Sinclair Refining Co. v. Atkinson

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question this case presents is whether § 301 of the Taft-Hartley Act, in giving federal courts jurisdiction of suits between employers and unions for breach of collective bargaining agreements,^[1] impliedly repealed § 4 of the pre-existing Norris-LaGuardia Act, which, with certain exceptions not here material, barred federal courts from issuing injunctions “in any case involving or growing out of any labor dispute.”^[2]

The unions moved to dismiss this complaint on the ground that it sought injunctive relief which United States courts, by virtue of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, have no jurisdiction to give. The District Court first denied the motion, but subsequently, upon reconsideration after full oral argument, vacated its original order and granted the unions’ motion to dismiss.^[4] In reaching this conclusion, the District Court reasoned that the controversy between Sinclair and the unions was unquestionably a “labor dispute” within the meaning of the Norris-LaGuar-dia Act and that the complaint therefore came within the proscription of § 4 of that Act which “withdraws jurisdiction from the federal courts to issue injunctions to prohibit the refusal ‘to perform work or remain in any relation of employment’ in cases involving any labor dispute.”^[5] The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the order of dismissal for the same reasons.^[6] Because this decision presented a conflict with the deci

We agree with the courts below that this case does involve a “labor dispute” within the meaning of the Norris-LaGuardia Act. Section 13 of that Act expressly defines a labor dispute as including “any controversy concerning terms or conditions of employment, or concerning the association or representation of persons in negotiating, fixing, maintaining, changing, or seeking to arrange terms or conditions of employment, regardless of whether or not the disputants stand in the proximate relation of employer and employee.”^[9] Sinclair’s own complaint shows quite plainly that each of the alleged nine work stoppages and strikes arose out of a controversy which was unquestionably well within this definition.^[10]

In the first place, even the general policy declarations of § 2 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, which are the foundation of this whole argument, do not support the conclusion urged. That section does not purport to limit the Act to the protection of collective bargaining but, instead, expressly recognizes the need of the anti-injunction provisions to insure the right of workers to engage in “concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.” Moreover, the language of the specific provisions of the Act is so broad and inclusive that it leaves not the slightest opening for reading in any exceptions beyond those clearly written into it by Congress itself.^[13]

Since we hold that the present case does grow out of a “labor dispute,” the injunction sought here runs squarely counter to the proscription of injunctions against strikes contained in § 4 (a) of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, to the proscription of injunctions against peaceful picketing contained in § 4 (e) and to the proscription of injunctions prohibiting the advising of such activities contained in §4(i).^[15] For these reasons, the Norris-LaGuardia Act deprives the courts of the United States of jurisdiction to enter that injunction unless, as is contended here, the scope of that Act has been so narrowed by the subsequent enactment of § 301 of the Taft-Hartley Act that it no longer prohibits even the injunctions specifically described in § 4 where such injunctions are sought as a remedy for breach of a collective bargaining agreement. Upon consideration, we cannot agree with that view and agree instead with the view expressed by the courts below and supported by the Courts of Appeals for the First and Second Circuits that § 301 was not intended to have any such partially repealing effect upon such a long-standing, carefully thought out and highly significant part of this country’s labor legislation as the Norris-LaGuardia Act.^[16]

When the inquiry is carried beyond the language of § 301 into its legislative history, whatever small doubts as to the congressional purpose could have survived consideration of the bare language of the section should be wholly dissipated. For the legislative history of § 301 shows that Congress actually considered the advisability of repealing the Norris-LaGuardia Act insofar as suits based upon breach of collective bargaining agreements are concerned and deliberately chose not to do so.^[20] The

“Section 302 (e) of the House bill made the Norris-LaGuardia Act inapplicable in actions and proceedings involving violations of agreements between an employer and a labor organization. Only part of this provision is included in the conference agreement. Section 6 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act provides that no employer or labor organization

participating or interested in a labor dispute shall be held responsible for the unlawful acts of their agents except upon clear proof of actual authorization of such acts,, or ratification of such acts after actual knowledge thereof. This provision in the Norris-LaGuardia Act was made inapplicable under the House bill. Section 301 (e) of the conference agreement provides that for the purposes of section 301 in determining whether any person is acting as an agent of another so as to make such other person responsible for his actions, the question of whether the specific acts performed were actually authorized or subsequently ratified shall not be controlling.”^[26]

And Senator Taft, Chairman of the Conference Committee and one of the authors of this legislation that bore his name, was no less explicit in explaining the results of the Conference to the Senate: “The conferees . . . rejected the repeal of the Norris-LaGuardia Act.”^[27]

Nor have we found anything else in the previous decisions of this Court that would indicate that we should disregard all this overwhelming evidence of a congressional intent to retain completely intact the anti-injunction prohibitions of the Norris-LaGuardia Act in suits brought under § 301. Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen v. Chicago River & Indiana R. Co.,^[29] upon which Sinclair places

Textile Workers Union v. Lincoln Mills,^[32] upon which some lesser reliance is placed, is equally distinguishable. There the Court held merely that it did not violate the anti-injunction provisions of the Norris-LaGuardia Act to compel the parties to a collective bargaining agreement to submit a dispute which had arisen under that agreement to arbitration where the agreement itself required arbitration of the dispute. In upholding the jurisdiction of the federal courts to issue such an order against a challenge based upon the Norris-LaGuardia Act, the Court pointed out that the equitable relief granted in that case — a mandatory injunction to carry out an agreement to arbitrate — did not enjoin any one of the kinds of conduct which the specific prohibitions of the Norris-LaGuardia Act withdrew from the injunctive powers of United States courts.^[33] An injunction against work stoppages, peaceful picketing or the nonfraudulent encouraging of those activities would, however, prohibit the precise kinds of conduct which subsections (a), (e) and (i) of § 4 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act unequivocally say cannot be prohibited.^[34]

The plain fact is that § 301, as passed by Congress, presents no conflict at all with the anti-injunction provisions of the Norris-LaGuardia Act. Obedience to the congres

It is doubtless true, as argued, that the right to sue which § 301 gives employers would be worth more to them if they could also get a federal court injunction to bar a breach of their collective bargaining agreements. Strong arguments are made to us that it is highly desirable that the Norris-LaGuardia Act be changed in the public interest. If that is so, Congress itself might see fit to change that law and repeal the anti-injunction provisions of the Act insofar as suits for violation of collective agreements are concerned, as the House bill under consideration originally provided. It might, on the other hand, decide that if injunctions are necessary, the whole idea of enforcement of these agreements by private suits should be discarded in favor of enforcement through the administrative machinery of the Labor Board, as Senator Taft provided in his Senate bill. Or it might decide that neither of these methods is entirely satisfactory and turn instead to a completely new approach. The question of what

The District Court was correct in dismissing Count 3 of petitioner’s complaint for lack of jurisdiction under the Norris-LaGuardia Act. The judgment of the Court of Appeals affirming that order is therefore

Affirmed.

Mr. Justice Frankfurter took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

with whom Mr. Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Harlan join,

dissenting.

I believe that the Court has reached the wrong result because it has answered only the first of the questions which must be answered to decide this case. Of course § 301 of the Taft-Hartley Act did not, for purposes of

Section 301 of the Taft-Hartley Act, enacted in 1947, authorizes Federal District Courts to entertain “[s]uits for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization . . . .” It does not in terms address itself to the question of remedies. As we have construed § 301, it casts upon the District Courts a special responsibility to carry out contractual schemes for arbitration, by holding parties to that favored process for settlement when it has been contracted for, and by then regarding its result as conclusive.^[1] At the same time, § 4 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, enacted in 1932, proscribes the issuance by federal courts of injunctions against various concerted activities “in any case involving or growing out of any labor dispute.” But the enjoining of a strike over an arbitrable grievance may be indispensable to the effective enforcement of an arbitration scheme in a collective agreement ; thus the power to grant that injunctive remedy may be essential to the uncrippled performance of the Court’s

The Court has long acted upon the premise that the Norris-LaGuardia Act does not stand in isolation. It is one of several statutes which, taken together, shape the national labor policy. Accordingly, the Court has recognized that Norris-LaGuardia does not invariably bar injunctive relief when necessary to achieve an important objective of some other statute in the pattern of labor laws. See Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen v. Chicago River R. Co., 353 U. S. 30 ; Graham v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, 338 U. S. 232 ; Virginian R. Co. v. System Federation, 300 U. S. 515 , 562-563. In Chicago River we insisted that there "must be an accommodation of [the Norris-LaGuardia Act] and the Railway Labor Act so that the obvious purpose in the enactment of each is preserved.”^[3]

These decisions refusing inflexible application of Norris-LaGuardia point to the necessity of a careful inquiry whether the surface conflict between § 301 and § 4 is irreconcilable in the setting before us: a strike over a

I

t cannot be denied that the availability of the injunc-tive remedy in this setting is far more necessary to the accomplishment of the purposes of § 301 than it would be detrimental to those of Norris-LaGuardia. Chicago River makes this plain. We there held that the federal courts, notwithstanding Norris-LaGuardia, may enjoin strikes over disputes as to the interpretation of an existing collective agreement, since such strikes flout the duty imposed on the union by the Railway Labor Act to settle such “minor disputes” by submission to the National Railroad Adjustment Board rather than by concerted economic pressures. We so held, even though the Railway Labor Act contains no express prohibition of strikes over “minor disputes,” because we found it essential to the meaningful enforcement of that Act — and because the existence of mandatory arbitration eliminated one of the problems to which Norris-LaGuardia was chiefly addressed, namely, that “the injunction strips labor of its primary weapon without substituting any reasonable alternative.”^[4]

That reasoning is applicable with equal force to an injunction under § 301 to enforce a union’s contractual duty, also binding on the employer, to submit certain disputes to terminal arbitration and to refrain from striking over them. The federal law embodied in § 301 stresses the effective enforcement of such arbitra

In any event, I should have thought that the question was settled by Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U. S. 448 . In that case, the Court held that the procedural requirements of Norris-LaGuardia’s § 7, although in terms fully applicable, would not apply so as to frustrate a federal court’s effective enforcement under § 301 of an employer’s obligation to arbitrate. It is strange, I think, that § 7 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act need not be read, in the face of § 301, to impose inapt procedural restrictions upon the specific enforcement of an employer’s

The legislative history of § 301 affords the Court no refuge from the compelling effect of our prior decisions. That history shows that Congress considered and rejected “the advisability of repealing the Norris-LaGuardia Act insofar as suits based upon breach of collective bargaining agreements are concerned . ...”^[7] But congressional rejection of outright repeal certainly does not imply hostility to an attempt by the courts to accommodate all statutes pertinent to the decision of cases before them. Again, the Court’s conclusion stems from putting the wrong question. When it is appreciated that there is no question here of “repeal,” but rather one of how the Court is to apply the whole statutory complex to the case before it, it becomes clear that the legislative history does not support the Court’s conclusion. First, however, it seems appropriate to discuss, as the Court has done, the language of § 301 considered in light of other provisions of the statute.

There is nothing in the words of § 301 which so much as intimates any limitation to damage remedies when the asserted breach of contract consists of concerted activity. The section simply authorizes the District Courts to entertain and decide suits for violation of collective contracts. Taking the language alone, the irresistible implication would be that the District Courts were to employ their regular arsenal of remedies appropriately to the situation. That would mean, of course, that injunctive relief could be afforded when damages would not be an adequate remedy. This much, surely, is settled by Lin-

Sound reasons explain why repeal of Norris-LaGuardia provisions, acceptable in other settings, might have been found ill-suited for the purpose of § 301. And those reasons fall far short of a design to preclude absolutely the issuance under § 301 of any injunction against an activity included in § 4 of Norris-LaGuardia. Section 10 (h) of the Act^[9] simply lifts the § 4 barrier in connection with proceedings brought by the National Labor Relations Board — in the Courts of Appeals for enforcement of Board cease-and-desist orders against unfair labor practices, and in the District Courts for interlocutory relief against activities being prosecuted before the Board as unfair labor practices. This repeal in aid of government litigation to enforce carefully drafted prohibitions already in the Act as unfair labor practices was, obviously, entirely

Only in § 302 (e) of Taft-Hartley^[11] is there found a repeal of Norris-LaGuardia’s anti-in junction provisions in favor of a suit by a private litigant.^[12] The District Courts are there authorized to restrain the payment by employers and the acceptance by employee representatives of unauthorized payments in the nature of bribes. Not only is the problem thus dealt with “unusually sensitive and important,” as the Court notes,^[13] but the repeal of Norris-LaGuardia is clearly, predictably, and narrowly confined to one kind of suit over one kind of injury; and obviously it presents no possible threat to the important purposes of that Act.

How different was the problem posed by § 301, which broadly authorized District Courts to decide suits for breach of contract. The Congress understandably may not have felt able to predict what provisions would crop up in collective bargaining agreements, to foresee the settings in which these would become subjects of litiga

Indeed, it might with as much force be said that Congress knew well how to limit remedies against employee activities to damages when that was what it intended, as that Congress knew how to repeal Norris-LaGuardia when that was what it intended. Section 303 of Taft-Hart-ley^[14] authorizes private actions for damages resulting from certain concerted employee activities. When that section was introduced on the Senate floor, it provided for injunctive relief as well. Extended debate revealed strong sentiment against the injunction feature, which incorporated a repeal of Norris-LaGuardia. The section’s supporters, therefore, proposed a different version which provided for damages only. In this form, the section was adopted by the Senate — and later by the Conference and the House.^[15] Certainly, after this experience Congress' would have used language confining § 301 to damage remedies when it was invoked against concerted activity, if such had been the intention.

The statutory language thus fails to support the Court’s position. The inference is at least as strong that Congress was content to rely upon the courts to resolve any seeming conflicts between § 301 and § 4 as they arose in the relatively manageable setting of particular cases, as that Congress intended to limit to damages the reme

Nor does the legislative history of § 301 suggest any different conclusion. As the Court notes, the House version would have repealed Norris-LaGuardia in suits brought under the new section.^[16] The Senate version of § 301, like the section as enacted, did not deal with Norris-LaGuardia, but neither did it limit the remedies available against concerted activity.^[17] Thus any attempt to ascertain the Senate’s intention would face the same choices as those I have suggested in dealing with the language of § 301 as finally enacted. It follows that to construe the Conference Committee’s elimination of the House repeal as leaving open the possibility of judicial accommodation is at least as reasonable as to conclude that Congress, by its silence, was directing the courts to disregard § 301 whenever opposition from § 4 was encountered.^[18]

I emphasize that the question in this case is not whether the basic policy embodied in Norris-LaGuardia against the injunction of activities of labor unions has been abandoned in actions under § 301; the question is simply whether injunctions are barred against strikes over griev-

The question arises whether today’s prohibition of injunctive relief is to be carried over to state courts as a part of the federal law governing collective agreements. If so, § 301, a provision plainly designed to enhance the responsibility of unions to their contracts, will have had the opposite effect of depriving employers of a state remedy they enjoyed prior to its enactment.

On the other hand if, as today’s literal reading suggests^[19] and as a leading state decision holds,^[20] States remain free to apply their injunctive remedies against concerted activities in breach of contract, the development of a uniform body of federal contract law is in for hard times. So long as state courts remain free to grant the injunctions unavailable in federal courts, suits seeking relief against concerted activities in breach of contract will be channeled to the States whenever possible. Ironically, state rather than federal courts will be the preferred instruments to protect the integrity of the arbitration process, which Lincoln Mills and the Steelworkers decisions forged into a kingpin of federal labor policy. Enunciation of uniform doctrines applicable in such cases will be severely impeded. Moreover, the type of relief available in a particular instance will turn on fortuities

I have not overlooked the possibility that removal of the state suit to the federal court might provide the answer to these difficulties. But if § 4 is to be read literally, removal will not be allowed.^[21] And if it is allowed, the result once again is that § 301 will have had the strange consequence of taking away a contract remedy available before its enactment.

V.

The decision deals a crippling blow to the cause of grievance arbitration itself. Arbitration is so highly regarded as a proved technique for industrial peace that even the Norris-LaGuardia Act fosters its use.^[22] But since unions cannot be enjoined by a federal court from striking in open defiance of their undertakings to arbitrate, employers will pause long before committing themselves to obligations enforceable against them but not against their unions. The Court does not deny the desirability, indeed, necessity, for injunctive relief against a strike over an arbitrable grievance.^[23] The Court says only that federal courts may not grant such relief, that Congress must amend § 4 if those courts are to give substance to the congressional plan of encouraging peaceable settlements of grievances through arbitration.

In the case before us, the union enjoys the contractual right to make the employer submit to final and binding arbitration of any employee grievance. At the same time, the union agrees that “[T]here shall be no strikes . . . for any cause which is or may be the subject of a grievance.”^[24] The complaint alleged that the union had, over the past several months, repeatedly engaged in “quickie” strikes over arbitrable grievances. Under the contract and the complaint, then, the District Court might conclude that there have occurred and will continue to occur breaches of contract of a type to which the principle of accommodation applies. It follows that rather than dismissing the complaint’s request for an injunction, the