Limited Protection

Is disloyalty to an employer cause for firing? Yes, said the NLRB, mediating a 1949 case where union employees of the Charlotte, N.C. television station WBTV, in the midst of a labor dispute, had circulated handbills attacking the station's programs. The employees were fired--for just and sufficient cause, ruled the NLRB, because the handbills had nothing to do with the union issue. The U.S. court of appeals for the District of Columbia reversed the NLRB's decision, called the discharges unlawful under Taft-Hartley Act guarantees against firing for union activity. This week the Supreme Court, by a vote of 6-3, had the final word, decided that the form of attack on WBTV was not a "union activity." Said Justice Harold Burton, delivering the majority opinion: "There is no more elemental cause for discharge of an employee than disloyalty to his employer."

Burton's opinion noted that "the handbill diverted attention from the labor controversy. It attacked public policies of the company which had no discernible relation to that controversy . . . The means used . . . have deprived the attackers from the protection ... of the labor act."

Justices Frankfurter, Black and Douglas dissented.

This week the high court also:

P: Ruled, 5-4, that slot machines may not be seized by federal officers unless it is clearly proved that the machines have been shipped across state lines. One of the cases in point involved slots seized by the FBI in a Columbia, Tenn. country club which were never shown to have been brought into the state from outside. Said Justice Robert Jackson, delivering the majority opinion: "If this is not substituting federal for state enforcement, it is difficult to know how it could be accomplished. A more local and detailed act of enforcement is hardly conceivable."

P: Began three afternoon hearings of reargument of the historic public-schools segregation cases.

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