Garner v. Teamsters Union, 346 U.S. 485 (1953)

Garner v. Teamsters Union

No. 56

Argued October 20-21, 1953
Decided December 14, 1953
346 U.S. 485

CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA,

MIDDLE DISTRICT

Syllabus

Petitioners were engaged in Pennsylvania in an interstate trucking business. Only a small minority of its employees were members of respondent union. No labor dispute or strike was in progress, and petitioners had not objected to their employees joining the union. Respondents kept two pickets at petitioners’ loading platform, to coerce petitioners into compelling or influencing their employees to join the union. The picketing was peaceful, but petitioners’ business fell off 95% because employees of other carriers refused to cross the picket line.

Held: Petitioners’ grievance was within the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board to prevent unfair labor practices under the Labor Management Relations Act, and was not subject to relief by injunction in the state courts. Pp. 486-491.

(a) The National Labor Relations Board was vested with power to entertain petitioners’ grievance, to issue its own complaint against respondents, and, pending final hearing, to seek from a federal district court an injunction to prevent irreparable injury to petitioners. Pp. 488-491.

(b) The same considerations which prohibit federal courts from intervening in such cases, except by way of review or on application of the National Labor Relations Board, and which exclude state administrative bodies from assuming control of such matters, preclude state courts from doing so. Pp. 490-491.

(c) When federal power constitutionally is exerted for the protection of public or private interests, or both, it becomes the supreme law of the land, and cannot be curtailed, circumvented, or extended by a state procedure merely because such procedure will apply some doctrine of private right. Pp. 492-501.

(d) Congress, in enacting such legislation as the Labor Management Relations Act, can save alternative or supplemental state remedies by express terms, or by some clear implication, if it sees fit. P. 501.

373 Pa. 19, 94 A. 2d 893, affirmed.