No. 72-1597
Argued: February 19, 1974Decided: May 15, 1974
282 N.C. 530, 193 S. E. 2d 911, affirmed.
BRENNAN, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.
Larry L. Eubanks argued the cause and filed a brief for petitioners.
Ralph M. Stockton, Jr., argued the cause for respondents. With him on the brief were J. Robert Elster and James H. Kelly, Jr. *
[ Footnote * ] Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed by Solicitor General Bork, Peter G. Nash, John S. Irving, Patrick Hardin, and [416 U.S. 653, 654] Norton J. Come for the National Labor Relations Board, and by James M. Miles for Associated Industries, Inc., et al. [416 U.S. 653, 654]
MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court.
Taft-Hartley amendments 1 of the National Labor Relations Act excluded supervisors from the protections of the Act and thus freed employers to discharge supervisors without violating the Act’s restraints against [416 U.S. 653, 655] discharges on account of labor union membership. The question in this case is whether those amendments also freed the employer from liability in damages to the discharged supervisors under 95-81 and 95-83 of North Carolina’s right-to-work law that provides such an action for employees discharged for union membership. 2
Respondent Food Fair of North Carolina, Inc. (Food Fair), a grocery chain, operates stores throughout North Carolina. Petitioners were managers of meat departments in Food Fair Stores in the Winston-Salem area. When Local 525 of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America, AFL-CIO, organized the stores’ meatcutters, petitioners also joined the union. Food Fair discharged them, allegedly on account of their union membership, immediately after Local 525 won a representation election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. The Local claimed that the discharges constituted an unfair labor practice and filed charges with the Regional Director of the NLRB. The Regional Director refused to issue a complaint on the ground that petitioners were “supervisors” excluded from the Act’s protection. On appeal, the NLRB General [416 U.S. 653, 656] Counsel refused to issue a complaint, on the same ground. 3 Petitioners thereupon brought this suit in state court against Food Fair under 95-83. Food Fair contended successfully that the second clause of 14 (a) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. 164 (a) – “but no employer . . . shall be compelled to deem individuals defined herein as supervisors as employees for the purpose of any law, either national or local, relating to collective bargaining” – prohibited enforcement of the state law in favor of supervisors, and was granted summary judgment. The North Carolina Court of Appeals reversed in reliance upon Hanna Mining v. Marine Engineers, 382 U.S. 181 (1965). 15 N.C. App. 323, 190 S. E. 2d 333 (1972). The North Carolina Supreme Court in turn reversed the Court of Appeals and reinstated the summary judgment. 282 N.C. 530, 193 S. E. 2d 911 (1973). We granted certiorari, 414 U.S. 907 (1973). We affirm.
Petitioners concede that the Taft-Hartley amendments exclude supervisors from the protection of the Act. And it is undisputed that petitioners’ status as “supervisors” has been settled by the determinations of the Regional Director and General Counsel of the NLRB. See n. 3, supra; Hanna Mining v. Marine Engineers, supra, at 190; Brief for Respondents 7. The Act therefore did not protect petitioners against discharge by Food Fair solely because of their membership in Local 525. Oil City Brass Works v. NLRB, 357 F.2d 466 (CA5 1966); NLRB v. [416 U.S. 653, 657] Fullerton Publishing Co., 283 F.2d 545 (CA9 1960). See NLRB v. Inter-City Advertising Co., 190 F.2d 420 (CA4 1951); NLRB v. Griggs Equipment, Inc., 307 F.2d 275 (CA5 1962); NLRB v. Big Three Welding Equipment Co., 359 F.2d 77 (CA5 1966); Brief for Petitioners 8-9.
Our inquiry is thus narrowed to the determination of whether Congress, in addition to denying the protections of the federal law to supervisors discharged for union membership, should be taken as having also precluded North Carolina from affording petitioners its state damages remedy for such discharges. Section 14 (a) does not wholly foreclose state regulations respecting the status of supervisors, but its two clauses require individualized consideration in view of the Court of Appeals’ reliance on Hanna Mining. Hanna, construing the first clause – “Nothing herein shall prohibit any individual employed as a supervisor from becoming or remaining a member of a labor organization” – held that “certainly Congress made no considered decision generally to exclude state limitations on supervisory organizing,” 382 U.S., at 190 . The Court accordingly held that the Wisconsin anti-picketing statutes – that furthered, not hindered, the Act’s limitations – could be applied to activity by a union of supervisors.
That construction, of course, is consistent with the objectives of the section. But the second clause is a broad command that no employer shall be compelled to treat supervisors as employees for the purpose of “any law, either national or local, relating to collective bargaining.” Consistently with this broader command, and Hanna’s further statement that “Congress’ propelling intention was to relieve employers from any compulsion under the Act and under state law to countenance or bargain with any union of supervisory employees,” 382 U.S., at 189 , the North Carolina Supreme Court concluded that 95-81 and 95-83 of the State’s right-to-work [416 U.S. 653, 658] law contravened the congressional objective. That court held: “To permit a state law to deprive an employer of his right to discharge his supervisor for membership in a union would completely frustrate the congressional determination to leave this weapon of self-help to the employer.” 282 N.C., at 541, 193 S. E. 2d, at 918.
Petitioners argue, however, that Congress must have meant that the reach of the limitation of the second clause that “no employer . . . shall be compelled to deem . . . supervisors as employees for the purpose of any law, either national or local, relating to collective bargaining” (emphasis supplied) did not bar state damages remedies for the discharge of supervisors for union membership but was a limited prohibition against state regulations that compel the employer to bargain collectively with unions that include supervisors as members. The legislative history of 14 (a), read with its companion amendments, 2 (3) and 2 (11), satisfies us that Congress embraced laws like North Carolina’s 95-81 and 95-83 within the prohibition against “any [local] law . . . relating to collective bargaining.”
Section 2 (3) of the National Labor Relations Act before the 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments provided that “[t]he term `employee’ shall include any employee . . . .” 49 Stat. 450. The NLRB, after much vacillation, 4 interpreted this term as including supervisors. Packard [416 U.S. 653, 659] Motor Car Co. v. NLRB, 330 U.S. 485 (1947), sustained the Board. Congress reacted by amending 2 (3) and 2 (11), and enacting 14 (a) for the express purpose of relieving employers of obligations under the Act when supervisors, if employees under the Act, would be the focus of concern. Hanna Mining v. Marine Engineers, supra, at 188. Those amendments were the product of compromise of H. R. 3020 and S. 1126, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. (1947). There were differences in the specific provisions addressed to supervisory employees, 5 but no difference in objective. Employers were not to be obliged to recognize and bargain with unions including or composed of supervisors, 6 because supervisors were management [416 U.S. 653, 660] obliged to be loyal to their employer’s interests, and their identity with the interests of rank-and-file employees might impair that loyalty and threaten realization of the basic ends of federal labor legislation. Thus the House Report stated:
-
- “Management, like labor, must have faithful agents. – If we are to produce goods competitively and in such large quantities that many can buy them at low cost, then, just as there are people on labor’s side to say what workers want and have a right to expect, there must be in management and loyal to it persons not subject to influence or control of unions, not only to assign people to their work, to see that they keep at their work and do it well, to correct them when they are at fault, and to settle their complaints and grievances, but to determine how much work employees should do, what pay they should receive for it, and to carry on the whole of labor relations.” H. R. Rep. No. 245, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 16 (1947).
Further:
- “The bill does not forbid anyone to organize. It does not forbid any employer to recognize a union of foremen. Employers who, in the past, have bargained collectively with supervisors may continue to do so. What the bill does is to say what the law always has said until the Labor Board, in the exercise of what it modestly calls its `expertness,’ changed the law: That no one, whether employer or employee, need have as his agent one who is obligated to those on the other side, or one whom, for any reason, he does not trust.” Id., at 17 (emphasis in original).
The same theme – that unionizing supervisors threatened realization of the basic objectives of the Act to increase the output of goods in commerce by promoting labor peace – is repeated in the Senate Report. The Report refers to the NLRB rulings that included supervisors as protected employees as
- “[a] recent development which probably more than any other single factor has upset any real balance of power in the collective-bargaining process . . . .
- “The folly of permitting a continuation of this policy is dramatically illustrated by what has happened in the captive mines of the Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. Since supervisory employees were organized by the United Mine Workers under the protection of the act. Disciplinary slips issued by the underground supervisors in these mines have fallen off by two-thirds and the accident rate in each mine has doubled.” S. Rep. No. 105, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 3, 4 (1947).
This history compels the conclusion that Congress’ dominant purpose in amending 2 (3) and 2 (11), and enacting 14 (a) was to redress a perceived imbalance in [416 U.S. 653, 662] labor-management relationships that was found to arise from putting supervisors in the position of serving two masters with opposed interests. See generally NLRB v. Bell Aerospace Co., ante, p. 267. We conclude, therefore, that the second clause of 14 (a) relieving the employer of obligations under “any law either national or local, relating to collective bargaining” applies to any law that requires an employer “to accord to the front line of management the anomalous status of employees.” S. Rep. No. 105, supra, at 5. Enforcement against respondents in this case of 95-81 and 95-83 would plainly put pressure on respondents “to accord to the front line of management the anomalous status of employees,” and would therefore flout the national policy against compulsion upon employers from either federal or state agencies to treat supervisors as employees. Cf. Teamsters Union v. Morton, 377 U.S. 252, 258 -260 (1964).
