“Under § 7 of the Act the employees have ‘the right to refrain from any or all’ concerted activities relating to collective bargaining or mutual aid and protection____”
How later courts described this case
- “Under § 7 of the Act the employees have ‘the right to refrain from any or all’ concerted activities relating to collective bargaining or mutual aid and protection____”
- § 7 gives an employee the right to refuse to undertake and involve himself in union activities
- union cannot fine employees who resign before crossing picket line
- resignation from union and refusal to strike
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion because for me the institutional needs of the Union, important though they are, do not outweigh the rights and needs of the individual. The balance is close and difficult; unions have need for solidarity and at no time is that need more pressing than under the stress of economic conflict. Yet we have given special protection to the associational rights of individuals in a variety of contexts; through § 7 of the Labor Act, Congress has manifested its concern with those rights in the specific context of our national scheme of collective bargaining. Where the individual employee has freely chosen to exercise his legal right to abandon the privileges of union membership, it is not for us to impose the obligations of continued membership.