Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees v. Ass'n of American Railroads

639 F. Supp. 220, 122 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2673, 1986 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26257
CourtDistrict Court, District of Columbia
DecidedApril 25, 1986
DocketCiv. A. 86-0951, 86-0977 and 86-1141
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 639 F. Supp. 220 (Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees v. Ass'n of American Railroads) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, District of Columbia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees v. Ass'n of American Railroads, 639 F. Supp. 220, 122 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2673, 1986 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26257 (D.D.C. 1986).

Opinion

OPINION

HAROLD H. GREENE, District Judge.

Plaintiff, Central Vermont Railway, Inc. (CVR), 1 has moved for a preliminary injunction 2 barring defendant Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWE) and its employees from picketing plaintiff’s rail yards in New England. Resolution of the motion presents issues of some difficulty, for it requires the Court to reconcile the apparently conflicting goals and purposes of two statutes: the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 29 U.S.C. § 107, which bars the courts from enjoining labor disputes, and the Railway Labor Act, 45 U.S.C. §§ 151-160, which mandates that railroad employers and employees engaged in a labor dispute must exhaust certain statutory remedies before resorting to self-help and, implicitly, that the assistance of the courts’ injunctive power may be called upon to that end.

I

The dispute here .has its genesis in a breakdown of contract negotiations between BMWE and two New England-based railroad companies, the Maine Central Railroad Company and Portland Terminal Company. Employees of Maine Central and Portland Terminal have been on strike since early March, and in response to that strike, Maine Central and Portland Terminal locked out their BMWE members. Since April 9, 1986, the BMWE has sought to enhance the bargaining position of its striking members by picketing the rail yards of various rail carriers doing business with the two struck carriers. Counsel for the BMWE candidly concede that the pickets’ purpose is to discourage the carriers from doing business with the struck *222 railroads and from moving their trains and freight over the struck carriers’ lines, thereby to bring economic pressure to bear on the Maine and Portland companies to agree to a settlement favorable to the union.

A large number of railroads from across the nation that had become targets of BMWE’s secondary picketing campaign have previously sought a temporary restraining order from this Court enjoining the picketing as illegal. On that occasion 3 the railroads failed to show that the pickets had disrupted rail traffic or were likely to do so in the immediate future. 4 Accordingly, exercising caution in this delicate field, the Court denied injunctive relief, holding that the railroads had not established the requisite irreparable harm. WMATA v. Holiday Tours, 559 F.2d 841 (D.C.Cir. 1977). 5 CVR, by contrast, has established that BMWE’s picketing has virtually closed down the operations of that particular railroad. On that basis, the Court can and must now for the first time address the merits of the underlying controversy.

II

The Norris-LaGuardia Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 101-115, generally bars the courts from issuing an injunction in any “case involving or growing out of a labor dispute.” See 29 U.S.C. § 107. A labor dispute is “any controversy concerning terms or conditions of employment, or conceming 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.” 29 U.S.C. § 113(c). Although the Circuits are in disagreement regarding the proper test, 6 this Court is persuaded, for the following reasons, that the dispute between CVR and BMWE is a “labor dispute” within the meaning of the Norris-LaGuardia Act under any appropriate construction of the statute.

First, it is necessary to bear in mind the Supreme Court’s pronouncement that “the term ‘labor dispute’ must not be narrowly construed.” Jacksonville Bulk Terminals, Inc. v. International Longshoremen’s Association, 457 U.S. 702, 712, 102 5. Ct. 2672, 2680, 73 L.Ed.2d 327 (1982). As the court there said, “the language is broad because Congress was intent upon taking the federal courts out of the labor injunction business except in ... very limited circumstances.” 457 U.S. at 712, 102 S.Ct. at 2680 (quoting Marine Cooks & Stewards v. Panama S.S. Co., 362 U.S. 365, 369, 80 S.Ct. 779, 783, 4 L.Ed.2d 797 (1960)).

Second, the Court concludes that this case is similar to Smith’s Management Corp. v. IBEW, 737 F.2d 788 (9th Cir.1984), where the court held that a union boycott against certain food markets, designed to *223 bring economic pressure upon a shopping center developer who was constructing space for a new food market owned by the operator of the boycotted markets, constituted a labor dispute under 29 U.S.C. § 107. The Ninth Circuit found that “[t]he Union ... [was] acting against a secondary employer ... in an effort to promote the interest of the members of the Union in a contest with a primary employer ... over terms and conditions of employment.” Id. at 790. That is also the case here.

Third, even if this Court were to adopt the more restrictive test of cases such as Ashley, Drew & Northern Ry. v. United Transportation Union, 625 F.2d 1357 (8th Cir.1980), which stated that the controversy there did not constitute a labor dispute within the meaning of the Norris-LaGuardia Act because the secondary target was not “substantially aligned” with the struck employees, and accordingly approved the issuance of an injunction, the result there reached would not follow here. The evidence in this case demonstrates that a significant exchange of freight and rail cars occurs between the CVR and the struck carriers, thus creating the “significant commonality of interest” between the primary and secondary targets required by Ashley to invoke Norris-LaGuardia. 7 Accord, Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen v. Atlantic Coast Line R.R., 362 F.2d 649, 651 (5th Cir.), aff'd by an equally divided court, 385 U.S. 20, 87 S.Ct. 226, 17 L.Ed.2d 20 (1966).

Ill

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Bluebook (online)
639 F. Supp. 220, 122 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2673, 1986 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26257, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/brotherhood-of-maintenance-of-way-employees-v-assn-of-american-railroads-dcd-1986.