involving a union shop agreement and the National Labor Relations Act § 8(a)(3): “Full union membership thus no longer can be a requirement of employment.... By allowing employees to resign from a union at any time, § 8(a)(3) protects the employee whose views come to diverge from those of his union.”
How later courts described this case
- involving a union shop agreement and the National Labor Relations Act § 8(a)(3): “Full union membership thus no longer can be a requirement of employment.... By allowing employees to resign from a union at any time, § 8(a)(3) protects the employee whose views come to diverge from those of his union.”
- recognizing right of employees to refrain from concerted union activities by being able to resign union membership without interference.
- stating that “[u]nder Section 8(b)(1)(A
- “We decide today whether a union is precluded from fining employees who have attempted to resign when resignations are prohibited by the union’s constitution.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Justice White,
concurring.
I agree with the Court that the Board’s construction of §§ 7 and 8(b)(1)(A) is a permissible one and should be upheld. The employee’s rights under § 7 include, among others, the right to refrain from joining or assisting a labor organization and from engaging in concerted activities for mutual aid or protection. The right to join or not to join a labor union includes the right to resign, and § 8(b)(1)(A) forbids unions to interfere with that right except to the extent, if any, that such interference is permitted by the proviso to that section, which preserves the union’s right to prescribe its own rules with respect to the acquisition or retention of membership. The proviso might be read as permitting restrictions on resignation during a strike, since they would seem to relate to the “retention” of membership. But it can also be sensibly read to refer only to the union’s right to determine who shall be allowed to join and to remain in the union. The latter is the Board’s interpretation. Under that view, restrictions on resignations are not saved by the proviso, and the rule at issue in this case may not be enforced.
For the Act to be administered with the necessary flexibility and responsiveness to “the actualities of industrial relations,” NLRB v. Steelworkers, 357 U. S. 357, 362-364 (1958), the primary responsibility for construing its general provisions must be with the Board, and that is where Congress has placed it. “[W]e should ‘recognize without hesitation the primary function and responsibility of the Board’ ” to apply these provisions to particular, and often complex, situations. Ford Motor Co. v. NLRB, 441 U. S. 488, 496 (1979), quoting NLRB v. Insurance Agents, 361 U. S. 477, 499 (1960). *117 Where the statutory language is rationally susceptible to contrary readings, and the search for congressional intent is unenlightening, deference to the Board is not only appropriate, but necessary.
This is such a case. The Board has adopted a sensible construction of the imprecise language of §§7 and 8 that is not negated by the legislative history of the Act. That Congress eliminated from the bill under consideration a provision that would have made certain restrictions on resignation unfair labor practices falls short of indicating an intention to foreclose the Board’s reading. By the same token, however, there is nothing in the legislative history to indicate that the Board’s interpretation is the only acceptable construction of the Act, and the relevant sections are also susceptible to the construction urged by the union in this case. Therefore, were the Board arguing for that interpretation of the Act, I would accord its view appropriate deference.
Because I do not understand it to be inconsistent with the foregoing views, I join the Court’s opinion.