Court Opinion

ID: 9640921
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:18:10.720224+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:33.649588
License: Public Domain

FOSTER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting). In the last analysis, the case here presented is an attempt by one labor union to prevent the organization of another labor union and to compel a railroad to negotiate with it as the sole representative of its clerical employees.
The organization of workers into unions. and collective bargaining as to wages and working conditions has long been recognized by the courts as legal and by the publie as desirable. The Railway Labor Act of 1926 is *18merely declaratory of public poliey. It provides means for negotiation and arbitration, but, unless arbitration is voluntarily entered into by mutual agreement, it contains no provision for compelling observance of its various sections.
However desirable it may be, in tbe interest of tbe publie and tbe parties, that both a railroad and its employees proceed in good faith to settle their differences as to wages and working conditions in the manner pointed out by the act, either the railroad or its employees may refuse to be bound by the act and may decline to negotiate at all.
For a railroad to set up a company union, by persuasion or implied coercion, perhaps, and to then enter into an agreement with it, which may be considered merely an empty form, may be wrong and contrary to public opinion, but to say that paragraph 3 of section 2 of the Railway Labor Act gives a right of action to prevent such a course of conduct is going beyond the letter and intent of the law.
In my opinion, the ease here presented comes clearly under the ruling in Pennsylvania, etc., Federation v. Pennsylvania Railroad Co., 267 U. S. 203, 45 S. Ct. 307, 69 L. Ed. 574. I therefore respectfully dissent.