Court Opinion

ID: 9447073
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:24:33.166965+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:52.679438
License: Public Domain

HASTIE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Without challenging the conclusions of the majority as to the constitutionality of the statute and the sufficiency of proof that the continuing national steel strike imminently threatens serious interference with essential national defense production, I still am not persuaded that a case has been established for the issuance of a Taft-Hartley injunction.
These are the steps in my reasoning. The injunction sought here is an equitable remedy and, therefore, is to be granted or withheld in the exereise of a sound discretion. Accordingly it should not be granted if it apparently would not accomplish its objective. In the emergency strike provisions of the Taft-Hartley law, the primary purpose of a temporary injunction is not to force strikers to return to work but to facilitate a settlement of a serious industry wide strike by collective bargaining. The evidence here shows that an injunction would not facilitate and might even make more difficult a negotiated settlement of the steel strike. In these circumstances an exercise of sound discretion must lead to a denial of the requested injunction. This reasoning is elaborated in what follows.
*691The national emergency strike provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act, 29 U.S. C.A. §§ 176-180, do not purport to determine the merits of a labor dispute or to terminate a strike by judicial order. The statute merely authorizes a court temporarily to suspend a strike of a certain nationally very harmful type1 for a period of not more than eighty days while the parties negotiate and the strikers ultimately vote whether to accept whatever final offer management may make. This duty to negotiate and vote is explicit and constitutes the whole machinery of settlement set up by the statute. Thus the apparent purpose of the statute is to create for a limited time a more favorable environment for collective bargaining between the parties to a nationally hurtful strike with the hope and expectation that bargaining and related procedures, outlined in Section 179 of Title 29, will accomplish a settlement of the strike.
It is true that a Taft-Hartley injunction may also have the immediately helpful effect of temporarily restoring much needed production. But if this had been the objective primarily in view there would have been no reason for limiting the term of the injunction to an eighty day period of attempted settlement. Reflecting his primary concern with achieving a negotiated settlement Senator Taft, the principal sponsor of the legislation, explained its philosophy to the Senate in these words:
“We did not feel that we should put into the law, as a part of the collective-bargaining machinery, an ultimate resort to compulsory arbitration, or to seizure, or to any other action. We feel that it would interfere with the whole process of collective bargaining.” 93 Cong.Rec. 3951.
It is also to be considered in judging the primary purpose of the legislation that Congress had already conferred sweeping and more direct authority upon the Executive for satisfying emergency national needs for materials and commodities by seizing struck plants under Section 18 of the Universal Military Training and Service Act2 and by allocating scarce supplies under Section 101 of the Defense Production Act of 1950 as amended.3 It is reasonable to believe that some different purpose motivated the Congress in authorizing temporary injunctions under the Taft-Hartley law.
To accomplish its purpose the statute invokes the equity jurisdiction of the district courts. This is done by the provision that if the continuation of a strike of a substantial part of an industry will impair national health or safety, the district court “shall have jurisdiction to enjoin any such strike [for a period which cannot exceed eighty days] * * * and to make such other orders as may be appropriate”. The case might have been different had the statute provided for an administrative hearing and determination and an administrative order suspending a strike, with the judicial role limited to enforcement of any permissible order. But Congress having chosen to refer the whole problem to a court of equity exercising its normal historic jurisdiction, the court must consider in the normal fashion of equity whether injunc-tive relief will serve its intended purpose. Equity refrains from issuing orders which appear vain in that they seem unlikely to serve their intended purpose.
To put the matter somewhat differently, there is no legislative mandate that a court shall grant an injunction whenever a strike is imperiling national health or safety, though such peril is essential to jurisdiction. Rather, a court *692sitting in equity is called upon to balance all equitable considerations inherent in the statutory scheme or disclosed by the evidence in a given case. Under this analysis a primary and essential equitable consideration must be whether the underlying public purpose of the statute to promote and facilitate more effective bargaining would be served. Indeed, in my judgment some utility in accomplishing this primary purpose of the legislation should provide, the principal equitable justification of injunctive relief.
Thus, a court, before issuing an injunction under Section 178 of Title 29, should satisfy itself that there is a reasonable basis for belief that a forced suspension of the strike will aid and accelerate the process of collective bargaining. In terms of the present case, has it been made to appear here that the parties are more likely to settle their dispute within the next eighty days if the strike is suspended for that period by court order than they are to accomplish this result while the strike continues?
Examining the pleadings and proof in the present record it appears that neither the government which seeks the injunction nor the steel companies whose employees are striking has shed any light on this critical question. Certainly there is no indication that violence or any other exacerbating conduct in the course of the strike is creating a climate harmful to negotiation. There is no suggestion that any tension, or hostility inimical to negotiation would be relieved or any impediment to settlement removed by a suspension of the strike. There is simply nothing before us which warrants a conclusion that the objective of more productive bargaining would be served by an injunction.
On the other hand there is evidence to the contrary. The question is necessarily one of judgment informed by experience with the course of this strike and the history of other similar situations. The parties have elected to try this ease on affidavits. The affidavit of David J. McDonald, President of the defendant union is relevant here. He has deposed as follows:
“On the basis of the information available to me, I firmly believe that if the injunction which is anticipated by these companies should not be issued, a major stumbling block to the negotiation of a voluntary settlement of this dispute will be removed, and a settlement of the dispute will be achieved through the process of free collective bargaining. It is, of course, impossible to predict with certainty the time which will be required to reach such a settlement or what the terms of the settlement will be. I am certain, however, that the anticipation that the strike will be ended or interrupted by an injunction, has operated to remove the economic pressures which would otherwise be felt by both sides to reach a settlement, and that those pressures will operate to assure a settlement within a short period of time if the anticipation of an injunction is removed.
“My firm belief that the anticipation of an injunction has, in fact, prevented a settlement from occurring to date is supported by the views expressed by such impartial experts as George W. Taylor, the Chairman of the Board of Inquiry appointed by the President in this dispute, and former Chairman of the National War Labor Board and the Wage Stabilization Board, Nathan P. Feinsinger and W. Willard Wirtz, both former members of the National War Labor Board and both former Chairmen of the Wage Stabilization Board, in interviews published in the October 19, 1959, issue of U. S. News & World Report, and reproduced, in part, in Appendix B to this affidavit.”
The above mentioned statement of George W. Taylor, Chairman of the Presidential Board of Inquiry for this strike and former Chairman of the National War Labor Board, upon this subject was published in question and answer form:
*693“Q. How do you feel about the Taft-Hartley machinery for handling big strikes? A. [Taylor] Everybody knows it’s not adequate to handle those strikes. If the Taft-Hartley procedures are meaningful, they should serve the same function as a strike — that is, get people to modify their extreme positions. I don’t think they have done that.”
Also in the record is the statement of Nathan P. Feinsinger who has served on the National War Labor Board and the Wage Stabilization Board, and who was chairman of Presidential fact finding boards convened to inquire into the steel and meat packing strikes of 1946 and 1948. Speaking of the effect of Taft-Hartley injunctions, Mr. Feinsinger said:
“A study of the records shows that, in some cases, the injunction has merely stiffened the resistance of the unions. There is a traditional resistance of labor to the injunction as a strike breaking device. I know of no case where an injunction, as such, cleared the atmosphere or expedited the settlement of a dispute.”
It also merits mention, although the court below did not have this information, that the very day this case was argued to us both the President, who has invoked Taft-Hartley procedures in this case, and his Secretary of Labor issued public statements deprecating this procedure by injunction and expressing the view that it is not an effective aid in settling an industry wide strike. For the text of the President’s statement, at his news conference of October 22nd, see New York Times, October 23, 1959, page 12.
In brief, the sources of information available to us indicate that there is real basis for apprehension that the granting of an injunction will remove existing and rapidly mounting economic pressure upon all parties to settle their differences quickly, and thus be hurtful to the statutory objective of promoting a strike settlement by bargaining. And this is not counterbalanced by any indication that an injunction will in any way advance the bargaining process. Yet, it is the burden of the government which seeks an injunction from a court of equity to show that this relief seems likely to serve its intended purpose.
In my view the only way to avoid the foregoing analysis and its result is to say that the statutory scheme makes it the duty of the court to grant an injunction to halt an industry wide strike on the petition of the government whenever it appears that the national safety or health is being jeopardized. That is a possible scheme. Perhaps it is a desirable scheme. But as I read the Taft-Hartley Act it is not the scheme of the statute. I think Congress undertook a limited intervention of government to aid collective bargaining, and, therefore, that a court should not act absent some showing that it will be aiding a negotiated settlement. That is a sufficient reason for denying injunctive relief here.
Finally, under the authority granted in Section 178 of Title 29, to issue “such other orders as may be appropriate”, and guided in part by the manifest will of Congress that the court promote a negotiated settlement, I think it is within the equitable power of the district court, while refusing to enjoin the strike, to require the parties to follow such procedures as under the terms of the statute would be mandatory after an injunction. In this respect I disagree with the view of the majority that such procedures as the statute requires after an injunction are legally impossible without one. If they are reasonable ways of facilitating the settlement of the strike to which the court is addressing itself, I think the court in its discretion may require the parties to follow them without more. Indeed, we have already done as much by ordering that the parties proceed with collective bargaining while staying the order directing that they resume production. Particularly, I would have the district court order the parties to engage in continuing and persistent bargaining, to accept the assistance of the Federal Mo-*694diation and Conciliation Service and the Presidential Board of Inquiry and, if settlement should not result within sixty days, to permit the National Labor Relations Board to take a secret ballot of the employees of each employer involved on the acceptance or rejection of their employer’s final offer of settlement. This much and no more is in my view an appropriate exercise of equitable judgment and discretion in the circumstances of this case.
On the Matter of Dismissal.
PER CURIAM.
It appearing from a stipulation filed herein on October 27, 1959, that the Kaiser Steel Corporation has concluded an agreement settling its labor dispute with United Steelworkers of America and it appearing therefore that any labor controversy between them has become moot, an order is entered concurrent with this opinion dismissing the instant proceedings as to Kaiser Steel Corporation.

. Presumably it is only when a strike imminently and sorionsly threatens very important national interests that an exception is made to the general policy of non-interference by federal courts in labor disputes.

. This provision as it appears in 50 U.S. C.A.Appendix, § 468 is quoted in the majority opinion at page 689 of 271 F.2d.

. This provision as it appears in 50 U.S. C.A.Appendix, § 2071 is quoted in the majority opinion at page 689 of 271 F.2d.