Court Opinion

ID: 9728741
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:15:38.000383+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:26:11.442443
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice,
concurring.
I fully agree with the majority that under the principles of preemption embodied in San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U.S. 236, 79 S.Ct. 773, 3 L.Ed.2d 775 (1959), the Court of Common Pleas of Clearfield County is without jurisdiction to entertain appellant’s action of trespass against appellees. But I must write separately to point *640out my disagreement with the majority’s reasons for so concluding. In my view, the crucial issue is not, as the majority suggests, whether appellants’ action requires a Pennsylvania tribunal to determine that appellants had a meritorious federal unfair labor practice charge against the employer. Rather, the issue of preemption here more properly turns upon whether appellants have stated a federal unfair labor practice against appellees.
In early 1969, appellees, a union and a union representative, attempted to organize appellants and other employees of Treasure Lake, Inc. Treasure Lake discharged appellants on May 23, 1969 and fourteen other employees one month later. In September, 1969, appellees filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of Treasure Lake employees: The NLRB held in the employees’ favor and ordered the Treasure Lake employees reinstated, with back pay.
Appellants were not included in the charge brought before the NLRB and did not otherwise seek to join. In April, 1977, after expiration of the applicable federal statute of limitations on unfair labor practice charges against the employer, see 29 U.S.C. § 106(b) (six months), appellants filed their action of trespass against appellees in the court of common pleas. Appellants allege that they asked appellees to add their names to the list of aggrieved parties and that appellees misrepresented appellants would be included in the action brought before the NLRB, but then “did nothing to press [appellants’] claims.” Though ambiguous, appellants’ allegations (and prayer for relief) suggest both intentional and negligent misrepresentations. Appellants sought damages equalling the back pay they claim would have been awarded had they been included in the NLRB action, along with punitive damages. Appellants neither joined nor pursued an independent action against their employer Treasure Lake.
Appellees filed preliminary objections to the court’s subject matter jurisdiction. They claimed federal labor law preempts state court action. The court dismissed the pre*641liminary objections, but the Superior Court unanimously reversed and directed dismissal of appellants’ complaint.
I agree that appellants’ complaint must be dismissed, for in my view appellants have charged the union and its representative with a violation of Section 8(b)(1)(A) of the NLRA, 29 U.S.C. § 158(b)(1)(A). Section 8(b)(1)(A) makes it an unfair labor practice for a “labor organization or its agents” “to restrain or coerce . . . employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 7” of the NLRA. Section 7, 29 U.S.C. § 157, provides employees “the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining . . . .” In N.L.R.B. v. Marine and Shipbuilding Workers, 391 U.S. 418, 88 S.Ct. 1717, 20 L.Ed.2d 706 (1968), the Supreme Court held a union violates Section 8(b)(1)(A) by sanctioning a union member who, without first exhausting internal union procedures, files an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB against the union. The Court observed that:
“[t]he policy of keeping people ‘completely free from coercion,’ [Nash v. Florida Industrial Comm’n, 389 U.S. 235, 238, 88 S.Ct. 362, 365, 19 L.Ed.2d 438,] against making complaints to the [NLRB] is . important in the functioning of the [NLRB] as [a] whole. ... A healthy interplay of the forces governed and protected by the Act means that there should be as great a freedom to ask the Board for relief as there is to petition any other department of government for a redress of grievances. Any coercion used to discourage, retard, or defeat that access is beyond the legitimate interests of a labor organization.”
391 U.S. at 424, 88 S.Ct. at 1721-22. Like the union sanctions imposed in Marine and Shipbuilding Workers against an employee who filed unfair labor practice charges against the union, appellees’ misrepresentations which interfered with appellants’ charges against the employer Treasure Lake may very well amount to an unfair labor practice. *642But for appellees’ misrepresentations, appellants would have presented unfair labor practice charges against the employer Treasure Lake. The language of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers would appear broad enough to include “misrepresentations” within the “coercion” condemned under Section 8(b)(1)(A). Cf. N.L.R.B. v. Corbea, Perez, and Morell, S. en C., 300 F.2d 886, 888 (1st Cir. 1962) (“a [union’s] fraudulent [misrepresentation inducing membership is an unfair labor practice”).
It must therefore be concluded that the Court of Common Pleas of Clearfield County lacks jurisdiction. As the Supreme Court stated in Garmon, “when it is clear or may fairly be assumed that the activities which a State purports to regulate . . . constitute an unfair labor practice under § 8, due regard for the federal enactment requires that state jurisdiction must yield.” 359 U.S. at 244, 79 S.Ct. at 779.
The Superior Court thus correctly directed dismissal of appellants’ complaint.
NIX, J., joins in this concurring opinion.