NLRB V. Truck Drivers Local 449 - Decision

Decision

Associate Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. delivered the unanimous opinion of the Court. Justice Charles Evans Whittaker took no part in the oral argument or decision.

Nearly half of the short decision is taken up by Brennan's review of the collective bargaining history between the Exchange and the Teamsters, the arguments before the NLRB board agent, and the ruling of the Court of Appeals.

Justice Brennan opened his argument by observing that although the NLRA does not mention lockouts, it also does not prohibit them. Citing no evidence, Brennan then asserted that the legislative history of the NLRA did not indicate any intention by Congress to ban lockouts. Inclusion of the term in the Taft-Hartley Act, the majority found, indicated congressional recognition of the lockout and implied that there were circumstances in which a lockout might be legally employed.

Brennan next addressed the issue before the Court. "The narrow question to be decided," he wrote, "is whether a temporary lockout may lawfully be used as a defense to a union strike tactic which threatens the destruction of the employers' interest in bargaining on a group basis."

The Exchange and the Board had argued that preservation of the cohesiveness of the multi-employer association justified use of the lockout. The Court of Appeals had rejected that argument. Reviewing the legislative history of the Taft-Hartley Act, the appellate court found that Congress had deferred judgment on the legality of multi-employer bargaining units to a commission. Brennan rejected the finding of the Court of Appeals. Reviewing the academic literature on the history of collective bargaining in the 20th century as well as the legislative history of the Taft-Hartley Act, Brennan found that multi-employer bargaining not only pre-dated the Taft-Hartley Act but that Congress had considered and rejected language limiting or banning such bargaining. The "compelling conclusion," Brennan wrote, is that Congress intended to let the NRLB make case-by-case decisions as to the wisdom of permitting multi-employer bargaining.

In the decision's final two paragraphs, the majority drew an important conclusion from the foregoing. Citing NLRB v. Mackay Radio & Telegraph Co., 304 U.S. 333 (1938), among others, Brennan held that the NLRA's protection of the right to strike is not absolute. Balancing the rights of union members to strike against the right of employers to preserve the multi-employer bargaining unit, Brennan asserted (without additional argument or evidence) that the appellate court had erred in establishing an "economic hardship" test for lockouts. Then the Supreme Court deferred to the Board's ruling, and concluded that "a temporary lockout to preserve the multi-employer bargaining basis from the disintegration threatened by the Union's strike action was lawful."