# National Labor Relations Board v. Denver Building & Construction Trades Council

> Supreme Court of the United States · June 4, 1951 · 341 U.S. 675

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9420622

## Case

- **Full name:** NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD v. DENVER BUILDING & CONSTRUCTION TRADES COUNCIL Et Al.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** June 4, 1951
- **Citations:** 341 U.S. 675; 28 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2108; 71 S. Ct. 943; 95 L. Ed. 2d 1284; 95 L. Ed. 1284; 1951 U.S. LEXIS 2409
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Douglas
- **Judges:** Burton, Douglas, Jackson, Reed
- **Cited by:** 644 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9420622

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- affirming Board’s assertion of jurisdiction over activities taking place at local construction site based on finding that “any widespread application of the practices charged might well result in substantially decreasing” the flow of interstate commerce
- noting the “dual congressional objectives of preserving the right of labor organizations to bring pressure to bear on offending employers in primary labor disputes and of shielding unoffending employers and others from pressures in controversies not their own”
- noting that section 8(b)(4) was intended to preserve “the right of labor organizations to bring pressure to bear on offending employers in primary labor disputes”
- describing the classic forms of unlawful secondary activity

## Opinion text

Mr. Justice Douglas,
with whom Mr, Justice Reed joins, dissenting.
The employment of union and nonunion men on the same job is a basic protest in trade union history. That was the protest here. The union was not out to destroy the contractor because of his antiunion attitude. The union was not pursuing the contractor to other jobs. All the union asked was that union men not be compelled to work alongside nonunion men on the same job. As Judge Rifkind stated in an analogous case, “the union was not extending its activity to a front remote from the immediate dispute but to one intimately and indeed inextricably united to it.” 1
The picketing would undoubtedly have been legal if there had been no subcontractor involved — if the general *693 contractor had put nonunion men on the job. The presence of a subcontractor does not alter one whit the realities of the situation; the protest of the union is precisely the same. In each the union was trying to protect the job on which union men were employed. If that is forbidden, the Taft-Hartley Act makes the right to strike, guaranteed by § 13, dependent on fortuitous business arrangements that have no significance so far as the evils of the secondary boycott are concerned. I would give scope to both § 8 (b) (4) and § 13 by reading the restrictions of § 8 (b) (4) to reach the case where an industrial dispute spreads from the job to another front. 2
Douds v. Metropolitan Federation, 75 F. Supp. 672, 677 .
See the opinion of Judge Fahy below, 87 U. S. App. D. C. 293, 186 F. 2d 326 ; and the dissenting opinion of Judge Clark, International Brotherhood v. Labor Board, 181 F. 2d 34, 40 .

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9420622. Public record. Not legal advice.