violent nature of the conduct, but upon the type of work being done by the picketed secondary employees. Such picketing does not become illegal secondary activity when violence is involved but only when it interferes with business intercourse not connected with the ordinary operations of the employer.8
United Steelworkers of America v. NLRB, 376 U.S. 492, 501-502, 84 S.Ct. 899, 905, 11 L.Ed.2d 863 (1964).
I believe the District Judge’s holding as to secondary boycott activities is erroneous as a matter of law. I would reverse and remand for computation of damages resulting only from violations of the common law of Kentucky.

. Compare National Labor Relations Board v. International Rice Milling Co., 341 U.S. 665, 672, 71 S.Ct. 961, 95 L.Ed. 1284, in which the Court said: ‘In the instant ease the violence on the picket line is not material. The complaint was not based upon that violence, as such. To reach it, the complaint more properly would have relied upon § 8(b) (1) (A) or would have addressed itself to local authorities. The substitution of violent coercion in place of peaceful persuasion would not in itself bring the complained-of conduct into conflict with § 8(b) (4). It is the object of union encouragement that is proscribed by that section, rather than the means adopted to make it felt.
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