Individuals v. Unions

In protecting the rights of unions as a counterbalance to the power of management, the U.S. Supreme Court has long overlooked considerable wear and tear on individual workers' rights in the face of the power of unions. Last week the court, in two sharply written 6-2 opinions, gave individuals a new leverage against union power by upholding 1) the right of a nonunion member to go to court for punitive damages when he is kept from work by a picket line, and 2) the right of a union member to sue when his own union prevents him from getting a job.

Sole Jurisdiction. In 1952 Paul S. Russell, a nonunion electrician from Decatur, Ala., filed suit against the United Auto Workers for $50,000 damages. He charged that U.A.W. picket lines prevented him from driving to work at Decatur's Wolverine Tube Division of Calumet and Hecla Consolidated Copper Co. plant, sued for five weeks' wages and punitive damages. The Alabama Supreme Court, reversing the lower court, ordered a trial. A jury awarded Russell $10,000.

The U.A.W. hustled the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, argued that the Taft-Hartley law gave the National Labor Relations Board sole jurisdiction, that chaos would result if local courts granted relief to non-strikers caught up in union battles with management.

Not so, said Justice Harold H. Burton, writing the Supreme Court majority opinion (joined by Felix Frankfurter, Tom Clark, William Brennan, Charles Evans Whittaker and John Marshall Harlan). Even assuming that the Taft-Hartley Act permits the NLRB to assess unions for back pay in certain cases, that, said Burton, would not prevent a plaintiff from seeking full damages in state courts. To hold otherwise, he wrote, would "grant to unions a substantial immunity" from the consequences of illegal mass picketing or coercion.

Chief Justice Earl Warren and Justice William O. Douglas dissented. (Justice Hugo Black had disqualified himself.) Congress, argued Warren, set up the NLRB consciously as a device to "balance the competing interests of employee, union and management." For state courts to offer additional remedies could well destroy the delicate balance and frustrate the NLRB's decisions. Moreover, if non-strikers were encouraged to sue in state courts, labor unions would be under the threat of "staggering" financial losses, would have to be so cautious they might end up concluding that even federally protected union activities, i.e., peaceable striking and picketing, were too risky.

Vagueness v. Vulnerability. The second case was brought by Marcos Gonzales, a machinist living in San Francisco. In 1950 Gonzales got into a quarrel with International Association of Machinists officials and was expelled. In plain violation of NLRB rules the I.A.M. hiring hall refused to refer him to another job. The California courts gave Gonzales $7,500 in back pay, $2,500 in punitive damages, and the Supreme Court upheld the awards.

Nub of both the Russell and Gonzales cases: whether in setting up the NLRB as a special court of labor law Congress intended to pre-empt the entire field for federal regulation, deprive individuals of rights under statute and common law.* For years unions have argued successfully that the NLRB had exclusive jurisdiction. Writing the majority opinion in the Gonzales case, Justice Frankfurter conceded that the federal act does contain passages that seem to encourage this view. But, said Frankfurter, the passages are of "Delphic" vagueness, and require "the process of litigating elucidation" to make their meaning clear.

Justice Department and union lawyers saw the court decisions as a clear signal: after a period of virtually unassailable authority, unions are in for a time of troubles. Like individuals and corporations, they must now expect to be sued if they do damage. To many a unioneer the sudden vulnerability was appalling. Said a U.A.W. official in Detroit: "We are really looking down the barrel of a gun."

* The controversy over pre-emption covers the whole field of activities where the U.S. and the states have concurrent jurisdiction. In the Steve Nelson case (TIME 16, 1956), the court held that the Smith Act pre-empted state laws against sedition. This brought on the new Smith bill, now pending, that would uphold state laws unless a federal statute specifically states Congress' intention to strike them down. Last week, the day after the court backed away from the extreme pre-emption doctrine, the House Judiciary Committee softened the bill (sponsor: Virginia's Howard Smith) to say the intention need not be stated if, in the court's opinion, there is "direct and positive conflict."

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