After changing from short-range steam locomotives to
longer-range diesel locomotives, respondent railroads issued
general orders doubling the length of their way-freight runs,
thereby eliminating the jobs of two of their five-man way-freight
crews and changing the home or away-from-home terminals of the
remaining crews. After unsuccessfully invoking the services of the
National Mediation Board, the unions representing the members of
these crews called a strike. The railroads submitted the dispute to
the National Railroad Adjustment Board and sued for injunctive
relief. The District Court enjoined the strike pending decision by
the Adjustment Board, but only on condition that the railroads
either (1) restore the pre-existing situation, or (2) pay the
employees adversely affected the wages they would have received had
the orders not been issued.
Held: in granting an injunction to protect the
jurisdiction of the Adjustment Board, the District Court had the
equitable power to impose these conditions to protect the employees
against a harmful change in working conditions during pendency of
the dispute before the Adjustment Board. Pp.
363 U. S.
529-535.
266 F.2d 335 reversed.
Page 363 U. S. 529
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARREN delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case presents a question concerning the jurisdiction of a
Federal District Court to impose certain conditions upon a strike
injunction issued in a railway labor dispute.
The essential facts are not complicated. The respondent
Railroads operate a 302-mile branch between Wichita Falls, Texas,
and Forgan, Oklahoma. The line was originally operated with steam
locomotives capable of only short runs, and this necessitated the
stationing of five way-freight crews along the route. After
longer-range diesel locomotives were purchased to replace the steam
equipment, the Railroads issued general orders which doubled the
length of the way-freight runs, thereby eliminating the jobs of two
of the five way-freight crews and changing the home or
away-from-home terminals of the remaining crews.
The petitioner Brotherhoods, representing the engineers,
firemen, conductors and brakemen affected, protested the issuance
of the orders and invoked the services of the National Mediation
Board. Nonetheless, the Railroads put the change into effect. After
the Board advised the parties that it did not consider the dispute
one subject to mediation, the unions called a strike. On the same
day, the Railroads filed a complaint for injunctive relief in the
Federal District Court and obtained a temporary restraining order.
The Railroads then submitted the dispute to the National Railroad
Adjustment Board, to National Committees and Disputes Committees
established by the collective bargaining agreements, and to the
National
Page 363 U. S. 530
Mediation Board. They amended their complaint in the District
Court to allege the various submissions.
After a hearing, the District Court granted the injunction
pending decision by the Adjustment Board, but it did so upon
certain conditions which are the subject of the controversy before
us. These conditions required that the Railroads either (1) restore
the situation which existed prior to the General Orders, or (2) pay
the employees adversely affected by the orders the wages they would
have received had the orders not been issued.
Both sides appealed, the unions from the injunction against the
strike and the Railroads from the conditions requiring preservation
of the
status quo. The Court of Appeals sustained the
injunction but vacated the conditions, holding that the District
Court had no power to attach them. 266 F.2d 335. In so holding, the
Court of Appeals reasoned that imposition of conditions of this
character involved a preliminary judgment on the merits of a "minor
dispute," the resolution of which is committed by the Railway Labor
Act, § 3(i), 48 Stat. 1189, 45 U.S.C. § 153, to the exclusive
jurisdiction of the Adjustment Board. The question of a district
judge's jurisdiction to impose this type of condition upon an
injunction issued to preserve the Adjustment Board's jurisdiction
is both recurring and important in the field of labor-management
relations. Consequently, we granted certiorari, but limited the
grant to this issue. [
Footnote
1]
Page 363 U. S. 531
This Court held in
Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen v.
Chicago River & Ind. R. Co., 353 U. S.
30, that a Federal District Court may enjoin strikes
arising out of "minor disputes" -- generally speaking, disputes
relating to construction of a contract [
Footnote 2] -- when they have been properly submitted to
the National Railroad Adjustment Board. We concluded that such an
injunction does not fall within the prohibitions of the
Norris-LaGuardia Act, 29 U.S.C. § 101
et seq., because of
the superseding purpose of the Railway Labor Act to establish a
system of compulsory arbitration for this type of dispute, a
purpose which might be frustrated if strikes could not be enjoined
during the consideration of such a dispute by the Board. This case
presents a further question as to nature of the relief which may be
granted under the
Chicago River rule -- specifically,
whether the injunction granted the Railroad may be qualified by
conditions imposed by the District Court under traditional
equitable considerations. [
Footnote
3]
If the District Court is free to exercise the typical powers of
a court of equity, it has the power to impose conditions requiring
maintenance of the
status quo. Conditions of this nature
traditionally may be made the price
Page 363 U. S. 532
of relief when the injunctive powers of the court are invoked
and the conditions are necessary to do justice between the parties.
[
Footnote 4]
"The award of an interlocutory injunction by courts of equity
has never been regarded as strictly a matter of right, even though
irreparable injury may otherwise result to the plaintiff. . . .
[The court] will avoid . . . injury so far as may be, by attaching
conditions to the award. . . ."
Yakus v. United States, 321 U.
S. 414,
321 U. S.
440.
"[I]t is the duty of a court of equity granting injunctive
relief to do so upon conditions that will protect all . . . whose
interests the injunction may affect."
Inland Steel Co. v. United States, 306 U.
S. 153,
306 U. S. 157.
Since the power to condition relief is essential to ensure that
extraordinary equitable remedies will not become the engines of
injustice, it would require the clearest legislative direction to
justify the truncation of that power.
Such direction, if it exists, presumably must be derived from
the Railway Labor Act itself, and, since that Act contains no
express provisions circumscribing the equitable powers of the
court, such limitations, if any, must be created by clear
implication.
The Court of Appeals found the limiting legislative direction in
the provision of the Railway Labor Act granting exclusive primary
jurisdiction over "minor disputes" to the National Railroad
Adjustment Board. Its theory was that the conditions imposed by the
District Court constituted a preliminary decision on the merits of
the parties' dispute, and therefore encroached upon the
jurisdiction of the Board.
It is true that the federal courts ought not act in such a way
as to infringe upon the jurisdiction of the Board,
Page 363 U. S. 533
Order of Ry. Conductors v. Pitney, 326 U.
S. 561. But neither this principle nor the
Pitney case itself leads us to the Court of Appeals'
conclusion.
In
Pitney, we held that the District Court, in exercise
of its equity powers ancillary to its jurisdiction as a railroad
reorganization court under 11 U.S.C. § 205, should not have granted
a permanent injunction finally determining the merits of a dispute
which was within the jurisdiction of the Board, but that, instead,
it should have withheld such relief pending a determination by the
Board.
In the case at bar, however, there was no determination of the
merits of the dispute by the District Court. Nothing in the record
of the proceedings in the District Court suggests that any view on
the merits was considered. Instead, the record affirmatively
discloses that the district judge was quite aware that it was not
his function to construe the contractual provisions upon which the
parties relied for their respective positions on the merits. In
sum, the judge was scrupulous to avoid encroaching upon the
jurisdiction of the Board. [
Footnote 5]
The Court of Appeals apparently concluded that a decision on the
merits was inherent in the very conditioning of the injunction. It
is true that a District Court must make some examination of the
nature of the dispute before conditioning relief, since not all
disputes coming before the Adjustment Board threaten irreparable
injury
Page 363 U. S. 534
and justify the attachment of a condition. To fulfill its
function, the District Court must also consider the hardships, if
any, that would arise if the employees were required to await the
Board's sometimes long-delayed decisions without recourse to a
strike. But this examination of the nature of the dispute is so
unlike that which the Adjustment Board will make of the merits of
the same dispute, and is for such a dissimilar purpose, that it
could not interfere with the labor consideration of the grievance
by the Adjustment Board.
Moreover, such an examination is inherent in the grant of the
injunction itself. Yet it is settled, since
Chicago River,
that an injunction may issue to preserve the Board's jurisdiction.
We think that, in logic, we must hold that the conditions are
proper also, at least where they are designed not only to promote
the interests of justice, but also to preserve the jurisdiction of
the Board.
It is not difficult to perceive how the conditions imposed in
this case could be deemed to serve to protect the jurisdiction of
the Board. The dispute out of which the judicial controversy arose
does not merely concern rates of pay or job assignments, but rather
involves the discharge of employees from positions long held, and
the dislocation of others from their homes. From the point of view
of these employees, the critical point in the dispute may be when
the change is made, for, by the time of the frequently long delayed
Board decision, it might well be impossible to make them whole in
any realistic sense. If this be so, the action of the district
judge, rather than defeating the Board's jurisdiction, would
operate to preserve that jurisdiction by preventing injury so
irreparable that a decision of the Board in the union's favor would
be but an empty victory.
It is true that preventing the Railroad from instituting the
change imposed upon it the burden of maintaining what may be a less
efficient and more costly operation.
Page 363 U. S. 535
The balancing of these competing claims of irreparable hardship
is, however, the traditional function of the equity court, the
exercise of which is reviewable only for abuse of discretion. And,
although respondents maintain that there has been such an abuse in
this case, scrutiny of the record does not persuade us that the
evidence was insufficient to support the judge's action.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is
Reversed.
MR. JUSTICE HARLAN and MR. JUSTICE STEWART, while agreeing with
the Court that the District Court had power to condition the
issuance of the injunction, would vacate the judgment of the Court
of Appeals and remand the case to that court for consideration of
respondents' contention that the District Court's action involved
an abuse of discretion.
[
Footnote 1]
The order granting certiorari limits our review to the following
question:
"Whether a district court, under circumstances where a dispute
arising under the Railway Labor Act has been submitted by a
railroad to the National Railroad Adjustment Board and an
injunction against a strike by employees is sought on authority of
Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen v. Chicago River and Ind. R.R.
Co., 353 U. S. 30, may, on the
granting of an injunction, impose reasonable conditions designed to
protect the employees against a harmful change in working
conditions during pendency of the dispute before the Adjustment
Board by ordering that the railroad restore the
status quo
or, in the alternative, pay the employees the amount they would
have been paid had changes in working conditions giving rise to the
dispute not been made."
361 U.S. 810.
[
Footnote 2]
See Elgin, J. & E. R. Co. v. Burley, 325 U.
S. 711,
325 U. S. 723;
Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen v. Chicago River & Ind. R.
Co., 353 U. S. 30,
353 U. S.
33-34.
[
Footnote 3]
We did not decide in
Chicago River, and we do not
decide here, whether a federal court can, during the pendency of a
dispute before the Board, enjoin a carrier from effectuating the
changes which gave rise to and constitute the subject matter of the
dispute, independently of any suit by the railroad for equitable
relief. As we read the order of the District Court, this case does
not involve independent relief for the union.
[
Footnote 4]
See 2 Pomeroy, Equity Jurisprudence, 51, 57-59 (5th ed.
1941); 1 Story, Equity Jurisprudence, §§ 69-76 (14th ed. 1918);
Central Kentucky Natural Gas Co. v. Railroad Comm'n,
290 U. S. 264,
290 U. S.
271.
[
Footnote 5]
The judge said at one stage of the proceeding,
"Now, let us see where we are. There is a contract. We have not
analyzed the contract, because it is useless for us to analyze it
because, regardless of what conclusion we reach about the
provisions of that contract, we have no right to enforce its
provisions or deny its provisions. Those conditions can be
determined first only by the Railroad Adjustment Act,. . . ."
"This Court is without power to construe that contract, which
the defendants claim has been broken by the company."
R. 316-317.