Court Opinion

ID: 9843159
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:29:00.488417+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:39.560377
License: Public Domain

SILBERMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring dubitante:
I join Judge Henderson’s opinion up to the point that she reaches the issue whether the assessments to support the ALPA strike at Eastern were “germane” to collective bargaining. And, although I do not object to the remand for findings as to the actual relationship between the strike at Eastern and the dynamics of collective bargaining in appellants’ unit, I doubt that further findings will provide much illumination on the issue presented in this case. Judge Henderson is certainly correct that the Fourth Circuit in Crawford purported to rely heavily on the district court’s factfinding and that the Supreme Court in Lehnert also referred to the facts as found by the district judge. Nevertheless, whether an expenditure is to be con*1281sidered “germane” is not merely a question of its factual relatedness to the union’s bargaining efforts on behalf of the objecting members’ bargaining unit, because even certain classes of clearly related activities have been deemed “non-germane.” Our primary problem is that, when assessments have been levied for expenditures relating to activities at another bargaining unit, it is impossible to detect in the Supreme Court cases — particularly Lehnert — a principled basis for distinguishing expenditures that are “germane” from those that are not. And findings of fact are only useful if a court has available a legal framework into which to place those findings.
The Supreme Court has held that nonmembers cannot be charged for general union organizing costs, for lobbying activities, or for litigation expenses not directly associated with their collective bargaining unit (the latter since the Supreme Court understands such litigation to be “political”). See Ellis v. Brotherhood of Ry., Airline & S.S. Clerks, 466 U.S. 435, 448, 104 S.Ct. 1883, 1892, 80 L.Ed.2d 428 (1984); Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Ass’n, 500 U.S. 507, 519-22, 528, 111 S.Ct. 1950, 1959-60, 1963, 114 L.Ed.2d 572 (1991) (plurality holding); id. at 555, 111 S.Ct. at 1977 (Scalia, J., concurring in the judgment). Non-members can be assessed, however, for their share of expenses associated with the chargeable bargaining activities of affiliates — “even if those activities were not performed for the direct benefit of the objecting employees’ bargaining unit,” Lehnert, 500 U.S. at 524, 111 S.Ct. at 1961 — for convention costs (including reasonable social expenditures), for strike preparations, and for the costs of union publications reporting on otherwise chargeable union activities. See Ellis, 466 U.S. at 448-56, 104 S.Ct. at 1892-96; Lehnert, 500 U.S. at 524-31, 111 S.Ct. at 1961-65.
It is beyond my powers of comprehension to understand why litigation expenses incurred by the union in another unit on a matter that relates to collective bargaining— perhaps even an interpretation of a collective bargaining agreement identical to that of the objecting employees’ unit — are not thought “germane,” but certain strike preparations are. Perhaps it is the Supreme Court’s unique perception of litigation that leads it to describe that process as “political.” I only wish the matter seemed as clear to me as it does to Judge Wilkinson, who said in Crawford that “the language in Lehnert nails the result to the mast.”
I recognize the analytical difficulty in drawing a line between those expenses that, if charged to unwilling agency shop employees, would offend the First Amendment, and those thought to be germane to collective bargaining. But surely the Court can give us some principles on which to base our decisions. In the absence of such, I cannot quarrel with the majority’s decision to remand for factfinding. The district judge will at least be able to determine just how related these particular expenditures were to collective bargaining in appellants’ unit.