Garner v. Teamsters Local 776

Garner v. Teamsters Local 776, 346 U.S. 485 (1953), is a US labor law case, concerning the scope of federal preemption against state law for labor rights.

Facts
Garner claimed that a dispute over picketing was not governed by federal law in the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, but by state law. Garner ran a trucking business with 24 employees, four members of the Teamsters Union. The union placed rotating pickets, of people who did not work for the business, at the platform for loading onto trucks, holding signs saying "Local 776 Teamsters Union (A.F. of L.) wants Employees of Central Storage & Transfer Co. to join them to gain union wages, hours and working conditions." Drivers and other carriers refused to cross the picket, and the business fell by 95%. A Pennsylvania court found this violated the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Act and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania decided that the issue fell within the NLRB's jurisdiction to prevent unfair labor practices.

Judgment
Jackson J decided the Pennsylvania statute was preempted from providing superior remedies or processing claims quicker than the NLRB because "the Board was vested with power to entertain petitioners’ grievance, to issue its own complaint" and apparent "Congress evidently considered that centralized administration of specially designed procedures was necessary to obtain uniform application of its substantive rules".

"Congress has taken in hand this particular type of controversy where it affects interstate commerce. In language almost identical to parts of the Pennsylvania statute, it has forbidden labor unions to exert certain types of coercion on employees through the medium of the employer. It is not necessary or appropriate for us to surmise how the National Labor Relations Board might have decided this controversy had petitioners presented it to that body. The power and duty of primary decision lies with the Board, not with us. But it is clear that the Board was vested with power to entertain petitioners' grievance, to issue its own complaint against respondents and, pending final hearing, to seek from the United States District Court an injunction to prevent irreparable injury to petitioners while their case was being considered. 'The Board shall have power, upon issuance of a complaint as provided in subsection (b) * * * charging that any person has engaged in or is engaging in an unfair labor practice, to petition any district court of the United States (including the District Court of the United States for the District of Columbia), within any district wherein the unfair labor practice in question is alleged to have occurred or wherein such person resides or transacts business, for appropriate temporary relief or restraining order. Upon the filing of any such petition the court shall cause notice thereof to be served upon such person, and thereupon shall have jurisdiction to grant to the Board such temporary relief or restraining order as it deems just and proper.' § 10(j), 61 Stat. 149, 29 U.S.C. (Supp. III) § 160(j), 29 U.S.C.A. § 160(j). Temporary injunctions have been granted by the district courts upon application by the Board following issuance of complaints charging violations of § 8(b)(2), Brown v. National Union of Marine Cooks and Stewards, D.C., 104 F.Supp. 685; Douds v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc., D.C., 99 F.Supp. 474; Jaffee v. Newspaper & Mail Deliverers' Union of New York & Vicinity, D.C., 97 F.Supp. 443; Penello v. International Union, United Mine Workers of America, D.C., 88 F.Supp. 935, and of other sections of the Act. Curry, for and on Behalf of National Labor Relations Board v. Union de Trabajadores de la Industria, Del Cemento Ponce, D.C., 86 F.Supp. 707; Madden v. International Union, United Mine Workers of America, D.C., 79 F.Supp. 616; Douds v. Local 294, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, A.F. of L., D.C., 75 F.Supp. 414. See National Labor Relations Board v. Denver Building & Construction Trades Council, [1951] USSC 78; 341 U.S. 675, 682[1951] USSC 78; 71 S.Ct. 943, 948[1951] USSC 78; 95 L.Ed. 1284; Herzog v. Parsons, 86 U.S.App.D.C. 198, 203, 181 F.2d 781, 786. See also 61 Stat. 155, 29 U.S.C. (Supp. V) § 178, 29 U.S.C.A. § 178, granting similar initiative powers to the Attorney General when strikes or lockouts imperil the national health or safety. The question then is whether the State, through its courts, may adjudge the same controversy and extend its own form of relief.

Congress did not merely lay down a substantive rule of law to be enforced by any tribunal competent to apply law generally to the parties. It went on to confide primary interpretation and application of its rules to a specific and specially constituted tribunal and prescribed a particular procedure for investigation, complaint and notice, and hearing and decision, including judicial relief pending a final administrative order. Congress evidently considered that centralized administration of specially designed procedures was necessary to obtain uniform application of its substantive rules and to avoid these diversities and conflicts likely to result from a variety of local procedures and attitudes toward labor controversies. Indeed, Pennsylvania passed a statute the same year as its labor relations Act reciting abuses of the injunction in labor litigations attributable more to procedure and usage than to substantive rules. '(a) Under prevailing economic conditions developed with the aid of governmental authority for owners of property to organize in the corporate and other forms of ownership association, the individual unorganized worker is commonly helpless to exercise actual liberty of contract and to protect his freedom of labor, and thereby to obtain acceptable terms and conditions of employment, wherefore, though he should be free to decline to associate with his fellows, it is necessary that he have full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of his own choosing to negotiate the terms and conditions of his employment, and that he shall be free from the interference, restraint or coercion of employers of labor or their agents in the designation of such representatives or in self-organization or in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.

'(b) Equity procedure that permits a complaining party to obtain sweeping injunctive relief that is not preceded by or conditioned upon notice to and hearing of the responding party or parties or that permits sweeping injunctions to issue after hearing based upon written affidavits along and not wholly or in part upon examination, confrontation and cross-examination of witnesses in open court is peculiarly subject to abuse in labor litigation for the reasons that—

'(1) The status quo cannot be maintained, but is necessarily altered by the injunction.

'(2) Determination of issues of veracity and of probability of fact from affidavits of the opposing parties that are contradictory and under the circumstances untrustworthy rather than from oral examination in open court is subject to grave error.

'(3) Error is issuing the injunctive relief is usually irreparable to the opposing party; and

'(4) Delay incident to the normal course of appellate practice frequently makes ultimate correction of error in law or in fact unavailing in the particular case.' Pa.Laws 1937, 1198, Purdon's Pa.Stat.Ann.1952, Tit. 43, § 206b. A multiplicity of tribunals and a diversity of procedures are quite as apt to produce incompatible or conflicting adjudications as are different rules of substantive law. The same reasoning which prohibits federal courts from intervening in such cases, except by way of review or on application of the federal Board, precludes state courts from doing so. Cf. Myers v. Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corp., 303 U.S. 41, 58 S.Ct. 459, 82 L.Ed. 638; Amalgamated Utility Workers v. Consolidated Edison Co. of New York, 309 U.S. 261, 60 S.Ct. 561, 84 L.Ed. 738. And the reasons for excluding state administrative bodies from assuming control of matters expressly placed within the competence of the federal Board also exclude state courts from like action. Cf. Bethlehem Steel Co. v. New York State Labor Relations Board, 330 U.S. 767, 67 S.Ct. 1026, 91 L.Ed. 1234.

This case would warrant little further discussion except for a persuasively presented argument that the National Labor Relations Board enforces only a public right on behalf of the public interest, while state equity powers are invoked by a private party to protect a private right. The public right, it is said, is so distinct and dissimilar from the private right that federal occupancy of one field does not debar a state from continuing to exercise its conventional equity powers over the other. Support for this view is accumulated from the Act itself, its legislative history, some judicial expression, and professional commentary."