Hodgson v. Local Union 6799, United Steelworkers of America/Opinion of the Court

United States Supreme Court

403 U.S. 333

Hodgson  v.  Local Union 6799, United Steelworkers of America

Petitioner, the Secretary of Labor, instituted this action under § 402(b) of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, 73 Stat. 534, 29 U.S.C. § 482(b), against Local 6799, United Steelworkers of America, to set aside a general election of officers conducted by the union. ^[1] The lawsuit arose after Nicholas Hantzis, an unsuccessful candidate for president of the local, protested the election to both the local and international union organizations. His protest concerned several matters including the use of union facilities to prepare campaign materials for the incumbent president who was re-elected. ^[2]

After failing to obtain relief through the internal procedures of either union organization, Hantzis filed a complaint with the Secretary of Labor pursuant to § 402(a) of the Act, 29 U.S.C. § 482(a). The complaint repeated the charge that union facilities had been used to promote the candidacy of the incumbent president and raised, for the first time, an additional objection concerning a meeting-attendance requirement imposed as a condition of candidacy for union office. ^[3] At no time during his internal union protests did Hantzis challenge the attendance requirement.

Following an investigation of the complaint, the Secretary concluded that union facilities had been used improperly to aid the re-election of the incumbent president in violation of § 401(g) of the Act, 29 U.S.C. § 481(g). The Secretary also concluded that § 401(e) had been violated because the meeting-attendance requirement had not been uniformly administered and because the requirement itself was not a reasonable qualification on the right of union members to hold office. Respondents were advised of these conclusions and were asked to take voluntary remedial action. When they failed to comply with the request, the Secretary brought this proceeding in the District Court for the Central District of California.

The District Court held that § 401(g) had been violated by the use of union facilities for the benefit of the incumbent president's campaign and ordered a new election for the office of president. ^[4] The District Court also held, however, that the meeting-attendance rule was reasonable and that Local 6799 had not violated § 401(e) by imposing the rule as a qualification on candidacies fur union office.

On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed without reaching the question whetehr the attendance requirement was reasonable. In the court's view, Hantzis' failure to challenge the requirement during his pursuit of internal union remedies precluded the Secretary from later raising the issue. The court reasoned that since the Act requires that union members protesting the conduct of elections exhaust their internal union remedies before complaining to the Secretary, Congress intended to empower the Secretary to assert only 'those violations that are fairly apparent from a member's protest to the union * * *.' 426 F.2d 969, 971.

Because the case presents an important issue concerning the scope of the Secretary's authority under the Act, we granted certiorari, 400 U.S. 940, 91 S.Ct. 239, 27 L.Ed.2d 243. We conclude that Hantzis' failure to object to the attendance rule during pursuit of his internal union remedies bars the Secretary from later challenging the rule in a § 402(b) action. We therefore affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals.

Section 402(b) provides that once a member challenging an election has exhausted his internal union remedies and filed a complaint with the Secretary of Labor, the Secretary 'shall investigate such complaint and, if he finds probable cause to believe that a violation of this title has occurred and has not been remedied, he shall, within sixty days after the filing of such complaint, bring a civil action against the labor organization * * *.' ^[5] At the outset, petitioner contends that the language of the section empowers the Secretary to investigate and litigate any and all violations that may have affected the outcome of an election once a union member has exhausted his internal union remedies concerning any violation that occurred during that election. Emphasis is placed on the fact that the Secretary is authorized to act if his investigation uncovers 'a violation'-this, it is said, means that the Secretary is not limited to seeking redress only in respect of the claims earlier presented by the union member to his union. However, the statutory language is not so devoid of ambiguity that it alone can bear the weight of the Secretary's expansive view of his authority. While the words 'a violation' might mean 'any violation whatever revealed by the investigation,' the words are susceptible of other readings. In particular, they can fairly be read to mean 'any of the violations raised by the union member during his internal union election protest.' In Wirtz v. Local Union No. 125 Laborers' International Union, 389 U.S. 477, 88 S.Ct. 639, 19 L.Ed.2d 716 (1968), this Court noted that the range of the Secretary's authority under § 402(b) must be determined 'by inference since there is lacking an explicit provision regarding the permissible scope of the Secretary's complaint,' 389 U.S., at 481, 88 S.Ct., at 641. We must, therefore, examine the legislative history and statutory policies behind § 402 and the rest of the Act to decide the issue presented by this case.

Examination of the relevant legislative materials reveals a clear congressional concern for the need to remedy abuses in union elections without departing needlessly from the longstanding congressional policy against unnecessary governmental interference with internal union affairs, Wirtz v. Local 153, Glass Bottle Blowers Assn., 389 U.S. 463, 470-471, 88 S.Ct. 643, 647-648, 19 L.Ed.2d 705 (1968). The introduction to the Senate report accompanying the Act summarizes the general objectives of Congress:

'A strong independent labor movement is a vital part of American institutions. The shocking abuses revealed by recent investigations have been confined to a few unions. The overwhelming majority are honestly and democratically run. In providing remedies for existing evils the Senate should be careful neither to undermine self-government within the labor movement nor to weaken unions in their role as the bargaining representatives of employees.' S.Rep. No. 187, 86th Cong., 1st Sess., 5 (1959); U.S.Code Cong. & Admin. News, p. 2322.

The requirement of § 402(a) that a union member first seek redress of alleged election violations within the union before enlisting the aid of the Secretary, was similarly designed to harmonize the need to eliminate election abuses with a desire to avoid unnecessary governmental intervention. The same Senate Report, in reference to Title IV of the Act and to the exhaustion requirement, states:

'In filing a complaint the member must show that he has pursued any remedies available to him within the union and any parent body in a timely manner. This rule preserves a maximum amount of independence and self-government by giving every international union the opportunity to correct improper local elections.' Id., at 21.

Plainly Congress intended to foster a situation in which the unions themselves could remedy as many election violations as possible without the Government's ever becoming involved. Achieving this objective would not only preserve and strengthen unions as self-regulating institutions, but also avoid unnecessary expenditure of the limited resources of the Secretary of Labor.

Petitioner contends that the congressional concerns underpinning the exhaustion requirement were in fact adequately served in this case, because the election in question was actually protested by a union member within the union and because the union was later given a chance to remedy specific violations before being taken to court by the Secretary. In this view, it is irrelevant that Hantzis himself did not focus his election challenge on the attendance requirement when seeking internal union remedies. In sum, the Secretary urges that § 402(b) empowers him to act so long as a union member objects in any way to an election and so long as the union is given the opportunity to remedy voluntarily any violations that the Secretary determines may have affected the outcome of that election, regardless whether the member objected to the violations during his protest to the union.

However, under petitioner's limited view of congressional objectives, the exhaustion requirement of § 402(a) is left with virtually no purpose or part to play in the statutory scheme. 'Exhaustion' would be accomplished given any sort of protest within the union, no matter how remote the complaint made there from the alleged violation later litigated. The obvious purpose of an exhaustion requirement is not met when the union, during 'exhaustion,' is given no notice of the defects to be cured. Indeed, the primary objective of the exhaustion requirement is to preserve the vitality of internal union mechanisms for resolving election disputes-mechanisms to decide complaints brought by members of the union themselves. To accept petitioner's contention that a union member, who is aware of the facts underlying an alleged violation, need not first protest this violation to his union before complaining to the Secretary would be needlessly to weaken union self-government. Plainly petitioner's approach slights the interest in protecting union self-regulation and is out of harmony with the congressional purpose reflected in § 402(a).

Of course, any interpretation of the exhaustion requirement must reflect the needs of rank and file union members-those people the requirement is designed ultimately to serve. We are not unmindful that union members may use broad or imprecise language in framing their internal union protests and that members will often lack the necessary information to be aware of the existence or scope of many election violations. Union democracy is far too important to permit these deficiencies to foreclose relief from election violations; and in determining whether the exhaustion requirement of § 402(a) has been satisfied, courts should impose a heavy burden on the union to show that it could not in any way discern that a member was complaining of the violation in question. ^[6] But when a union member is aware of the facts supporting an alleged election violation, the member must, in some discernible fashion, indicate to his union his dissatisfaction with those facts if he is to meet the exhaustion requirement.

In this case, it is clear that the protesting member knew of the existence of the meeting-attendance provision and that his election protests to the local and international unions concerned matters wholly unrelated to the rule. We therefore hold that internal union remedies were not properly exhausted and that the Secretary was barred from litigating the claim. Given this holding, we do not reach the question whether the meeting-attendance rule itself is reasonable.

The judgment is affirmed.

Affirmed.

Mr. Justice BRENNAN, dissenting.

Notes

1. The United Steelworkers of America, an international union under which Local 6799 is chartered, intervened as a party defendant.
2. Hantzis' written protest consisted of a letter to the International Union which purported to describe the election's operation. Since the letter did not make specific allegations, it is difficult precisely to define Hantzis' objections. However, in addition to his general charge that union machinery had been used to aid incumbents, Hantzis also protested several procedural matters including the methods used to nominate and swear in officers. The Secretary of Labor subsequently concluded that none of these procedural matters constituted a violation of the Act.
3. The attendance rule, which is contained in the constitution of the International Union, provides that a union member, in order to the eligible for election as a local union officer or grievance committeeman, must have attended at least one-half of the regular meetings of his local union for 36 months previous to the election unless union activities or working hours prevented his attendance. It is unclear from Hantzis' complaint whether he objected to the attendance rule itself or to the way in which the rule was administered during the election. Hantzis himself qualified under the rule.
4. This facet of the District Court's decision is not challenged here.
5. 'Sec. 402. (a) A member of a labor organization-
6. For much the same reasons, members should not be held to procedural niceties while seeking redress within their union, and exhaustion is not required when internal union remedies are unnecessarily complex or otherwise operate to confuse or inhibit union protestors.