Court Opinion

ID: 9841948
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-22 20:11:51.834909+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:28.326347
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
whom Mr. Justice Min-ton and Mr. Justice Harlan join,
dissenting.
The petitioners are corporations in the plastics manufacturing business in New York and are subject to the Taft-Hartley Act, 61 Stat. 136, 29 U. S. C. § 141. In November 1949 they negotiated a one-year collective bargaining agreement with the Carpenters Union, A. F. L., *290governing wages, hours and working conditions. The agreement provided for the arbitration of disputes and contained a clause outlawing strikes. During the life of this agreement, the Wholesale and Warehouse Workers Union commenced the solicitation of members among petitioners’ employees, and in September 1950 requested the National Labor Relations Board to certify them as exclusive bargaining representative.
In an effort to keep the Warehouse Workers out of their plant, the petitioners enlisted the aid of a third union, the Pulp and Mill Workers. This latter organization had bested the Wholesale and Warehouse Workers elsewhere in organizational wars. Petitioners proselytized among their employees on behalf of the Pulp and Mill Workers, which in late October, having gained sufficient adherents, intervened in the representation proceeding initiated before the Board by the Warehouse Workers.
Meanwhile the Carpenters had written petitioners on October 10, stating that they wished to negotiate a new contract to take effect upon the expiration of the current agreement. The letter made specific demands, and bargaining over them followed. When the petitioners’ organizational activities became manifest, the Carpenters lodged unfair-labor-practice charges with the Board. Some members of the incumbent union tried to counteract the influence of the petitioners upon the employees. Frank Ciccone, a machinist, was one who was active in urging employees to remain loyal to the Carpenters.
On November 10 Ciccone was discharged because of this. The discharge, in conjunction with the antecedent employer unfair labor practices, precipitated a plant-wide strike accompanied by peaceful picketing. The strike continued until early February when the participants requested reinstatement. The request was rejected by the petitioners which had earlier notified the strikers of their discharge.
*291The proceedings that followed before the Board resulted in findings against the employers of unfair labor practices under § 8 (a)(1), (2) and (3). The Board entered a cease and desist order, and affirmatively directed petitioners to reinstate the discharged strikers with back pay. 103 N. L. R. B. 511. Chairman Herzog and Member Mur-dock dissented from the latter portion of the Board’s order. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (Swan, J., dissenting in part) enforced the Board’s order. 214 F. 2d 462. We granted certiorari because of the important question of the construction of the Taft-Hartley Act raised by the case. 348 U. S. 910.
Petitioners did not contend in the Court of Appeals, nor have they argued here, that the Board erred either in finding them guilty of committing unfair labor practices, or in concluding that the strike was precipitated by these illegal practices. Rather they maintain that the Board lacked the power to order the discharged strikers reinstated. Two reasons are urged. First, the strike is claimed to constitute a breach of the labor agreement between petitioners and the bargaining representative of the strikers, and was therefore unprotected activity. Such is not the case. The Board and the Court of Appeals rightly held that the “no-strike” clause in the contract does not cover a work stoppage provoked by the petitioners’ unfair labor practices. The second reason is that the strikers ceased to be employees within the meaning of the Act, and therefore were not entitled to reinstatement. Petitioners contend that the discharged workers lost their status as employees by reason of the 60-day “cooling-off” period provided by § 8 (d) of the Act.
. Section 8 (d) defines the duty of the employer and the union to bargain collectively. A long proviso in the section treats specifically of the duty during the period *292of contract renegotiation. The relevant portions of the section follow:
“. . . where there is in effect a collective-bargaining contract covering employees in an industry affecting commerce, the duty to bargain collectively shall also mean that no party to such contract shall terminate or modify such contract, unless the party desiring such termination or modification—
“(1) serves a written notice upon the other party to the contract of the proposed termination or modification sixty days prior to the expiration date thereof, or in the event such contract contains no expiration date, sixty days prior to the time it is proposed to make such termination or modification;
“(4) continues in full force and effect, without resorting to strike or lock-out, all the terms and conditions of the existing contract for a period of sixty days after such notice is given or until the expiration date of such contract, whichever occurs later: . . . Any employee who engages in a strike within the sixty-day period specified in this subsection shall lose his status as an employee of the employer engaged in the particular labor dispute, for the purposes of sections 8, 9, and 10 of this Act, as amended, but such loss of status for such employee shall terminate if and when he is reemployed by such employer.” 61 Stat. 142-143, 29 U. S. C. § 158 (d).
The discharged employees struck during the 60-day period, for the notification required by § 8 (d)(1) was given on October 10, and the strike began on November 10. The holding of the Board, however, sustained by the Court of Appeals, is that the loss-of-status provision does not apply to an unfair-labor-practice striker.
*293This provision was one of the amendments to the Wagner Act made by the Labor Management Relations Act, 61 Stat. 136. If the provision, couched in ordinary nontechnical language, is to be read as ordinary English words, concededly the striking employees lost their “status” as employees of petitioners “for the purposes of sections 8, 9, and 10 . . . .” Accordingly they were not entitled to re-employment by the petitioners, and the Board was without authority to order their reinstatement. The real problem, then, is to determine whether controlling considerations preclude giving the ordinary meaning to what Congress has written. While literalness of construction does not conclude ascertainment of a statute’s meaning, it certainly is the beginning.
The so-called canons of construction are not technical rules of law which afford the answer to a problem like this. But they are “axiom[s] of experience” (Boston Sand & Gravel Co. v. United States, 278 U. S. 41, 48), helpful guides in determining when language as plain as ours should be respected and enforced. Relevant guides in construing an amendatory provision like the one in issue are: (1) what was the state of the law before the amendment and (2) what light is shed on the specific provision by placing it in the context of the legislation, i. e., the Taft-Hartley Act, of which it is a part, in order to secure harmony and not discord of result. In a word, enactments like the Wagner Act and the Taft-Hartley Act must be considered as an organic whole.
Under the original Wagner Act, employees were given the right in § 7 “to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in concerted activities, for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.” Duties were imposed upon the employer under § 8. Among these, he could not interfere with the exercise by employees of their *294rights under § 7, and he was required to bargain in good faith with the employees’ representative. When the Board found that an employer had violated his duty under § 8, it was empowered under § 10 to order the employer to cease and desist from so doing and to take action undoing his violation, including the reinstatement of discharged employees, if such reinstatement would effectuate the policies of the Act.
While the employer had numerous obligations to his employees and their bargaining representative, the union and the employees were under no statutory duty to the employer. For example, the union was not required to bargain in good faith, and it was not forbidden to strike in order to achieve its demands during a period of contract renegotiation.
If this case had come up under the Wagner Act the results would be clear. The employers violated § 8 and thereby unleashed the strike. Such a strike would not have been in violation of any statutory duty because the union and the employees had no duties under the Wagner Act. Since the employers had committed an unfair labor practice, the Board had jurisdiction and could order the discharged strikers reinstated with back pay. Phelps Dodge Corp. v. Labor Board, 313 U. S. 177. Furthermore, the employers’ discharge of their employees because they engaged in a strike was itself an unfair labor practice under § 8 for it interfered with their § 7 right to engage in “concerted activities.”
The Wagner Act did not define “concerted activities.” All collective action, however, was not concerted activity protected by § 7. We held in Labor Board v. Fansteel Metallurgical Corp., 306 U. S. 240, that a sit-down strike was not § 7 activity; and in Southern S. S. Co. v. Labor Board, 316 U. S. 31, we decided that a strike in violation of the laws against mutiny was not protected under § 7. If an employer interferes with collective *295employee action which is not sanctioned by § 7, he does not violate § 8, and in the absence of a violation of § 8 the Board cannot take action under § 10. Thus if an employer discharges workers because they engaged in a sit-down strike for higher wages, the Board cannot order him to reinstate the strikers. Since § 8, however, did not place any duties upon employees or unions, most peaceful collective action was protected under § 7, because most peaceful activity did not infringe some implicit federal labor policy or some other federal policy, such as that represented by the statute against mutiny.
The Taft-Hartley Act changed the situation. Section 8 of the Wagner Act was amended and duties were placed upon unions. Collective action which violates any of these duties is of course activity unprotected by § 7. See Cox, The Right to Engage in Concerted Activities, 26 Ind. L. J. 319, 325-333 (1951). One of these new union duties, and an important one, is contained in § 8 (d): unions may not strike to enforce their demands during the 60-day “cooling-off” period.
By reason of this new enactment, participating workers would not be engaged in a protected activity under § 7 by striking for the most legitimate economic reasons during the 60-day period. The strike would be in violation of the provision of that section which says that during the period there shall be no resort to a strike. The employer could discharge such strikers without violating § 8. This would be so if § 8 were without the loss-of-status provision. The Board would be powerless to order reinstatement under § 10. The loss-oLstatus provision in § 8 (d) does not curtail the Board’s power, since it did not have power to order reinstatement where a strike is resorted to for economic reasons before the 60-day period has expired. In such a situation the striker has no rights under §§ 8 and 10. Yet the Board would have us construe the loss-of-status provision as applicable only *296to the economic striker and qualifying a power which the Board does not have.
It is with respect to the unfair-labor-practice striker that the provision serves a purpose. This becomes clear if we assume that there were no such provision and examine the consequences of its absence. On such an assumption, a strike based on an unfair labor practice by the employer during the 60-day period may or may not be a protected activity under § 7. If it is, obviously discharged strikers would be entitled to reinstatement. The strike would not be a § 7 activity, however, if, for example, it were in breach of a no-strike clause in the contract which extends to a work stoppage provoked by an employer unfair labor practice, cf. Labor Board v. Sands Mfg. Co., 306 U. S. 332, 344, or if the no-strike clause in § 8 (d) (4) (not to be confused with the loss-of-status provision) extends to such a work stoppage. However, even if the strike is not a § 7 activity, the Board in the unfair-labor-practice strike situation as distinguished from the economic strike situation, may in its discretion order the discharged participants reinstated. This is so because of the antecedent employer unfair practice which caused the strike, and which gave employees rights under § 8. If the Board finds that reinstatement of such strikers is a remedy that would effectuate the policies of the Act, it has the power under §• 10 (c) to issue the necessary order.
This would not be the case, however, if the loss-of-status provision were held applicable to unfair-labor-practice strikes, because participating workers would lose their rights as “employees” for the purposes of §§ 8 and 10. Under the Act only “employees” are eligible for reinstatement. • The unfair-labor-practice strike, then, is the one situation where loss of status for the purposes of §§ 8 and 10 is of significance. At any rate, we have not been advised of any other situation to which the provision would apply.
*297We are therefore confronted with the demonstrable fact that if the provision stripping strikers of their status as employees during the 60-day period is to have any usefulness at all and not be an idle collection of words, the fact that a strike during that period is induced by the employer's unfair labor practice is immaterial.* Even though this might on first impression seem an undesirable result, it is so only by rejecting the important considerations in promoting peaceful industrial relations which might well have determined the action of Congress. In the first place, the Congress may have set a very high value on peaceful adjustments, i. e., the absence of strikes. One may take judicial notice of the fact that this consideration was at the very forefront of the thinking and feeling of the Eightieth Congress. And there is another consideration not unrelated to this. While in a particular case the cause of a strike may be clear, and in a particular case there may be no controversy regarding the *298circumstances which prove that an employer committed an unfair labor practice, as a matter of experience that is not always true, indeed often it is not true. One of the sharpest controversies, one of the issues most difficult of determination, is the very question of what precipitated a work stoppage. This is especially true where a new contract is being negotiated. It is not at all unreasonable, therefore, to find a congressional desire to preclude litigation over what all too often is a contentious subject and to deter all strikes during the crucial period of negotiation.
We need not agree with a legislative judgment in order to obey a legislative command. It is enough for us that Congress did not legislate idly, but did intend the loss-of-status provision to have an effect. “We are not at liberty to construe any statute so as to deny effect to any part of its language. It is a cardinal rule of statutory construction that significance and effect shall, if possible, be accorded to every word. As early as in Bacon’s Abridgment, sect. 2, it was said that 'a statute ought, upon the whole, to be so construed that, if it can be prevented, no clause, sentence, or word shall be superfluous, void, or insignificant.’ This rule has been repeated innumerable times. Another rule equally recognized is that every part of a statute must be construed in connection with the whole, so as to make all the parts harmonize, if possible, and give meaning to each.” Market Co. v. Hoffman, 101 U. S. 112, 115-116. Since the loss-of-status provision has an effect only in an unfair-labor-practice strike, the judgment of the Court of Appeals should be reversed.

It may be noted that the opponents of the Taft-Hartley Act objected to the loss-of-status provision for just this reason:
“[T]he section is silent as to the Board’s authority to accommodate conflicting issues such as provocation on the part of the employer. Under this section an employer desirous of ridding himself either of the employees or their representative can engage in the most provocative conduct without fear of redress except by way of a lengthy hearing before the Board and a subsequent admonition to thereafter 'cease and desist’ from such practices. In striking contrast to the relatively delicate treatment provided for such action by an employer, employees unwilling idly to countenance abuse, who resort to self-help under the circumstances are removed from the protection of the statute and lose ‘employee’ status. An employer is at liberty under such circumstances freely to replace any employee bold enough to insist upon justice. The provision denies to the Board the exercise of any discretion to accommodate the equitable doctrine of ‘clean hands.’ The provisions of the section are conclusive — the employee is subject to summary dismissal irrespective of the employer’s conduct.” S. Rep. No. 105 (Minority), Part 2, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 21-22 (1947).