Court Opinion

ID: 9669007
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:36:26.932899+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:51.264369
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Calvert
Concurring.
My purpose in filing this opinion is to express my apprehension concerning those portions of the majority opinion which undertake at this time to interpret an unexecuted contract and ■to define judicially, in advance, certain rights of the parties under the contract. I refer specifically to the following statements: “* * * the membership requirement of this contract and of the union shop statute are merely formal and fictional aside from the financial obligation. * * * The unwilling employee need assume no pledge of conformity nor promise of obedience, nor even make application for membership to retain employment un*347der the union shop contract. * * * We think a political assessment was not contemplated by the Congress in using the term ‘assessments’ in the union shop statute, nor that the failure to pay a political assessment would be a ground for discharge.”
It is my view that the foregoing issues are prematurely raised and prematurely decided. A question certain to be raised hereafter is whether the quoted rulings are pure obiter dicta or whether they are res ad judicata of the matters there decided. I do not mean to indicate that I would disagree with most of what has been said on the issues if they were here; I simply disagree that they are here.
In passing I point out that what has been said with respect to the rights of the parties to a contract made pursuant to paragraph (a) of Sec. 2 Eleventh leaves little, if any, difference in the meaning of that paragraph and paragraph (b) of Sec. 2 Eleventh. (See footnote, majority opinion). Now obviously these paragraphs were not intended to have the same meaning.
I particularly do not wish to be bound by the holding that an employee may not be required to make application for membership in the union in order to obtain or retain employment. If a contract be executed requiring union membership as a condition of retaining employment some means must be afforded non-union employees for indicating to the unions their wish to become members. The unions could hardly be expected to admit to membership those who were unwilling to apply therefor. The tendered contract requires, in the terms of the statute, that all employees shall, within sixty days from the date of the agreement, become members of the union as a condition of their continued employment. It seems to me that an application for membership may well be a necessary part of the mechanics for determining whether an employee wishes and is granted union membership. This is not to say that unions could include in an application, against the wish of the signing employees, pledges of conformity and promises of obedience.
Opinion delivered July 25, 1956.