Injunction, New Style

Because some judges have abused the power to restrain unions, recent Federal legislation has treated U. S. District judges like problem children. In most labor disputes. Federal injunctions are forbidden by the Norris-LaGuardia Act. The Wagner Act routes , appeals from NLRB decisions direct to U. S. Circuit Courts, forbids lower courts to enjoin the Board, in general assumes that the less District judges have to say about labor cases the better.

Last week, wordy, 80-year-old District Judge Oliver Booth Dickinson of Philadelphia had much to say, thereby made an obscure labor case highly significant and, at least temporarily, regained some of his lost powers. Noting that the Wagner Act suspends Norris-LaGuardia restrictions in so far as they hamper Circuit Court enforcement of NLRB orders. Judge Dickinson deduced that District courts may intervene by injunction to protect NLRB from interference while cases are before the Board. In the case before Judge Dickinson last week, four A. F. of L. unions were interfering with NLRB.

They and a C. I. O. union had got into a row over the right to represent employes of Union Premier Food Stores Inc. NLRB called an election to determine the workers' preference. A. F. of L. refused to participate, picketed the stores, demanded that Judge Dickinson dismiss the company's petition for a restraining order. Instead, Judge Dickinson found that the Wagner Act permitted him to do, in NLRB's interest, what the Norris-LaGuardia Act forbade: order the pickets to disperse.

Said he: "[The stores'] present predicament is wholly due to the circumstance that their employes are unorganized and looked upon as fair game for the organizers. . . . The law which stands behind [NLRB] in enforcing its judgments will and must stand behind it in reaching those judgments. ... No friend of labor, or at least organized labor, could think otherwise."

A. F. of L. Counsel Joseph Padway thought otherwise, declared in Washington: "The Wagner Act specifically provides under Section 13 that 'nothing in this act shall be construed so as to interfere with, or impede or diminish in any way the right to strike.' The American Federation of Labor will appeal this case. . . ."

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