United Mine Workers of America v. Arkansas Oak Flooring Company/Dissent Frankfurter

by Felix Frankfurter

United States Supreme Court

351 U.S. 62

United Mine Workers of America  v.  Arkansas Oak Flooring Company

 Argued: Jan. 23, 1956. --- Decided: April 23, 1956

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER (dissenting).

Although my doubts are not shared by others, they have not been overcome, and the nature of the problem raised by this case makes it not inappropriate to express them.

The problem is the recurring difficulty of determining when a federal enactment bars the exercise of what otherwise would clearly be within the scope of a State's lawmaking power. There is, of course, no difficulty when Congress explicitly displaces state power. The perplexity arises in a situation like the present, where such displacement by the controlling federal power is attributed to implications or radiations of a federal statute.

The various aspects in which this problem comes before the Court are seldom easy of solution. Decisions ultimately depend on judgment in balancing overriding considerations making for the requirement of an exclusive nation-wide regime in a particular field of legal control and respect for the allowable area within which the forty-eight States may enforce their diverse notions of policy. The Court has heretofore adverted to the uncertainties in the accommodation of these interests of the Nation and the States in regard to industrial relations affecting interstate commerce uncertainties inevitable in the present state of federal legislation.

Proper accommodation is dependent on an empiric process, on case-to-case determinations. Abstract propositions and unquestioned generalities do not furnish answers.

In this case, the Court concludes that Louisiana law must yield to the dominance of the National Labor Relations Act. Presumably, what Louisiana has decreed in the judgment now reversed would be within Louisiana's power were it not for the argumentatively derived withdrawal of that power by the National Labor Relations Act, as amended. Over the years, the Court has found such withdrawal of state power from reasonable implications of what Congress wrote in the National Labor Relations Act in some cases and not in others. Withdrawal has been found to exist in at least two types of situations: (1) where state law interferes with federal rights conferred on employees by § 7 of the National Labor Relations Act, e.g., Hill v. State of Florida, 325 U.S. 538, 65 S.Ct. 1373, 89 L.Ed. 1782; (2) where state law makes inroads on the primary jurisdiction with which Congress has invested the National Labor Relations Board, e.g., Weber v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc., 348 U.S. 468, 75 S.Ct. 480, 99 L.Ed. 546. Here we are not concerned with the Board's primary jurisdiction. The issue is whether Louisiana, by enjoining, according to its law, a strike calculated to coerce respondent to bargain with a union which has not complied with the non-Communist and other reporting provisions, § 9(f), (g) and (h) of the Taft-Hartley Act, interferes with the protection afforded by § 7 of that Act, where that union may represent a majority of employees.

Section 7 grants employees the federal right to engage in concerted activities in furtherance of collective bargaining. A strike accompanied by peaceful picketing is a typical expression of such authorized concerted activity. Instances of special situations that are clearly outside of this protection are (1) where the aspect that the strike action takes constitutes a union unfair labor practice interdicted by the Taft-Hartley Act, or (2) where the strike is in violation of the federal criminal law. See Southern S.S.C.o. v. National Labor Relations Board, 316 U.S. 31, 62 S.Ct. 886, 86 L.Ed. 1246. It would be self-contradictory for federal law to protect conduct which federal law brands as illegal. That is not this situation. A non-complying union, such as the petitioner, however vigorously it may assert non-compliance as a matter of principle, is not under condemnation of illegality by the Taft-Hartley Act, or any other federal law, if it employs economic pressure to achieve its goal. The explicit consequence which that Act attaches to non-compliance is that such a union is denied the advantages of the National Labor Relations Board-it cannot utilize that Board's machinery to obtain certification as the bargaining representative or to secure redress against unfair labor practices by an employer.

The policy of § 9 is that of Congress and the wisdom of the policy is not our concern. But just as all fair implications must be given to § 7, so it is equally incumbent to give to the scope of the non-Communist affidavit and other reporting requirements of § 9 the reasonable direction of their meaning and purpose. So far as its own law-enforcement machinery for protecting the interests of employees is concerned, Congress designed to hamper non-conforming unions and to discriminate against them by denying them rights deemed of the utmost importance to trade unions. This being so, I find it rather difficult to conclude that, while visiting such consequences upon a non-conforming union in the federal domain of law enforcement, the Congress has impliedly withdrawn from the States the power to regulate such a union. In balancing these considerations, the weight of my judgment tips in favor of not finding in § 7 of the Taft-Hartley Act an implied limitation upon power exercised by Louisiana in the circumstances of this case.

Notes