High Court case could clip union’s use of strikes as a bargaining strategy

Labor unions’ bargaining power through the use of strikes could be affected by a ruling in a case before the Supreme Court. The case is centered on how the court interprets provisions of the National Labor Relations Act.

The Supreme Court agreed last week to review whether an employer might bring a state law tort claim for property damage or whether such claims are preempted by the NLRA, Bloomberg Law reported. 

The case dates to 2017, when a work stoppage by 16 truck drivers for ready-mix concrete supplier Glacier Northwest, doing business as CalPortland, resulted in the spoilage of 16 loads of cement. According to Glacier, the drivers were in cahoots with International Brotherhood of Teamsters Union Local No. 174 while collective bargaining negotiations were taking place. The company sued “for intentional destruction of property, misrepresentation, and tortious interference with a business relationship, relating to the union’s conduct during and immediately after an August 2017 strike,” according to court records. 

State courts and federal appellate courts have sided with the union, which has claimed that the 16 drivers left their trucks running so that the company could dispose of the concrete and that it was the company that allowed the concrete to spoil.

Glacier contends that the union’s strike lost its protected status under the NLRA because the timing led to destruction of their product. According to court records, however, the Washington Supreme Court ruled that the inconvenience and economic loss do not render the strike unprotected under the NLRA.

The US Supreme Court might see things differently, according to attorney Aaron Vance of Barnes & Thornburg. He opined that the conservative majority might tend to favor the business owner.

“A decision for Glacier would likely make it easier for employers to recover property damage they suffer incidental to a strike,” he wrote in an article for the National Law Review. “Even more so, the availability of punitive damages under state tort law would provide an effective disincentive for employees or unions that might otherwise engage in reckless or malicious conduct while exercising their rights under the NLRA.”