Buffalo Forge Co. v. United Steelworkers

428 U.S. 397, 96 S. Ct. 3141, 49 L. Ed. 2d 1022, 1976 U.S. LEXIS 110, 92 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 3032

Opinions

Mr. Justice White

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The issue for decision is whether a federal court may enjoin a sympathy strike pending the arbitrator’s decision as to whether the strike is forbidden by the express no-strike clause contained in the collective-bargaining contract to which the striking union is a party.

I

The Buffalo Forge Co. (employer) operates three separate plant and office facilities in the Buffalo, N. Y., area. For some years production and maintenance (P&M) employees at the three locations have been represented by the United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO, and its Local Unions No. 1874 and No. 3732 (hereafter sometimes collectively the Union). The United Steelworkers is a party to the two separate collective-bargaining agreements between the locals and the employer. The contracts contain identical no-strike clauses,¹ as well as grievance and arbitration provisions for settling disputes over the interpretation and application of each contract. The latter provide:

“26. Should differences arise between the [employer] and any employee covered by this Agreement as to the meaning and application of the provisions of this Agreement, or should any trouble of any kind arise in the plant, there shall be no suspension of work on account of such differences, but an earnest effort shall be made to settle such differences immediately [under the six-step grievance and arbitration procedure provided in sections 27 through 32].” ²

Shortly before this dispute arose, the United Steelworkers and two other locals not parties to this litigation were certified to represent the employer’s “office clerical-technical” (O&T) employees at the same three locations. On November 16, 1974, after several months of negotiations looking toward their first collective-bargaining agreement, the O&T employees struck and established picket lines at all three locations. On November 18, P&M employees at one plant refused to cross the O&T picket line for the day. Two days later, the employer learned that the P&M employees planned to stop work at all three plants the next morning. In telegrams to the Union, the employer stated its position that a strike by the P&M employees would violate the no-strike clause and offered to arbitrate any dispute which had led to the planned strike.³ The next day, at the Union’s direction, the P&M employees honored the O&T picket line and stopped work at the three plants. They did not return to work until December 16, the first regular working day after the District Court denied the employer’s prayer for a preliminary injunction.

The employer’s complaint under § 301 (a) of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947,⁴ filed in District Court on November 26, claimed the work stoppage was in violation of the no-strike clause. Contending in the alternative that the work strike was caused by a specific incident involving P&M truck drivers’ refusal to follow a supervisor’s instructions to cross the O&T picket line, and that the question whether the P&M employees’ work stoppage violated the no-strike clause was itself arbitrable, the employer requested damages, a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction against the strike, and an order compelling the parties to- submit any “underlying dispute” to the contractual grievance and arbitration procedures. The Union's position was that the work stoppage did not violate the no-strike clause.⁵ It offered to submit that question to arbitration “on one day’s notice,” ⁶ but opposed the prayer for injunctive relief.

After denying the temporary restraining order and finding that the P&M work stoppage was not the result of the specific refusal to cross the O&T picket line, the District Court concluded that the P&M employees were engaged in a sympathy action in support of the striking O&T employees. The District Court then held itself forbidden to issue an injunction by § 4 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act⁷ because the P&M employees’ strike was not oyer an “arbitrable grievance” and hence was not within the “narrow” exception to the Norris-La-Guardia Act established in Boys Markets v. Retail Clerks Union, 398 U. S. 235 (1970). 386 F. Supp. 405 (WDNY 1974).

On the employer’s appeal from the denial of a preliminary injunction, 28 U. S. C. § 1292 (a)(1), the parties stipulated that the District Court’s findings of fact were correct, that the Union had authorized and directed the P&M employees’ work stoppage, that the O&T employees’ strike and picket line were bona fide, primary, and legal, and that the P&M employees’ work stoppage, though ended, might “be resumed at any time in the near future at the direction of the International Union, or otherwise.” ⁸

The Court of Appeals affirmed. It held that enjoining this strike, which was not “over a grievance which the union has agreed to arbitrate,” was not permitted by the Boys Markets exception to the Norris-LaGuardia Act. 517 F. 2d 1207, 1210 (CA2 1975). Because the Courts of Appeals are divided on the question whether such a strike may be enjoined,⁹ we granted the employer’s petition for a writ of certiorari, 423 U. S. 911 (1975), and now affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.

II

As a preliminary matter, certain elements in this case are not in dispute. The Union has gone on strike not by reason of any dispute it or any of its members has with the employer, but in support of other local unions of the same international organization, that were negotiating a contract with the employer and were out on strike. The parties involved here are bound by collective-bargaining contracts each containing a no-strike clause which the Union claims does not forbid sympathy strikes. The employer has the other view, its complaint in the District Court asserting that the work stoppage violated the no-strike clause. Each of the contracts between the parties also has an arbitration clause broad enough to reach not only disputes between the Union and the employer about other provisions in the contracts but also as to the meaning and application of the no-strike clause itself. Whether the sympathy strike the Union called violated the no-strike clause, and the appropriate remedies if it did, are subject to the agreed-upon dispute-settlement procedures of the contracts and are ultimately issues for the arbitrator. Steelworkers v. American Mfg. Co., 363 U. S. 564 (1960); Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Co., 363 U. S. 574 (1960); Steelworkers v. Enterprise Corp., 363 U. S. 593 (1960). The employer thus was entitled to invoke the arbitral process to determine the legality of the sympathy strike and to obtain a court order requiring the Union to arbitrate if the Union refused to do so. Gateway Coal Co. v. Mine Workers, 414 U. S. 368 (1974). Furthermore, were the issue arbitrated and the strike found illegal, the relevant federal statutes as construed in our cases would permit an injunction to enforce the arbitral decision. Steelworkers v. Enterprise Corp., supra.

The issue in this case arises because the employer not only asked for an order directing the Union to arbitrate but prayed that the strike itself be enjoined pending arbitration and the arbitrator’s decision whether the strike was permissible under the no-strike clause. Contrary to the Court of Appeals, the employer claims that despite the Norris-LaGuardia Act’s ban on federal-court injunctions in labor disputes the District Court was empowered to enjoin the strike by § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act as construed by Boys Markets v. Retail Clerks Union, supra. This would undoubtedly have been the case had the strike been precipitated by a dispute between union and management that was subject to binding arbitration under the provisions of the contracts. In Boys Markets, the union demanded that supervisory employees cease performing tasks claimed by the union to be union work. The union struck when the demand was rejected. The dispute was of the kind subject to the grievance and arbitration clauses contained in the collective-bargaining contract, and it was also clear that the strike violated the no-strike clause accompanying the arbitration provisions. The Court held that the union could be enjoined from striking over a dispute which it was bound to arbitrate at the employer’s behest.

The holding in Boys Markets was said to be a “narrow one,” dealing only with the situation in which the collective-bargaining contract contained mandatory grievance and arbitration procedures. Id., at 253. “[F]or the guidance of the district courts in determining whether to grant injunctive relief,” the Court expressly adopted the principles enunciated in the dissent in Sinclair Refining Co. v. Atkinson, 370 U. S. 195, 228 (1962), including the proposition that

“ ‘[w]hen a strike is sought to be enjoined because it is over a grievance which both parties are contractually bound to arbitrate, the District Court may issue no injunctive order until it first holds that the contract does have that effect; and the employer should be ordered to arbitrate, as a condition of his obtaining an injunction against the strike.' " 398 U. S., at 254 (emphasis in Sinclair).

The driving force behind Boys Markets was to implement the^ strong congressional preference for the private dispute Settlement mechanisms agreed upon by the parties. Only to that extent was it held necessary to accommodate § 4 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act to § 301 of the Laborj Management Relations Act and to lift the former’s ban against the issuance of injunctions in labor disputes. /Striking over an arbitrable dispute would interfere wijth and frustrate the arbitral processes by which the parties had chosen to settle a dispute. The quid pro quo for the employer’s promise to arbitrate was the union’s obligation not to strike over issues that were subject to the arbitration machinery. Even in the absence of an express no-strike clause, an undertaking not to strike would be implied where the strike was over an otherwise arbitrable dispute. Gateway Goal Co. v. Mine Workers, supra; Teamsters v. Lucas Flour Co., 369 U. S. 95 (1962). Otherwise, the employer would be deprived of his bargain and the policy of the labor statutes to implement private resolution of disputes in a manner agreed upon would seriously suffer.

Boys Markets plainly does not control this case. The District Court found, and it is not now disputed, that the strike was not over any dispute between the Union and the employer that was even remotely subject to the arbitration provisions of the contract. The strike at issue was a sympathy strike in support of sister unions negotiating with the employer; neither its causes nor the issue underlying it was subject to the settlement procedures provided by the contracts between the employer and respondents. The strike had neither the purpose nor the effect of denying or evading an obligation to arbitrate or of depriving the employer of its bargain. Thus, had the contract not contained a no-strike clause or had the clause expressly excluded sympathy strikes, there would have been no possible basis for implying from the existence of an arbitration clause a promise not to strike that could have been violated by the sympathy strike in this case. Gateway Coal Co. v. Mine Workers, supra, at 382.¹⁰

Nor was the injunction authorized solely because it was alleged that the sympathy strike called by the Union violated the express no-strike provision of the contracts. Section 301 of the Act assigns a major role to the courts in enforcing collective-bargaining agreements, but aside from the enforcement of the arbitration provisions of such contracts, within the limits permitted by Boys Markets, the Court has never indicated that the courts may enjoin actual or threatened contract violations despite the Norris-LaGuardia Act. In the course of enacting the Taft-Hartley Act, Congress rejected the proposal that the Norris-LaGuardia Act's prohibition against labor-dispute injunctions be lifted to the extent necessary to make injunctive remedies available in federal courts for the purpose of enforcing collective-bargaining agreements. See Sinclair Refining Co. v. Atkinson, supra, at 205-208, and 216-224 (dissenting opinion). The allegation of the complaint that the Union was breaching its obligation not to strike did not in itself warrant an injunction. As was stated in the Sinclair dissent embraced in Boys Markets:

“[T]here is no general federal anti-strike policy; and although a suit may be brought under § 301 against strikes which, while they are breaches of private contracts, do not threaten any additional public policy, in such cases the anti-injunction policy of Norris-LaGuardia should prevail.” 370 U. S., at 225.

The contracts here at issue, however, also contained grievance and arbitration provisions for settling disputes over the interpretation and application of the provisions of the contracts, including the no-strike clause. That clause, like others, was subject to enforcement in accordance with the procedures set out in the contracts. Here the Union struck, and the parties were in dispute whether the sympathy strike violated the Union’s no-strike undertaking. Concededly, that issue was arbitrable. It was for the arbitrator to determine whether there was a breach, as well as the remedy for any breach, and the employer was entitled to an order requiring the Union to arbitrate if it refused to do so. But the Union does not deny its duty to arbitrate; in fact, it denies that the employer ever demanded arbitration. However that may be, it does not follow that the District Court was empowered not only to order arbitration but to enjoin the strike pending the decision of the arbitrator, despite the express prohibition of § 4 (a) of the Norris-LaGuardia Act against injunctions prohibiting any person from “[c] easing or refusing to perform any work or to remain in any relation of employment.” If an injunction could issue against the strike in this case, so in proper circumstances could a court enjoin any other alleged breach of contract pending the exhaustion of the applicable grievance and arbitration provisions even though the injunction would otherwise violate one of the express prohibitions of § 4. The court in such cases would be permitted, if the dispute was arbitrable, to hold hearings, make findings of fact,¹¹ interpret the applicable provisions of the contract and issue injunctions so as to restore the status quo, or to otherwise regulate the relationship of the parties pending exhaustion of the arbitration process. This would ' cut deeply into the policy of the Norris-LaGuardia Act and make the courts potential participants in a wide range of arbitrable disputes under the many existing and future collective-bargaining contracts,¹² not just for the purpose of enforcing promises to arbitrate, which was the limit of Boys Markets, but for the purpose of preliminarily dealing with the merits of the factual and legal issues that are subjects for the arbitrator and of issuing injunctions that would otherwise be forbidden by the Norris-LaGuar-dia Act.

This is not what the parties have bargained for. Surely it cannot be concluded here, as it was in Boys Markets, that such injunctions pending arbitration are essential to carry out promises to arbitrate and to implement the private arrangements for the administration of the contract. As is typical, the agreements in this case outline the prearbitration settlement procedures and provide that if the grievance “has not been . . . satisfactorily adjusted,” arbitration may be had. Nowhere do they provide for coercive action of any kind, let alone judicial injunctions, short of the terminal decision of the arbitrator. The parties have agreed to submit to grievance procedures and arbitrate, not to litigate. They have not contracted for a judicial preview of the facts and the law.¹³ Had they anticipated additional regulation of their relationships pending arbitration, it seems very doubtful that they would have resorted to litigation rather than to private arrangements. The unmistakable policy of Congress stated in § 203 (d), 29 U. S. C. § 173 (d), is: “Final adjustment by a method agreed upon by the parties is declared to be the desirable method for settlement of grievance disputes arising over the application or interpretation of an existing collective-bargaining agreement.” Gateway Coal Co. v. Mine Workers, 414 U. S., at 377. But the parties’ agreement to adjust or to arbitrate their differences themselves would be eviscerated if the courts for all practical purposes were to try and decide contractual disputes at the preliminary injunction stage.

The dissent suggests that injunctions should be authorized in cases such as this at least where the violation, in the court’s view, is clear and the court is sufficiently sure that the parties seeking the injunction will win before the arbitrator. But this would still involve hearings, findings, and judicial interpretations of collective-bargaining contracts. It is incredible to believe that the courts would always view the facts and the contract as the arbitrator would; and it is difficult to believe that the arbitrator would not be heavily influenced or wholly pre-empted by judicial views of the facts and the meaning of contracts if this procedure is to be permitted. Injunctions against strikes, even temporary injunctions, very often permanently settle the issue; and in other contexts time and expense would be discouraging factors to the losing party in court in considering whether to relitigate the issue before the arbitrator.

With these considerations in mind, we are far from concluding that the arbitration process will be frustrated unless the courts have the power to issue interlocutory injunctions pending arbitration in cases such as this or in others in whieh an arbitrable dispute awaits decision. We agree with the Court of Appeals that there is no necessity here, such as was found to be the case in Boys Markets, to accommodate the policies of the Norris-La-Guardia Act to the requirements of § 301 by empowering the District Court to issue the injunction sought by the employer.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.

So ordered.

1 Section 14.b. of each agreement provides:

“There shall be no strikes, work stoppages or interruption or impeding of work. No Officers or representatives of the Union shall authorize, instigate, aid or condone any such activities. No employee shall participate in any such activity. The Union recognizes its possible liabilities for violation of this provision and will use its influence to see that work stoppages are prevented. Unsuccessful efforts by Union officers or Union representatives to prevent and terminate conduct prohibited by this paragraph, will not be construed as ‘aid’ or ‘condonation’ of such conduct and shall not result in any disciplinary actions against the Officers, committeemen or stewards involved.” App. 16.

2 Id., at 17. The final step in the six-part grievance procedure is provided for in § 32:

“In the event the grievance involves a question as to the meaning and application of the provisions of this Agreement, and has not been previously satisfactorily adjusted, it may be submitted to arbitration upon written notice of the Union or the Company.” Id., at 19.

3 Id., at 22-23. At oral argument before this Court, the parties disagreed whether the employer’s telegrams were sufficient to submit the dispute to the contractual grievance procedures. Tr. of Oral Arg. 44-45, 48-50. The employer’s complaint prayed for an order requiring arbitration of a dispute “relating to work performance of truck drivers or any other underlying dispute.” App. 10. As far as the record indicates no grievance proceedings have taken place with respect to any aspect of the dispute. The Union apparently argued in the Court of Appeals that the employer was not entitled to an injunction because it failed to invoke the contractual grievance procedures. 517 F. 2d 1207, 1209 n. 4 (1975). Like the Court of Appeals, ibid., we need not reach the issue under our disposition of the case.

4 61 Stat. 156, 29 U. S. C. §185 (a). Section 301 (a) provides: “Suits for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization representing employees in an industry affecting commerce as defined in this Act, or between any such labor organizations, may be brought in any district court of the United States having jurisdiction of the parties, without respect to the amount in controversy or without regard to the citizenship of the parties.”

5 District Court Tr. 57; Memorandum for Respondent in District Court 9, 13.

6 Id., at 9.

7 Section 4 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 47 Stat. 70, 29 U. S. C. § 104, provides:

“No court of the United States shall have jurisdiction to issue any-restraining order or temporary or permanent injunction in any case involving or growing out of any labor dispute to prohibit any person or persons participating or interested in such dispute (as these terms are herein defined) from doing, whether singly or in concert, any of the following acts:

“(a) Ceasing or refusing to perform any work or to remain in any relation of employment;

“(b) Becoming or remaining a member of any labor organization or of any employer organization, regardless of any such undertaking or promise as is described in section 3 of this Act;

“(c) Paying or giving to, or withholding from, any person participating or interested in such labor dispute, any strike or unemployment benefits or insurance, or other moneys or things of value;

“(d) By all lawful means aiding any person participating or interested in any labor dispute who is being proceeded against in, or is prosecuting, any action or suit in any court of the United States or of any State;

“(e) Giving publicity to the existence of, or the facts involved in, any labor dispute, whether by advertising, speaking, patrolling, or by any other method not involving fraud or violence;

“(f) Assembling peaceably to act or to organize to act in promotion of their interests in a labor dispute;

“(g) Advising or notifying any person of an intention to do any of the acts heretofore specified;

“(h) Agreeing with other persons to do or not to do any of the acts heretofore specified; and

“(i) Advising, urging, or otherwise causing or inducing without fraud or violence the acts heretofore specified, regardless of any such undertaking or promise as is described in section 3 of this Act.”

8 App. 25. The presence of an existing dispute makes this a five controversy despite the P&M employees’ return to the job. See Super Tire Engineering Co. v. McCorkle, 416 U. S. 115, 124-125 (1974); Bus Employees v. Missouri, 374 U. S. 74, 77-78 (1963). The collective-bargaining agreements in effect when this action arose have expired, but the parties have stipulated, App. 25, that they govern resolution of this dispute. On appeal the employer did not challenge the District Court’s finding that the P&M employees’ work stoppage was not, at least in part, a protest over truck driving assignments. 517 F. 2d, at 1211 n. 7.

9 The decision of the Second Circuit in this case is in accord with decisions of the Fifth and Sixth Circuits, Amstar Corp. v. Meat Cutters, 468 F. 2d 1372 (CA5 1972); Plain Dealer Pub. Co. v. Cleveland Typographical Union, 520 F. 2d 1220 (CA6 1975), cert. denied, post, p. 909; see United States Steel Corp. v. Mine Workers, 519 F. 2d 1236 (CA5 1975), reh. denied, 526 F. 2d 376 (1976), cert. denied, post, p. 910, but at odds with decisions of the Third, Fourth, and Eighth Circuits, NAPA Pittsburgh, Inc. v. Automotive Chauffeurs, 502 F. 2d 321 (CA3) (en banc), cert. denied, 419 U. S. 1049 (1974); Island Creek Coal Co. v. Mine Workers, 507 F. 2d 650 (CA3), cert. denied, 423 U. S. 877 (1975); Armco Steel Corp. v. Mine Workers, 505 F. 2d 1129 (CA4 1974), cert. denied, 423 U. S. 877 (1975); Pilot Freight Carriers, Inc. v. Teamsters, 497 F. 2d 311 (CA4), cert. denied, 419 U. S. 869 (1974); Wilmington Shipping Co. v. Longshoremen, 86 L. R. R. M. 2846 (CA4), cert. denied, 419 U. S. 1022 (1974); Monongahela Power Co. v. Electrical Workers, 484 F. 2d 1209 (CA4 1973); Valmac Industries v. Food Handlers, 519 F. 2d 263 (CA8 1975), cert. granted, vacated and remanded, post, p. 906; Associated Gen. Contractors v. Operating Engineers, 519 F. 2d 269 (CA8 1975). The Seventh Circuit has adopted an intermediate position. Hyster Co. v. Independent Towing Assn., 519 F. 2d 89 (1975), cert. denied sub nom. Hyster Co. v. Employees Assn, of Kewanee, post, p. 910; Gary Hobart Water Corp. v. NLRB, 511 F. 2d 284, cert. denied, 423 U. S. 925 (1975). But cf. Inland Steel Co. v. Mine Workers, 505 F. 2d 293 (1974).

10 To the extent that the Court of Appeals, 517 F. 2d, at 1211, and other courts, Island Creek Coal Co. v. Mine Workers, 507 F. 2d, at 653-654; Armco Steel Corp. v. Mine Workers, 505 F. 2d, at 1132-1133; Amstar Corp. v. Meat Cutters, 337 F. Supp. 810, 815 (ED La.), rev’d on other grounds, 468 F. 2d 1372 (CA5 1972); Inland Steel Co. v. Mine Workers, 505 F. 2d, at 299-300, have assumed that a mandatory arbitration clause implies a commitment not to engage in sympathy strikes, they are wrong.

Gateway Coal Co. v. Mine Workers itself furnishes no additional support for the employer here. In that case, after finally concluding that the dispute over which the strike occurred was arbitrable within the meaning of the arbitration clause contained in a contract which did not also contain a no-strike clause, the Court held that the contract implied an undertaking not to strike, based on Teamsters v. Lucas Flour Co., 369 U. S. 95 (1962), and permitted an injunction against the strike based on the principles of Boys Markets. The critical determination in Gateway was that the dispute was arbitrable. This was the fulcrum for finding a duty not to strike over that dispute and for enjoining the strike the union had called. Of course, the authority to enjoin the work stoppage depended on “whether the union was under a contractual duty not to strike.” 414 U. S., at 380. But that statement was made only preparatory to finding an implied duty not to strike. The strike was then enjoined only because it was over an arbitrable dispute. The same precondition to a strike injunction also existed in Boys Markets. Absent that factor, neither case furnishes the authority to enjoin a strike solely because it is claimed to be in breach of contract and because this claim is itself arbitrable.

11 See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 52 (a).

12 This could embroil the district courts in massive preliminary injunction litigation. In 1972, the most recent year for which comprehensive data have been published, more than 21 million workers in the United States were covered under more than 150,000 collective-bargaining agreements. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Directory of National Unions and Employee Associations 87-88 (1973).

13 Whether a district court's preview led it to grant or to refuse the requested injunction pending arbitration, its order, as in this case, would be appealable, 28 U. S. C. § 1292 (a)(1).