Opinion
No. 35541
Decided March 4, 1959.
Labor unions — Picketing to induce unionization of employees — Members of picketing union not employees of employer picketed — Employer engaged in interstate commerce — State courts without jurisdiction to intervene.
Where interstate commerce is involved and a labor union, through its members who are not former or present employees of an employer, engages in nonviolent picketing of such employer's premises to induce the unionization of his employees, the National Labor Relations Act (Section 141 et seq., Title 29, U.S. Code, as amended) has exclusive application, and, by decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States interpreting such act, state courts lack the power and jurisdiction to intervene.
APPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Cuyahoga County.
The Richman Brothers Company, hereinafter referred to as Richman, is a large and long established Ohio corporation principally engaged in the manufacture and sale of men's clothing. Its main factory is in Cleveland and it owns and operates a smaller factory in Sturgis, Kentucky. The clothing it fabricates, with other articles of wearing apparel, is sold at some 70 retail stores located in Ohio and other states. It is apparent and is conceded that Richman is engaged in interstate commerce.
Those employed by Richman in manufacturing its clothes have not been and are not now members of a labor union or unions. For a number of years the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, AFL-CIO, the Cleveland Joint Board, an affiliate, and other unions connected with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, through their officers and members, unsuccessfully sought to unionize Richman's factory employees. Beginning with the latter part of March 1951, the unions began picketing the Richman retail stores. Some of the pickets carried signs proclaiming that Richman clothes are not union made and urging the purchase of clothing which bears the union label. For the most part, the picketing was of a peaceful character, however on a number of occasions, about 20, it assumed mass and boisterous proportions, causing sidewalk congestion and the blocking of the entrances to the Richman stores.
In October 1952, Richman began the present action in the Court of Common Pleas of Cuyahoga County against the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, its Cleveland joint council, four Cleveland local unions and individual defendants to enjoin all picketing of the Richman stores. Allegedly, the purpose of the picketing was to coerce Richman by harassment and economic pressure to influence its factory employees to become unionized. The petition states that "defendants are now engaged, in carrying forward a conspiracy to cause economic pressure to be directed against plaintiff with the intention and for the purpose and objective of thereby causing plaintiff to force sufficient of its eligible employees to become members of defendant Amalgamated, so that defendant Amalgamated may become the representative of its such employees for the purposes of collective bargaining with plaintiff, regardless of the desires of a majority thereof."
Litigation progressed inconclusively in both the federal and state courts and finally the cause came on for hearing on its merits in the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court. That court found that the picketing complained of represented an unlawful plan or conspiracy against Richman contrary to the public policy of Ohio and issued an injunction prohibiting all picketing of the Richman stores.
An appeal on questions of law and fact was perfected to the Court of Appeals by the defendants, which court heard the cause de novo but on the transcript of the evidence taken in the lower court. The Court of Appeals found that it had jurisdiction of the parties and subject matter; that the allegations of the petition are true in that "the essential purpose of the picketing was to intimidate and coerce plaintiff [Richman] into compelling its manufacturing employees to join defendant, Amalgamated clothing Workers of America; that these activities on the part of defendants constitute unfair labor practice" as defined in the National Labor Relations Act; and "that the National Labor Relations Board has exclusive jurisdiction with respect to such unfair labor practice."
However, the Court of Appeals decided it did have jurisdiction and power in certain respects under the decision in United Automobile, Aircraft Agricultural Implement Workers of America v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Board, 351 U.S. 266, 100 L.Ed., 1162, 76 S. Ct., 794, and enjoined and restrained the defendants:
"(1) From interfering in any manner whatsoever with plaintiff's officers, agents, employees, representatives and others having business with plaintiff; from interfering with ingress to or egress from plaintiff's stores and premises, and with pedestrian or vehicular traffic in or about said stores, including the delivery, unloading and dispatch of equipment, supplies, merchandise, materials and products to and from plaintiff's said stores;
"(2) From engaging in mass picketing and demonstrations in front of plaintiff's stores, including particularly demonstrations in which pickets march in circular, quadrangular, or other, formations in front of the entrances of plaintiff's stores;
"(3) From in any way interfering with the access to the plaintiff's stores and premises, and from accosting persons seeking to enter or leave plaintiff's stores;
"(4) From causing, encouraging or assisting anyone in the commission of said acts."
Later Richman requested the court to state its findings of fact separately from its conclusions of law, upon which its judgment was based, which request was complied with.
Richman being dissatisfied with the judgment of the Court of Appeals filed its motion in this court to require the Court of Appeals to certify the record. Such motion was allowed, and the cause is now here for disposition on the merits.
Messrs. Jones, Day, Cockley Reavis, Mr. Victor DeMarco, Mr. George D. Bonebrake and Mr. George H. Rudolph, for appellant.
Messrs. Smoot Riemer, Mr. William J. Isaacson and Mr. Marshall J. Seidman, for appellees.
There are thinking citizens in the United States who view with concern and misgiving the steadily growing centralization of powers in the federal government and its agencies, and the alacrity with which those powers have been assumed and exercised. Noticeably, the several states are becoming less and less important in the over-all governmental scheme as they have either voluntarily or by compulsion relinquished prerogatives and transferred duties which were formerly theirs.
Existing conditions are reflected to an extent in the relationships between labor and management which are now controlled to an appreciable degree by the National Labor Relations Act (Section 141 et seq., Title 29, U.S. Code, as amended) and the interpretation of that act by the federal courts. In many conflicts between labor and management where interstate commerce is involved, as is the case here, the National Labor Relations Act asserts itself and is applied to the exclusion of interference by the state courts. This is so with respect to the "peaceful picketing" of an employer's premises by labor unions and their members to force the employer to accede to the unions' demands and to bring about the unionization of those who work for the employer.
The leading case relating to a situation of that kind is Garner v. Teamsters, Chauffeurs Helpers Local Union No. 776, 346 U.S. 485, 98 L. Ed., 228, 74 S. Ct., 161, which is outlined and discussed at some length in Grimes Hauer, Inc., v. Pollock, 163 Ohio St. 372, 127 N.E.2d 203 (certiorari denied, 350 U.S. 900, 100 L. Ed., 791, 76 S. Ct., 178).
On the basis of our interpretation of the holding in the Garner case, we said in the opinion in the Grimes Hauer case:
"* * * The Garner case * * * lays down the rule that a state court does not possess the power to enjoin union conduct, such as the picketing of an interstate employer's premises to induce the unionization of its employees, since such activity presents the question of an unfair labor practice within the meaning of the terms of the Labor Management Relations Act which, initially at least, is exclusive."
As far as we can ascertain, the Supreme Court of the United States has rendered no later decisions with which the above-quoted language is in conflict.
One of the latest expressions, if not the latest, of the Supreme Court of the United States is found in the per curiam opinion in Hotel Employees Union, Local No. 255, v. Sax Enterprises, Inc Inc., ___ U.S. ___, 3 L. Ed. (2d), 289, 79 S. Ct., 273, decided January 12, 1959. There the Supreme Court of Florida had affirmed the issuance of permanent injunctions against the non-violent picketing of 12 Florida resort hotels for organizational purposes, which had for its objective the forcing of the employees of the hotels to designate the union or certain of its members as their bargaining agents and the coercing of the hotels through economic sanctions to sign contracts with the union, which contracts were to be used as a basis to compel the hotel employees to become members of the union. See Sax Enterprises, Inc., v. Hotel Employees Union, Local No. 255 (Fla.), 80 So.2d 602, 605.
In reversing the judgments of the Florida Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of the United States said:
"The Florida courts were without jurisdiction to enjoin this organizational picketing, whether it was activity protected by Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, 29 U.S.C. § 157, Hill v. Florida, 325 U.S. 538, 89 L. Ed., 1782, 65 S. Ct., 137, or prohibited by Section 8(b) (4) of the act, 29 U.S.C. § 158 (b) (4), Garner v. Teamsters, C. H. Local Union, 346 U.S. 485, 98 L. Ed., 228, 74 S. Ct., 161. See Weber v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc., 348 U.S. 468, at 481, 99 L. Ed., 546, 558, 75 S. Ct., 480. This follows even though the National Labor Relations Board refused to take jurisdiction, Amalgamated Meat Cutters, etc., v. Fairlawn Meats, Inc., 353 U.S. 20, 1 L. Ed. (2d), 613, 77 S. Ct., 604, 609. The record does not disclose violence sufficient to give the state jurisdiction under United Auto. A. A.I. Workers v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Board, 351 U.S. 266, 100 L. Ed., 1162, 76 S. Ct., 794."
It would serve no useful purpose to carry this discussion further. Counsel for Richman have advanced a number of ingenious arguments in an attempt to place the instant case within the jurisdiction of Ohio courts, but in our opinion they have not succeeded.
Notwithstanding the writer's dissenting opinions, the existing public policy of this state is established by the cases of Crosby v. Rath, 136 Ohio St. 352, 25 N.E.2d 934, and Chucales v. Royalty, 164 Ohio St. 214, 129 N.E.2d 823, and is against "stranger picketing" of the kind practiced in the instant case.
The following question may arise in the minds of many: Where, as here, an employer and his employees are perfectly satisfied with existing working conditions and desire no relations with any labor union, why should they have to submit to harassment and persecution in Ohio by outsiders insisting on unwanted unionization and be precluded from restorting to Ohio courts for relief? As previously indicated, the answer is found in the decisions of the United States Supreme Court, which relegate a complaining employer engaged in interstate commerce to the National Labor Relations Board where response is uncertain, problematical and often long delayed.
In view of the sweeping decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States applying the National Labor Relations Act in a variety of circumstances, including those similar to the one existing here, we can discover no other alternative than to affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals herein. If we are wrong in our conclusion, the Supreme Court of the United States, as our superior in a matter of this kind, may be afforded the opportunity of telling us so.
Judgment affirmed.
STEWART, TAFT and MATTHIAS, JJ., concur.
WEYGANDT, C.J., BELL and HERBERT, JJ., dissent.
It appears to us that the very question stated in the next to the last paragraph of the majority opinion suggests its own answer. In our opinion, that answer should be in favor of permitting resort to Ohio courts for relief and that the trial court properly exercised its jurisdiction.
It should be emphasized that not only was the picketing here "stranger picketing" in the sense that none of the pickets were employees of Richman Brothers and never had been, but that they were not even picketing at a place where they desired some resultant action on the part of Richman. They were picketing the retail stores in 46 cities, not the factories in two.
The attempt here was to require the union label to be put into Richman suits at the factory. This result could be accomplished, according to the record of this case, irrespective of any contract provision for union security. We do not find in this record any support for the finding that the action of the union constituted an unfair labor practice which would place the jurisdiction of this matter exclusively in the National Labor Relations Board.
Interference with the use of the public streets in Ohio and with ingress to and egress from adjoining premises is, and should be, strictly a matter of Ohio concern and control. Although we recognize, as required by an ordered society, the doctrine of judicial subordination, we are not required by such recognition to refrain from decrying generally what we consider an unwarranted usurpation by federal agencies of that which we deem a matter of local concern. Nor are we required specifically in a situation such as this, where there is no evidence of an unfair labor dispute and it is clear that the National Labor Relations Board has no jurisdiction, to concede that the appropriate Ohio court must abdicate its responsibility to secure to each citizen his constitutionally guaranteed privilege to seek redress in that court for an alleged wrong.
In our opinion, the Court of Appeals properly enjoined mass picketing. But we believe it should have gone further, as did the trial court, and enjoined all picketing in this situation.
WEYGANDT, C.J., and HERBERT, J., concur in the foregoing dissenting opinion.