Court Opinion

ID: 9481892
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:34:43.488543+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:38.583462
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting in part and concurring in part.
I do not believe that Glenwood Bridge has established that either it or the public will be irreparably injured if it is not granted injunctive relief. To the contrary, it is clear that declaratory relief and damages will fully compensate Glenwood Bridge and protect the public interest if Glenwood Bridge is ultimately successful in this action. Additionally, Glenwood Bridge has not shown a sufficient likelihood of prevailing on the merits to warrant a preliminary injunction.
LIKELIHOOD OF SUCCESS ON THE MERITS
Glenwood Bridge has not demonstrated that it is likely to succeed on the merits. To the contrary, the better view is that the National Labor Relations Act permits governmental units to enter into valid and enforceable section 8(e) and (f) prehire agreements on any public construction project.
In 1959, Congress amended federal labor policy in two important respects. First, it added 29 U.S.C. § 158(f). Landrum-Griffin Act, Pub.L.No. 86-257, § 705(a), 73 Stat. 525, 545 (1959). This section validates pre-hire agreements that recognize a union as the bargaining representative of prospective employees. The section accommodates the unique needs of construction-industry employers and employees. See S.Rep. No. 187, 86 Cong., 1st Sess. 55-56 (1959), U.S. Code Cong. & Admin.News 1959, p. 2318 reprinted in 1 NLRB Legislative History of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 451-52 (1985); see also John Deklewa & Sons, 282 N.L.R.B. 1375 (1987) (discussing peculiarities of construction industry that motivated enactment of § 8(f)), enforced, 843 F.2d 770 (3d Cir.1988).
Second, Congress added 29 U.S.C. § 158(e) to the Act. Landrum-Griffin Act, Pub.L. No. 86-257, § 704(b), 73 Stat. 525, 543-44 (1959). This section permits agreements which require all contractors and subcontractors performing work at the project site to execute labor agreements, one purpose being to allocate the difficulties which may arise where union members work alongside nonunion laborers on the same construction site. See Woelke & Romero Framing, Inc. v. N.L.R.B., 456 U.S. 645, 662 & n. 14, 102 S.Ct. 2071, 2081 & n. 14, 72 L.Ed.2d 398 (1982); Connell Constr. Co. v. Plumbers & Steamfitters, 421 U.S. 616, 629-30, 95 S.Ct. 1830, 1838-39, 44 L.Ed.2d 418 (1975).
In light of congressional action validating prehire agreements of the type at issue in this case, federal courts, including this one, have no right to intervene and invalidate them. If Glenwood Bridge believes that the contract violates federal law, its proper recourse is to file an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board.
I do not believe that either Golden State Transit Corp. v. City of Los Angeles, 493 U.S. 103, 110 S.Ct. 444, 107 L.Ed.2d 420 (1989), or Employment Relations Commission v. Wisconsin, 427 U.S. 132, 96 S.Ct. 2548, 49 L.Ed.2d 396 (1976), is on point. Neither case involved prehire agreements in the construction industry. Associated Builders & Contractors v. Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, 935 F.2d 345 (1st Cir.1991) (en banc), is on point, but in my view, was wrongly decided. I note that the First Circuit split three votes to two on the prehire agreement issue, with Chief Judge Breyer and Judge Campbell dissenting. The dissenters stated:
Indeed, general contractors in the construction industry often enter into pre-*374hire agreements of this sort. The only question in this case is whether the NLRA forbids the MWRA, because it is a state agency, to do what the Act explicitly permits a private contractor to do.
The NLRA does not contain any language that explicitly forbids a state, acting like a general construction contractor, from entering into a prehire agreement. Rather, the majority believes that the Act implicitly forbids it from doing so, i.e., that the Act implicitly removed, or pre-empted, a state’s power to act as the MWRA has acted here. Applying general principles of pre-emption, the majority must therefore believe (1) that the MWRA’s action “conflicts with” the Act, (2) that it “frustrate[s] the federal [statutory] scheme,” or (3) that it appears “from the totality of the circumstances that Congress sought to occupy the field to the exclusion of the states.” Malone v. White Motor Corp., 435 U.S. 497, 504 [98 S.Ct. 1185, 1190, 55 L.Ed.2d 443] (1978) (setting forth general conditions for pre-emption); see also Sckneidewind v. ANR Pipeline Co., 485 U.S. 293, 300 [108 S.Ct. 1145, 1148, 99 L.Ed.2d 316] (1988). We do not see how permitting a state agency, when acting like a general contractor, to make labor agreements just like those that private general contractors make, could “conflict with” the NLRA, “frustrate” the NLRA “scheme,” or otherwise interfere with the regulatory system that the NLRA creates.
Id., 935 F.2d at 360 (Breyer, C.J., & Campbell, J., dissenting) (emphasis in original).
Neither the Act nor the legislative history supports the view that Congress intended that construction industry prehire contracts would be valid only in the private sector. Moreover, “the reasons Congress gave for authorizing [prehire contracts] have nothing to do with the public or the private nature of the employer.” Id., 935 F.2d at 364. As the First Circuit dissenters noted:
Further, to permit private general contractors, but not states, to enter into construction-industry prehire agreements would likely produce an odd crazy-quilt of prehire practices. Whether one finds such an agreement would often reflect, not size of the project, or desire of the parties, or special conditions of the industry, but simply whether or not the entity letting the contracts is an arm of the state or private....
Finally, Congress had two perfectly good reasons for not making the construction-industry exceptions explicitly applicable to states, and neither of these reasons suggests any pre-emptive intent. First, the obvious reason is that the list of forbidden practices, to which the exceptions apply, itself applies only to an “employer,” defined to exclude “any State,” thereby leaving the regulation of labor relations between a state and its own employees primarily to state law. A drafter, writing a statutory exception to the resulting prohibition, would not normally extend its scope beyond those subject to the prohibition in the first place. Second, Congress, particularly when it enacted the construction-industry exceptions in 1959, had little reason to believe that a court might find, hidden in the silence of the Act, some other relevant prohibition applicable to a state.
Id., 935 F.2d at 364.
Finally, in this case, as in Associated Builders, the city is, in reality, a buyer that competes with other private and public buyers. It is entitled to the protection of a prehire agreement for the same reason as other owners or general contractors: it wants to preserve peaceful working conditions to get the job done on time. Congress has decided that prehire contracts make for a level playing field, and we should not interfere with the decision of the city that it is in its best interest to have such contracts.
IRREPARABLE INJURY
Even if the foregoing analysis is incorrect, Glenwood Bridge has an adequate legal remedy available to it in the form of damages and declaratory judgment. Accordingly, I believe it has failed to demonstrate the irreparable injury required by *375Dataphase for the entry of a preliminary injunction. I agree with the majority that a bond in an amount sufficient to .reimburse the City of Minneapolis for the losses it might incur because of the delay caused by the granting of the injunctive relief will adequately protect the city and the taxpayers of the city in the event the city prevails. I further agree that the district court is the appropriate court to determine the amount of the bond. The bond must be substantial to protect the interest of the city. The project has already been delayed by more than four months and will be further delayed while this matter winds its way through the federal courts. Moreover, the delays have already pushed the project into the winter construction season, which will significantly increase the cost of the project.
If Glenwood Bridge should ultimately prevail on the merits, the majority suggests that the appropriate remedy would be to rebid the project without a labor stabilization agreement. I agree that the bids submitted in February 1991 in the second round of bidding most likely have become stale. The new bids will certainly be higher than those received to date because of increased costs for materials and labor and because of higher winter construction costs. It is difficult to understand who benefits by requiring the project to be rebid. Certainly the taxpayers of the City of Minneapolis do not gain because they will have to pay the higher cost of constructing the bridge while enduring the inconvenience of a protracted delay in its completion.
The majority notes that a preliminary injunction, combined with success on the merits, would safeguard Glenwood Bridge’s right to re-bid on this project without the labor stabilization agreement. I believe the majority errs, however, in concluding that money damages and declaratory relief will not fully vindicate this right. Money damages will place Glenwood Bridge in precisely the same financial position it would have occupied had the city not rejected all bids made in the initial round, which contained no labor stabilization agreement. A declaratory judgment will invalidate the labor stabilization agreement for purposes of future city construction projects, guaranteeing Glenwood Bridge’s right to participate in a legal bidding process. Damages and declaratory relief thus would give Glenwood Bridge the economic benefit of its bargain with the city in the first round of bidding and a right to bid on future city projects free of labor stabilization agreements. The only possible further benefit to Glenwood Bridge of injunctive relief would be an opportunity to re-bid this project with no assurance whatever that it would actually submit the low bid and be awarded the contract. When balanced against the potential harm to the city and its taxpayers in terms of increased project costs and delays if an injunction is granted, I do not believe that Glenwood Bridge’s lost opportunity to re-bid constitutes irreparable harm sufficient to support an injunction under Dataphase. Similarly, the public interest in a fair bidding process will be as well protected by a declaratory judgment as it would by injunctive relief. I therefore believe that Glenv/ood Bridge has failed to establish two prongs of the Data-phase test and is not entitled to injunctive relief. Accordingly, I would affirm the order of the district court.