LABOR LAW-ELIMINATION OF BUSINESSMEN-WORKERS AS A LEGITIMATE UNION OBJECTIVE

Authors

John Dobson, University of Michigan Law SchoolFollow

Abstract

For some seven or eight years before the commencement of their suit for injunction, plaintiffs had been jointly engaged in the business of distributing milk and milk products to retail dealers in a certain area. They performed all of their own labor, purchasing from wholesalers and making delivery to retail customers in their own trucks which they owned and individually operated. The defendants were the Milk Drivers and Dairy Employees Union, Local No. 93, and Paul Jones, its secretary-treasurer. Defendant union had entered into union shop contracts with about 95 per cent of the milk wholesalers in the area, whose business was the selling of milk and milk products to distributors, among whom were plaintiffs. Plaintiffs declined a union proposal that they employ members of the union to drive plaintiffs' trucks, but they did apply for admission to membership in defendant union. This application was rejected on the ground that plaintiffs were "independent peddler distributors." The union then sent a letter to all of the wholesalers with whom it had contracts requesting that they discontinue selling to the independent peddler distributors. The wholesalers complied with this request, fearing the economic pressure that the union could bring to bear upon them, and plaintiffs were thus prevented from securing any products to distribute. The lower court granted plaintiffs a decree in their suit, permanently restraining and enjoining defendants from preventing plaintiffs from obtaining milk or milk products from those who had supplied them with these commodities. Held, decree affirmed. The businessmen-workers, who operate without employees, constitute a minority group whose activities are not fundamentally opposed to the special interests of organized labor, and the elimination of such persons from economic life is not a legitimate object of concerted labor activity. Any union which exerts economic pressure to eliminate the businessman-worker as such, and at the same time excludes him from union membership on that ground alone, is going beyond the bounds of legitimate union activity. Bautista v. Jones, 25 Cal. (2d) 746, 155 P. (2d) 343 (1945).

Recommended Citation

John Dobson, LABOR LAW-ELIMINATION OF BUSINESSMEN-WORKERS AS A LEGITIMATE UNION OBJECTIVE, 44 Mich. L. Rev. 314 (1945).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol44/iss2/11