Pando v. Bartenders' International Alliance, Uniontown Local No. 78

37 Pa. D. & C. 169, 1940 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 119
CourtPennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Fayette County
DecidedJanuary 24, 1940
Docketno. 1679
StatusPublished

This text of 37 Pa. D. & C. 169 (Pando v. Bartenders' International Alliance, Uniontown Local No. 78) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Fayette County primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Pando v. Bartenders' International Alliance, Uniontown Local No. 78, 37 Pa. D. & C. 169, 1940 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 119 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1940).

Opinion

Dumbauld, P. J.,

Plaintiff operates a restaurant at 68 West Main Street, Uniontown, Pa. His place of business holds a liquor license. He employs regularly a cook, two -waitresses, a bartender, and, on busy days, an extra bartender and an extra waitress.

Uniontown Local No. 78 of the Bartenders’ International Alliance is located in Uniontown. It is a unit of the American Federation of Labor. Defendant, Hotel and Restaurant Employees International Alliance, Union-town Local No. 369, is also a unit of the American Federation of Labor, operating in Uniontown.

[170]*170Until May 1939, plaintiff contracted with the Union-town Local of defendants as the agent for collective bargaining with his employes. That contract is in writing. It is not for any specific period of time. It contains no definite provisions for termination.

Plaintiff testifies that it expired in May 1939. Later, plaintiff’s employes all joined the United Malt Beverage Distributors. This organization is a unit of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. All of plaintiff’s employes became members of the local unit. Plaintiff, having terminated his contract with defendant, on August 17,1939, entered into the new contract with United Malt Beverage Distributors. Thereupon Local No. 78 started a campaign to compel plaintiff to rescind this contract with United Malt Beverage Distributors, to employ as his help members of defendant unions, and to require a renewed allegiance to defendant locals.

A system of picketing was established. A man with a sign on his back paraded back and forth on the sidewalk in front of plaintiff’s place of business. This happened every day in the week except Sunday and continued, from 11 to 2 in the forenoon and from 4 to 9 in the afternoon. On Saturday, the picket stayed until 11 p.m. From some time in September until the granting of the injunction, this picketing continued. The picket carried a placard bearing the legend “Unfair to organized labor, Bartenders Union No. 78, Waitresses Union No. 389”.

No violence is alleged or proven.

Plaintiff’s place of business is located in a locality that is strongly inclined to organized labor. Publicizing plaintiff as unfair to organized labor would unquestionably hurt plaintiff’s business. A continuance of this system of picketing indefinitely cannot help resulting in the ultimate destruction of plaintiff’s business.

With such a state of facts we are confronted with the problem of determining whether or not equity has jurisdiction to restrain, by injunction, this picketing of plaintiff’s place of business.

[171]*171This is no easy problem. We find two gigantic labor unions engaged in a struggle for supremacy. We cannot fail to note that a Nation-wide conflict exists between the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The local units of both these unions are but cogs in the machinery by which this conflict is carried on.

When they meet in this local area, plaintiff, the innocent bystander, falls between the lines of battle. When he signs up with C. I. O., A. F. of L. destroys his business in its effort to compel him to change his allegiance. If he yields, repudiates his contract with C. I. O. and returns to the A. F. of L., we can readily foresee how his business would at once become the storm center of a counter-attack.

The evidence adduced at the trial leads to the inescapable conclusion that the picketing is coercive and designed to compel plaintiff to violate the terms of his contract, and, upon his failure so to do, to continue the attack until his business is destroyed. In the contemplation of defendants, the small restaurant owner cannot long survive; for what he is gambling with is not only his livelihood in this restaurant business, but also his investment. If unsuccessful, he will be deprived of the opportunity to earn his livelihood further in his business. He will forfeit his investment. Under these facts, his economic extinction is certain. To say that this is not within the distinct cognizance of defendant locals, or beyond their implied, if not expressed, purposes, is to ignore realities and to indulge in specious reasoning. The effort to compel plaintiff by coercive picketing to breach his contract with the United Malt Beverage Distributors is clearly unlawful. Whether the dominant motive of the picketing is coercion of plaintiff into an unlawful act, or the crushing of its rival labor union, can make no difference. Which of these motives is primary and which is incidental in the conduct of the system of picketing need not be determined. In either event the means selected are unlawful. Whether it is the destruc[172]*172tion of plaintiff’s business or the destruction of the rival union, the unlawfulness of the purpose still stands out. If a court of equity must stand by and permit such a contest to destroy private initiative; if we, by silence, approve the confiscation of property rights, and expose the small business man to the fury of a conflict in which he is an innocent bystander, though complying with every obligation within the field of labor relations imposed upon him by law, we must then admit that the time when every wrong could be redressed in some form of action has passed.

With such a set of facts before us, does the court have jurisdiction in equity to change this situation and to protect the unoffending employer, the innocent bystander, from the financial ruin that impends?

In our law student days, we defined as “equity” the correction of that wherein the law, by reason of its universality, is deficient.

We know of no effective legal remedy for plaintiff and for thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of small employers situated as he is. If equity lacks jurisdiction, the courts are impotent, and plaintiff and his kind are helpless. . . .

[The court here quoted at length from Stalban, etc., v. Friedman, etc., et al., 171 Misc. 106, 11 N. Y. Supp. (2d) 343, and United Union Brewing Co. v. Beck et al. (Washington, 1939), 93 P. (2d) 772.]

We have quoted at great length from the opinion of the chancellor in these cases because the facts are so similar to the facts in the case we are here considering, and because the chancellor, in each case, propounds a philosophy with which we agree.

It must not be forgotten that defendant O’Hern, president of defendant local, frankly states that the purpose of the picketing was “To inform the public in general that they [plaintiff] are not fair to organized labor; to persuade them [plaintiff] to put in union members— union bartenders.”

[173]*173The statement carried by the picket on the placard that plaintiff is unfair to organized labor is an actual falsehood. The most that could be said by these defendants is that plaintiff is unfair to the local unit of the American Federation of Labor. To arrogate to themselves the right to say that a contract embracing a hundred percent membership of plaintiff’s employes in a unit of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the selection of that unit as the agent for collective bargaining of all his employes was unfair to organized labor as a whole, is equivalent to saying that the American Federation of Labor is the whole of organized labor.

The court cannot say that the Congress of Industrial Organizations is not a labor union.

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Related

Associated Press v. National Labor Relations Board
301 U.S. 103 (Supreme Court, 1937)
Kirmse v. Adler
166 A. 566 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1932)
United Union Brewing Co. v. Beck
93 P.2d 772 (Washington Supreme Court, 1939)
Stalban v. Friedman
171 Misc. 106 (New York Supreme Court, 1939)

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Bluebook (online)
37 Pa. D. & C. 169, 1940 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 119, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pando-v-bartenders-international-alliance-uniontown-local-no-78-pactcomplfayett-1940.