Wilson v. Hacker

200 Misc. 124, 101 N.Y.S.2d 461, 1950 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 2279, 1 Empl. Prac. Dec. (CCH) 9621
CourtNew York Supreme Court
DecidedNovember 13, 1950
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 200 Misc. 124 (Wilson v. Hacker) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Wilson v. Hacker, 200 Misc. 124, 101 N.Y.S.2d 461, 1950 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 2279, 1 Empl. Prac. Dec. (CCH) 9621 (N.Y. Super. Ct. 1950).

Opinion

Halpern, J.

This is an action for an injunction against the picketing of the plaintiff’s premises. The plaintiff is the owner of a restaurant and tavern at 443 Forest Avenue in the city of Buffalo, New York. The defendant unions, consisting of unions of hotel and restaurant employees, waitresses, cafeteria and dairy lunch workers, and bartenders, and the defendant local joint executive board, composed of and representing the local chapters of the international unions, are engaged in picketing the .plaintiff’s premises, in an endeavor to unionize the plaintiff’s establishment and to induce the plaintiff to enter into a union shop contract. It appeared upon the trial that there is no controversy between the parties with respect to any point other than the plaintiff’s employment of three barmaids who perform the functions of bartenders. There is no controversy as to wages, hours, or working conditions. The plaintiff has indicated her willingness to enter into a union shop contract with the defendant unions and to require all her employees to become members of the appropriate unions, and all the employees are apparently willing to become union members. It appears, however, that one of the defendant unions,' the Bartenders League of America, does not accept female members, so that the barmaids employed by the plaintiff are not eligible for membership. The other unions covering waitresses and other restaurant employees are willing to admit the plaintiff’s other employees into membership. It appears that it has been the national policy of the Bartenders League for many years not to admit women members, although it appears there was some deviation from that policy during the war when a sufficient supply of male bartenders was not available.

The net result of the unions’ demand that the plaintiff’s establishment be unionized, coupled with the refusal of the Bartenders League to accept barmaids, is to require the plaintiff to discharge the barmaids now in her employ and to replace them with male bartenders.

This demand raises sharply the question of whether a union may lawfully insist upon a closed or union shop while it arbi[128]*128trarily refuses to admit into its membership certain of the present employees of the establishment sought to be unionized. It is clear, upon the authorities in this State, that the answer to this question must be in the negative. The law on this subject is of comparatively recent development. It is, to a large extent, still in a state of flux, but the case of Clark v. Curtis (273 App. Div. 797, affd. 297 N. Y. 1014) establishes the proposition that a closed union may not lawfully demand a closed shop, at least, to the extent that it may not demand that the employer discharge his present employees on the ground that they are not members of the union when, in fact, the employees are willing to join the union but the union arbitrarily denies them admission.

It was settled long ago in New York State that a closed shop is lawful and that a union may strike, maintain a picket line, or take other appropriate action to compel the employer to agree to a closed shop (National Protective Assn. v. Cumming, 170 N. Y. 315; Williams v. Quill, 277 N. Y. 1). It may also be assumed for the purpose of this decision that it is the settled law of this State that a union is free to select its own members and, with or without reason, to refuse to admit applicants for membership (except that, under section 43 of the Civil Bights Law, a union may not deny membership on the ground of race, creed, color or national origin). “ It has been the law in this State for many years that a union cannot be compelled to admit strangers to membership (McKane v. Adams, 123 N. Y. 609; Murphy v. Higgins, 12 N. Y. S. 2d 913, affd. 260 App. Div. 854; Matter of Miller v. Ruehl, 166 Misc. 479; Acierno v. North Shore Bus Co., 173 Misc. 79, 81; Shein v. Rose, 12 N. Y. S. 2d 87).” (Ryan v. Simons, 98 N. Y. S. 2d 243, revd. on other grounds 277 App. Div. 1000.)

However, when these two propositions are brought together and a union, which has exercised its right to close its membership against certain employees or a class of employees, demands that the employer enter into a closed or union shop contract under which only union members may be retained in employment, an obviously inequitable situation results. The problem was resolved in Clark v. Curtis (supra) by holding that the union, under such circumstances, would be required to accept one of two alternatives: either it would have to admit the employees to membership in the union, or it would have to exempt them from the requirement of union membership as a condition of continued employment under the proposed contract with the employer. In the brief filed by the American Civil [129]*129Liberties Union as amicus curiæ, in Clark v. Curtis, the Court of Appeals was asked to go further and to abrogate the rule, laid down in the decisions cited above, that a union has the right arbitrarily to refuse admission to membership. The Court of Appeals declined to do this and simply affirmed without opinion the decision of the Appellate Division, which upheld the sufficiency of a complaint designed to compel the union to choose one of the alternatives set forth above.

Clark v. Curtis was followed in Ryan v. Simons (98 N. Y. S. 2d 243, revd. on other grounds 277 App. Div. 1000, supra).

There are two bases upon which the holding in Clark v. Curtis may be said to rest, one growing out of statutory provisions, and the other founded on common-law principles. The statutory basis, which is the ground upon which the Appellate Division rested its decision, is found in the State Labor Relations Act (Labor Law, §§ 700-716). Under subdivision 1 of section 705 of the act, a union which has been designated or selected as the representative of the employees becomes the exclusive bargaining agent of all of the employees in the appropriate unit, whether they are members of the union or not. Having assumed the statutory responsibility of representing all the employees, the union must represent them fairly, and it may not discriminate against employees who are not members of the union. Clearly, it would be a violation of the fiduciary obligation owing by the union to the nonunion employees whom it represents, to compel their discharge without justification. This doctrine was first laid down by the United States Supreme Court in several decisions dealing with the construction of analogous provisions of the Railway Labor Act and the National Labor Relations Act (Steele v. Lousiville & Nashville R. R. Co., 323 U. S. 192; Tunstall v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen, 323 U. S. 210; Graham v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen & Enginemen, 338 U. S. 232; Wallace Corp. v. National Labor Relations Bd., 323 U. S. 248).

Cf. Betts v. Easley (161 Kan.

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200 Misc. 124, 101 N.Y.S.2d 461, 1950 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 2279, 1 Empl. Prac. Dec. (CCH) 9621, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/wilson-v-hacker-nysupct-1950.