National Affairs: Those Who Got Slapped

The august Supreme Court this week proceeded to slap faces to Right and Left. On the Right those eminent attorneys who once were sure the National Labor Relations Act was unconstitutional, were slapped again by a series of decisions upholding the law. On the Left those liberals who have long maintained that the Court was an arch enemy of Labor were rebuked with decisions favorable to Labor.

Most important was a decision on the Norris-LaGuardia Act which sharply limits the power of Federal courts to issue injunctions in labor disputes. A case arose in Milwaukee, when the Amalgamated Meat Cutters & Butchers Union, an A. F. of L. affiliate, appealed to E. G. Shinner & Co. to hire union workers only. The management refused, the union started picketing, and the company asked for an injunction to forbid picketing. District Judge Ferdinand Geiger decided that no labor dispute existed since no employes of the company were on strike, that therefore the Norris-LaGuardia Act did not apply, granted the injunction. The Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Judge Geiger’sinjunction.

With Justices Cardozo and Reed not participating, and Justices McReynolds and Butler dissenting vigorously, the Court upset the injunction, remanded the case. Nothing could have pleased Labor more, because for years Milwaukee unions have considered Judge Geiger their particular archenemy, have called his court “the injunction mill.”

Having delighted Labor once, the Supreme Court went on to uphold the National Labor Relations Board unanimously in two cases. In both cases (involving Pennsylvania Greyhound Lines and Pacific Greyhound Lines) the issue was whether the Board could order an employer to withdraw recognition of a company union if there was no competing union in the field. Admitting that there might be situations in which such an action would not be warranted, the Court nonetheless concluded that in both cases the Board’s action was an appropriate way to give effect to the policy of the Act.