Court Opinion

ID: 9639782
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:47:40.079848+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:21.751697
License: Public Domain

SANBORN, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
The respondent is a relatively small producer of soft coal in Missouri. It sells its product exclusively in that State. A few of its customers are engaged in conducting an interstate business and use the coal in their business. Other customers ship the coal purchased by them from respondent to other States. About 34,000 tons, or 13 per cent, of the coal produced by respondent finds its way into States other than Missouri. The respondent has at all times operated its mine with nonunion labor. It employs an average of fifty men. In October, 1935, it discharged four of its employees because of their union activities. In May, 1937, the union to which they belonged filed charges against respondent with the National Labor Relations Board, based upon the discharge of these four men. The respondent, contending that its activities were purely intrastate, challenged the jurisdiction of the Board. The Board took jurisdiction, and the order which is the subject of this proceeding followed.
While I can readily understand why the discharge by the respondent in the year 1935 of these four employees for union activity presented a situation with which the State of Missouri, in the exercise of its police power, might properly have concerned itself, I am not able to comprehend why the problem presented was one of national concern, or how the separation of these men from the respondent’s service could have had or could now have any appreciable effect upon commerce between the States, or how it could as a practical matter be regarded as a menace to such commerce. I agree, however, that no other conclusion than that reached by Judge WOODROUGH could be sustained, in view of the decision of the Supreme Court in the case of National Labor Relations Board v. Fainblatt et al., decided April 17, 1939, 59 S.Ct. 668, 83 L.Ed. -. The respondent seeks to distinguish that case from this, but its argument in that regard is not convincing, particularly when considered in the light cast upon the Fainblatt decision by the Justices who dissented and who were in a far better position to appraise its significance than we are.
I prefer, however, not to concur in so much of the reasoning of the opinion in the case before us as attempts to show that a matter which, to my mind, under the record presented, was local and exclusively subject to the jurisdiction of the State of Missouri, was in fact one of national concern. I therefore concur in the result only, and base my concurrence upon the Fain-blatt case.