Syllabus NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. INTER- CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 84-861. Argued April 23, 1985-Decided June 27, 1985 The Rules on Containers (Rules) require that some cargo containers owned or leased by marine shipping companies that otherwise would be loaded or unloaded within the local port area (defined as anywhere within a 50-mile radius of the port) instead must be loaded or unloaded by longshoremen at the pier. These Rules were collectively bargained for by respondent union after the advent of "containerization" had drastically reduced the amount of longshoremen's on-pier work involved in cargo handling. In this case, the National Labor Relations Board (Board) held that the Rules constituted unlawful secondary activity under §§ 8(b) (4)(B) and 8(e) of the National Labor Relations Act when applied to containers destined for "shortstopping" truckers (truckers who stop in the vicinity of a pier to load and unload cargo for reasons related to trucking requirements) and "traditional" warehousers (warehousers who perform loading and unloading of cargo at the warehouse for reasons unrelated to marine transportation). The Board reasoned that because the Rules, as so applied, sought to preserve longshoremen's work that had been "eliminated" by containerization, the Rules had "an illegal work acquisition objective." The Court of Appeals refused to enforce the Board's decision, holding that the Board had failed to make any factual finding that the Rules actually operated to deprive "shortstopping" truckers or "traditional" warehousers of any work, and that, as a matter of law, an agreement that preserves duplicative or technologically "eliminated" work does not constitute unlawful "work acquisition." Held: The Board's partial invalidation of the Rules as applied in the contexts in question is inconsistent with National Woodwork Manufacturers Assn. v. NLRB, 386 U. S. 612, and NLRB v. Longshoremen, 447 U. S. 490 (ILA I). Pp. 73-84. (a) National Woodwork, supra, concluded that §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e) were intended by Congress to "reach only secondary pressures," and that agreements negotiated with the objective of preserving work in the face of a threat to union members' jobs are lawful primary activity. These conclusions were reaffirmed in NLRB v. Pipefitters, 429 U. S. 507, and ILA I, supra. Pp. 74-78. (b) By focusing on the effect that the Rules might have on "shortstopping" truckers and "traditional" warehousers, the Board contravened this Court's direction in ILA I, supra, at 507, n. 22, that such extra-unit effects, "no matter how severe," are "irrelevant" to the analysis. Given the Rules' primary objective to preserve longshoremen's work in the face of a threat to jobs, extra-unit effects of a work preservation agreement alone provide an insufficient basis for concluding that the agreement has an unlawful secondary objective. Pp. 78-79. (c) The Board misconstrued this Court's cases in suggesting that "eliminated work" can never be the object of work preservation agreement. "Elimination" of work in the sense that it is made unnecessary by innovation is not of itself a reason to condemn work preservation agreements under §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e); to the contrary, such elimination provides the very premise for such agreements. The relevant inquiry is whether a union's activity is primary or secondary, and no talismanic tests may substitute for analysis. When the objective of an agreement and its enforcement is so clearly one of work preservation as is the one involved here, the lawfulness of the agreement under §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e) is secure, absent some other evidence of secondary purpose. Pp. 80-82. (c) The Rules are a lawful work preservation agreement, and nothing in the record of this case suggests a conclusion that their enforcement has had a secondary, rather than a primary, objective. P. 84. 734 F. 2d 966, affirmed. BRENNAN, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which WHITE, MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ., joined. REHNQUIST, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BURGER, C. J., and O'CONNOR, J., joined, post, p. 84. Norton J. Come argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Lee, Deputy Solicitor General Fried, David A. Strauss, and Linda Sher. J. Alan Lips argued the cause for the American Trucking Associations, Inc., et al., respondents under this Court's Rule 19.6 in support of petitioner. With him on the briefs were Mark E. Lutz and Kenneth E. Siegel. Briefs in support of petitioner were filed by William L. Auten for Houff Transfer, Inc., William H. Towle for the American Warehousemen's Association, and David Previant, Robert M. Baptiste, and Roland P. Wilder, Jr., for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen, and Helpers of America, all respondents under this Court's Rule 19.6. Donato Caruso argued the cause for respondent New York Shipping Association, Inc. Ernest L. Mathews, Jr., argued the cause for respondent International Longshoremen's Association, AFL-CIO. With them on the brief were C. P. Lambos, Thomas W. Gleason, and Francis A. Scanlan.* JUSTICE BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court. The Rules on Containers are collectively bargained-for guidelines requiring marine shipping companies to allow some of the large cargo containers that they own or lease to be loaded or unloaded by longshoremen at the pier. In NLRB v. Longshoremen, 447 U. S. 490 (1980) (ILA I), we reviewed the National Labor Relations Board's conclusion that the Rules and their enforcement constituted unlawful secondary activity under §§ 8(b)(4)(B) and 8(e) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended, 29 U. S. C. §§ 158(b)(4) (B) and 158(e). Respondent union, the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), defended the Rules as lawful under the "work preservation" doctrine of National Woodwork Manufacturers Assn. v. NLRB, 386 U. S. 612 (1967). We ruled, however, that the Board's preliminary definition of the work in dispute had been legally erroneous, because it focused on the off-pier work of nonlongshoremen rather than on the work of longshoremen sought to be preserved. 447 U. S., at 507-508. We therefore affirmed the Court of Appeals' remand of the Rules to the Board, directing it to "focus on the work of the bargaining unit employees, not *Dixie L. Atwater and Stephen A. Bokat filed a brief for the Chamber of Commerce of the United States as amicus curiae urging reversal. George Kaufmann, David Silberman, and Laurence Gold filed a brief for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations as amicus curiae urging affirmance. Stephen E. Tallent and William F. Highberger filed a brief for Delta Steamship Lines, Inc., as amicus curiae. on the work of other employees who may be doing the same or similar work." Id., at 507. Id., at 507. The Board then sustained the Rules, but held that their enforcement against "shortstopping" truckers and "traditional" warehousers is unlawful. 266 N. L. R. B. 230 (1983). The question now presented is whether the Board's partial invalidation of the Rules as applied in these two contexts is consistent with ILA I. I At issue is the response of unionized dockworkers to a technological innovation known as "containerization." Traditionally, longshoremen employed by steamship or stevedoring companies loaded and unloaded cargo into and out of oceangoing vessels at the pier. Cargo arriving at the pier by truck was "transferred piece by piece from the truck's tailgate to the ship by longshoremen . The longshoremen checked the cargo, sorted it, placed it on pallets and moved it by forklift to the side of the ship, and lifted it by means of a sling or hook into the ship's hold. The process was reversed for cargo taken off incoming ships." 447 U. S., at 495. As we explained in some detail in ILA I, the advent of containerization some 25 years ago profoundly transformed this traditional pattern, by reducing the cost of ocean cargo transport and "largely eliminat[ing] the need for cargo handling at intermediate stages." Id., at 509.1 'Containers are large metal boxes designed to fit without adjustment into the holds of special ships and onto the chassis of special trucks and railroad cars. "Because cargo does not have to be handled and repacked as it moves from the warehouse by truck to dock, into the vessel, then from the vessel to the dock and by truck or rail to its destination, the costs of handling are greatly reduced. Expenses of separate export packaging, storage, losses from pilferage and breakage, and costs of insurance and processing cargo documents may also be decreased. Perhaps most significantly, a container ship can be loaded or unloaded in a fraction of the time required for a conventional ship. As a result, the unprofitable in-port time of each ship is reduced, and a smaller number of ships are needed to carry a given volume of cargo." NLRB v. Longshoremen, 447 U. S. 490, 494-495 (1980). It is thus unsurprising that "the amount of on-pier work involved in cargo handling has been drastically reduced" and that containerization has been since its inception a "hotly disputed topic of collective bargaining" between the ILA and the marine shipping companies. Id., at 495-496. The Rules are the evolutionary product of the ILA's bargaining efforts that began with the introduction of the first oceangoing container ship in the Port of New York in 1957.2 The Rules do not require that all containers be loaded or unloaded by longshoremen at the pier. Instead, they apply only to containers that would otherwise be loaded or unloaded within the local port area, defined for convenience as "The Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) in this case characterized the ILA's position regarding containers as "one of resistence [sic]" from the outset. 266 N. L. R. B. 230, 244 (1983). The 1959 agreement between the ILA and the New York Shipping Association, a multiemployer bargaining group for marine shipping companies in New York, reserved for longshoremen "[a]ny work performed in connection with the loading and discharging of containers... which is performed in the Port." Ibid. Discontent continued, however, over increasing off-pier use of containers. In 1969, after the lengthiest longshoremen's strike in the history of the Port of New York, a set of Rules substantially similar to the current Rules was negotiated. The Rules were recognized as a compromise, reserving for the ILA only about 20% of the total containerized cargo handled in New York. Nevertheless, the next five years were marked by work slowdowns and stoppages related to containerization, and the Rules were amended several times to increase their enforceability. The text of the current Rules is substantively identical to the Rules printed as an Appendix to ILA I. 447 U. S., at 513-522. These Rules have been negotiated between the ILA and the Council of North Atlantic Shipping Associations, a multiemployer bargaining group encompassing the marine shipping companies in 36 major ports on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Longshoremen on the west coast are represented by a different union, the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen's Union. Although containerization has been a controversial collective-bargaining topic on the west coast as well, see Ross, Waterfront Lab. Response to Technological Change: A Tale of Two Unions, 21 Labor L. J. 397 (1970), only the ILA and the Atlantic and Gulf coast shippers are before the Court in this case. |