Labor & Collective Bargaining

Statutory Labor Exemption: A number of statutes have made organized labor exempt from federal antitrust laws. The statutes declare that labor unions are not combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade, and they exempt specific union activities, including secondary picketing and boycotts, from the operation of the antitrust laws. They do not exempt concerted action or agreements between unions and nonlabor parties.

Click the following links for the full text of the relevant statutes.

§ 6 of the Clayton Act (15 U.S.C. 17) states that the antitrust laws are not applicable to labor organizations.

Section 52 of the federal labor laws (29 U.S.C. 52) restricts the use of injunctive relief against organized labor.

§ 104 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act has an enumeration of specific acts related to labor disputes that are not subject to restraining orders or injunctions, and Section 105 bars the use of injunctive relief by any court against the types of concerted action enumerated in Sec. 104. (29 U.S.C. 104, 105 ).

In the Connell Case, cited as Connell Construction Co. v. Plumbers & Steamfitters, 421 U.S. 616 (1975), the Supreme Court noted that using state antitrust laws to regulate union activities in aid of union organization would risk substantial conflict with policies central to federal labor law.

Nonstatutory Labor Exemption The Supreme Court has recognized that a proper accommodation between the congressional policy favoring collective bargaining under the National Labor Relations Act and the congressional policy favoring free competition in business markets requires that some union-employer agreements and aspects of the collective bargaining process be accorded a limited nonstatutory exemption from antitrust sanctions. See Meat Cutters v. Jewel Tea, 381 U.S. 676 (1965).

This "nonstatutory" labor exemption applies where needed to make the collective-bargaining process work. See, e.g., Connell Constr. Co. v. Plumbers, 421 U.S. 616 (1975).

The Supreme Court held, in Brown v. Pro Football, (1996) that the post-impasse imposition of a proposed employment term concerning a mandatory subject of bargaining is within the nonstatutory antitrust exemption, as it plays a significant role in the multiemployer collective-bargaining process, which itself comprises an important part of the Nation's industrial relations system. The Pro Football Court reasoned that subjecting such conduct to antitrust law would threaten to introduce instability and uncertainty into the collective-bargaining process, because antitrust often forbids or discourages the kinds of joint discussions and behavior that collective bargaining invites or requires.

In its Pennington Decision, 381 U.S. 657 (1965) the Supreme Court ruled that an agreement between a union and employers to secure uniform labor standards throughout an industry is not exempt from the antitrust laws. Although a union may make wage agreements with a multi-employer bargaining unit and may, in pursuance of its own self-interests, and seek to obtain the same terms from other employers, it forfeits its antitrust exemption when it agrees with a group of employers to impose a certain wage scale on other bargaining units and thus joins a conspiracy to curtail competition.