Court Opinion

ID: 9428318
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:23:25.091345+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:12.812010
License: Public Domain

Justice Powell,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
The Court’s opinion makes clear that Congress, in enacting the Taft-Hartley amendments to the National Labor Relations Act, did not intend to hold individuals liable in damages for wildcat strikes. I therefore join the Court’s judgment and most of its opinion. I do not, however, share the Court’s view that there remains to management a “significant array of other remedies,” ante, at 416, n. 18, with which to deter or obtain compensation for illegal strikes. In fact, the “remedies” said to be available are largely chimerical.
I
Collective-bargaining agreements typically contain a promise by the union not to strike during the agreement’s term. Unions agree to these no-strike clauses in exchange for the employer’s promise to arbitrate disputes arising in contract *418administration. Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U. S. 448, 449, 455 (1957). Each promise is the “quid pro quo” for the other, Steelworkers v. American Mfg. Co., 363 U. S. 564, 567 (1960), because the employer yields traditional managerial autonomy in exchange for industrial peace.
Despite the mutual benefits of the' no-strike/grievance-arbitration pact, strikes in breach of contract occur with disturbing frequency. In some cases, these strikes are encouraged or even instigated by union leaders.1 Often, however, they are true “wildcats” — strikes that arise spontaneously to protest grievances against the company and, occasionally, against the union leadership itself. Responsible unions disapprove of such strikes, but some officials, especially those at the local level, may acquiesce in them because of the fervor of intransigent members.
Whatever the cause, strikes in breach of contract frequently injure all concerned: the employer,2 employees, and the public. Strikes and lockouts by their nature squander human working capacity, the full use of which is essential to the enjoyment of the Nation’s productive potential. To be sure, the national labor policy recognizes that, in some circumstances, the use of weapons of strike and lockout is con*419sistent with and protected by law. Labor, management, and the public nevertheless share a “common goal of uninterrupted production.” Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U. S. 574, 582 (1960). The essential tenet of our labor policy is that “a system of industrial self-government” based on consensual (albeit vigorously negotiated) labor contracts, see Steelworkers v. American Mfg. Co., supra, at 570 (Brennan, J., concurring), is preferable to “strikes, lockouts, or other self-help,” Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerks, 398 U. S. 235, 249 (1970).
When the Taft-Hartley amendments were enacted in 1947, the Nation had experienced a wave of labor unrest.3 Congress found that “the balance of power in collective-bargaining” had been destroyed because employers, who had promised to arbitrate disputes in exchange for no-strike promises, often failed to obtain the industrial peace for which they bargained. S. Rep. 14.4
II
It is increasingly clear that the 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments did not provide employers with an effective remedy for wildcat strikes. The Court today holds, properly I think, that Congress intended to foreclose a damages remedy against individual wildcat strikers. The Court states, however, that *420there remains a number of legal weapons with which to deter or terminate illegal strikes, or to obtain compensation when they occur. Ante, at 416-417, n. 18. In support of its view, the Court contends that the employer may (i) obtain an injunction, (ii) discharge the strikers, (iii) request the union to use its internal disciplinary powers, or (iv) sue the union entity for damages. Ibid. In reality, more often than not, each of these remedies is illusory.
Injunctions in labor disputes are generally prohibited by the Norris-LaGuardia Act.5 In Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerks, supra, the Court recognized a limited exception to the anti-injunction provisions of that Act. Boys Markets permits injunctions to terminate strikes pending arbitration if the grievance underlying the strike is arbitrable. However, Boys Markets offers only “narrow” relief, 398 U. S., at 263, because injunctions cannot be obtained in strikes of other kinds. E. g., Buffalo Forge Co. v. Steelworkers, 428 U. S. 397 (1976) (injunctions not available in sympathy strikes). Moreover, even when an injunction is available, workers on strike often are disinclined to obey it.6 Courts may be reluctant to impose contempt penalties on individual workers; if ordered, such penalties are difficult to enforce.
Nor is discharge a realistic remedy in most cases. Because a strike in breach of contract is unprotected conduct under the National Labor Relations Act, see NLRB v. Sands Mfg. Co., 306 U. S. 332 (1939), workers who strike illegally may be terminated. It therefore has been argued that discharge *421effectively deters strikes and punishes wrongdoers because discharge is “the industrial equivalent of capital punishment.” M. Jay Whitman, Wildcat Strikes: The Union’s Narrowing Path to Rectitude?, 50 Ind. L. J. 472, 481 (1975). There are at least three reasons why this remedy in practice often is not effective. First, in a large wildcat strike, wholesale discharges are not practical because an employer cannot terminate all or most of his labor force without crippling production. See Boys Markets, supra, at 248-249, n. 17.7 Second, certain kinds of selective discharges arguably are illegal. The National Labor Relations Board takes the position that an employer may not discipline a union officer more severely than other strike participants, even where the union officer failed to fulfill a contractual undertaking to help terminate strikes.8 In any event, discharging only selected strikers is unlikely to influence the rank and file to return to work. Such discharges actually may aggravate worker discontent and thereby prolong the strike. Cedar Coal Co. v. United Mine Workers, 560 F. 2d 1153, 1157 (CA4 1977), cert. denied, 434 U. S. 1047 (1978) ; see 86 Harv. L. Rev. 447, 454, *422n. 33 (1972). At a minimum, strikers may insist that their discharged colleagues be reinstated as a condition to returning to work. Fishman & Brown, Union Responsibility for Wildcat Strikes, 21 Wayne L. Rev. 1017, 1022 (1975). Third, arbitrators not infrequently refuse to sustain discharges of strikers. See Handsaker & Handsaker, Remedies and Penalties for Wildcat Strikes: How Arbitrators and Federal Courts Have Ruled, 22 Cath. U. L. Rev. 279, 284 (1973).
The union itself normally will not discipline its striking members. Most unions have the legal authority to take such action, see Summers, Legal Limitations on Union Discipline, 64 Harv. L. Rev. 1049, 1065 (1951), but the power seldom is used. In a wildcat strike, worker recalcitrance sometimes is directed at the incumbent union leadership as much as at company management. In these circumstances, the union’s attempt to discipline is unlikely to be effective and may be counterproductive. Moreover, under this Court’s decision in Carbon Fuel Co. v. Mine Workers, 444 U. S. 212 (1979), a parent union normally is not obligated to take affirmative steps to prevent or terminate a wildcat strike. Absent such an obligation, there is little incentive for the union to intervene, even where intervention would be useful.
Finally, a suit for damages against the union entity rarely is feasible.9 Last Term, in Carbon Fuel, supra, we largely *423foreclosed this possibility when we held that liability normally may not be imposed on a parent union10 absent proof that it authorized or ratified the strike.11 It is a foolish union that would invite a damages suit by explicitly endorsing a strike in this manner. See n. 1, supra.
Ill
The Court plainly is unrealistic, therefore, when it suggests that employers have at their disposal a battery of alternative remedies for illegal strikes. Ante, at 416^417, n. 18. The result of the absence of remedies is a lawless vacuum. Despite a no-strike clause, a plant may be closed with adverse consequences that often are far-reaching. The strike injures the employer, other companies and their employees, and consumers in general. Frequently, the strike is harmful even to the majority of strikers, who feel obligated to honor the picket line of minority wildcatters.
It is, of course, the province of Congress to set the Nation’s labor policy. I do not suggest that authorizing a damages remedy against individual wildcat strikers would be desirable. I do believe, however, that the absence of an effective *424remedy leaves such strikes undeterred and the public interest unprotected. The National Labor Relations Act, as amended in 1947, was intended to further broader national interests than those of either labor or management. It was conceived not only as a charter for labor rights but also as a framework of law to promote orderly labor relations. Wildcat strikes are at war with these objectives.

 Strike encouragement sometimes is explicit but more often is cryptic. A union may employ subtle signals to convey the message to strike. One court noted that unions sometimes employ “a nod or a wink or a code ... in place of the word ‘strike.’ ” United States v. UMW, 77 F. Supp. 563, 566 (DC 1948), aff’d, 85 U. S. App. D. C. 149, 177 F. 2d 29, cert. denied, 338 U. S. 871 (1949).

 Production disruptions have obvious short-term adverse consequences. And one commentator has pointed out that the long-term consequences of these strikes may be even more severe. A strike rends the “closely integrated supply and distribution systems” that the company has developed. M. Jay Whitman, Wildcat Strikes: The Unions’ Narrowing Path to Rectitude?, 50 Ind. L. J. 472, 473 (1975). Such systems “presume predictability. A business with a reputation for labor problems, let alone wildcats, simply cannot provide its customers with that predictability,” ibid., leading once-regular customers to seek other sources of supply.

 The Senate Report accompanying the Taft-Hartley amendments observed that the Nation in 1945 experienced “the loss of approximately 38,000,000 man-days of labor through strikes. This total was trebled in 1946 when there were 116,000,000 man-days lost. . . .” S. Rep. No. 105, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 2 (1947) (hereinafter S. Rep.).

 The Senate Report stated that if workers “can break agreements with relative impunity, then such agreements do not tend to stabilize industrial relations. The execution of such an agreement does not by itself promote industrial peace. The chief advantage which an employer can reasonably expect from a collective labor agreement is assurance of uninterrupted operation during the term of the agreement. Without some effective method of assuring freedom from economic warfare for the term of the agreement, there is little reason why an employer would desire to sign such a contract.” Id., at 16.

 Section 4 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 47 Stat. 70, 29 U. S. C. § 104, provides, in pertinent part:
“No court of the United States shall have jurisdiction to issue any restraining order or temporary or permanent injunction in any case involving or growing out of any labor dispute . . . .”

 Compare Old Ben Coal Corp. v. Local 1487, UMW, 457 F. 2d 162 (CA7 1972), with Old Ben Coal Corp. v. Local 1487, UMW, 500 F. 2d 950, 952 (CA7 1974). See Gould, On Labor Injunctions Pending Arbitration: Recasting Buffalo Forge, 30 Stan. L. Rev. 533, 541, and n. 47 (1978).

 Discharging the entire work force would “caus[e] mountainous personnel problems. Consider the sheer logistics of hiring, training and acclimating an entirely new work force with suitable skills. Even if a new labor force could be recruited, the time and expense of this process, from recruitment to full production, could very well sound the death knell of the business.” Fishman & Brown, Union Responsibility for Wildcat Strikes, 21 Wayne L. Rev. 1017, 1021 (1975).

 E. g., Miller Brewing Co., 254 N. L. R. B. 266 (1981); South Central Bell Telephone Co., 254 N. L. R. B. 315 (1981); Precision Casting Co., 233 N. L. R. B. 183 (1977). The Board’s position is so clear that employers may be deterred from conducting selective discharges. This Court has not addressed the question, but some Courts of Appeals have not warmly received the Board’s reasoning. See Gould, Inc. v. NLRB, 612 F. 2d 728 (CA3) (denying enforcement to 237 N. L. R. B. 881 (1978)), cert. denied sub nom. Moran v. Gould Corp., 449 U. S. 890 (1980); Indiana & Mich. Electric Co. v. NLRB, 599 F. 2d 227 (CA7 1979) (denying enforcement to 237 N. L. R. B. 226 (1978)); see also NLRB v. Armour-Dial, Inc., 638 F. 2d 51, 54-56 (CA8 181).

 Sophisticated employers for tactical reasons may elect to forgo tenable poststrike suits for damages. As the Court points out, such suits may “exacerbate industrial strife,” ante, at 416, n. 18, and thereby delay the dissipation of the acrimony engendered by the strike. Employers also may elect not to sue for damages because they do not want to subject themselves to the disclosure attendant to litigation. A damages suit
“necessarily involves detailed discussion of an employer’s most intimate financial secrets. By making a damage claim, the employer puts its . . . finances ... at issue in the litigation. The discovery rules of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure give the union and its accountants the right to explore every corner of the- employer’s books. If the union conducts its ease properly, it will know everything from per-unit profit to the finer *423details of [corporate] management.” M. Jay Whitman, supra n. 2, at 474 (footnote omitted).
Finally, part of the price of settling the strike often is a promise that the company will waive its claim for damages. Ransdell v. International Assn. of Machinists, 97 LRRM 2738 (ED Wis. 1978); Gould, On Labor Injunctions, Unions, and the Judges: The Boys Market Case, 1970 S. Ct. Rev. 215, 231.

 Carbon Fuel did not consider the quantum of proof necessary to establish damages liability against a local union. Because of the local’s proximity to workers, an inference of agency — and hence, liability— arguably may arise even without explicit proof of strike authorization or ratification. See § 301 (e) of the Act, 29 U. S. C. § 185 (e). The possibility that the local will be liable may be of little practical benefit, however, because the local often is judgment-proof.

 Carbon Fuel recognized, of course, that an explicit contractual undertaking by the parent to intervene to terminate wildcats could be the basis for damages liability. See 444 U. S., at 218-222.