The Supreme Court dropped its latest anti-labor decision Thursday, expanding the rights of companies to sue striking workers.
Employees who go on strike are largely protected from lawsuits under the National Labor Relations Act. The law says that as long as strikers don’t intentionally damage company property, they can’t be sued.
However, the Supreme Court’s latest ruling expanded the definition of “intentionally damage,” potentially forcing more unions to face expensive lawsuits.
The case centered on a group of concrete truck drivers in Washington State. During a 2017 labor dispute with their company, Glacier Northwest, the drivers walked off the job while concrete was still spinning in their trucks.
Because concrete hardens relatively quickly, non-union employees at Glacier Northwest had to rush to empty the trucks, and the day’s concrete remained undelivered and went to waste.
In previous, similar situations, lower federal courts had sided with employees in charge of spoilable products like milk and cheese, but against workers handling molten iron. In an 8-1 decision, the court decided that concrete landed on the molten iron side of the spectrum.
“The resulting risk of harm to Glacier’s equipment and destruction of its concrete were both foreseeable and serious,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority decision. “The Union thus failed to ‘take reasonable precautions to protect’ against this foreseeable and imminent danger.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the lone dissenter on the court. She was joined elsewhere by many labor leaders who warned that the decision would weaken strike threats nationwide.
“Make no mistake — this ruling has everything to do with giving companies more power to hobble workers if any attempt is made to fight back against a growing system of corruption,” said Teamsters president Sean O’Brien.
In the past five years, the Supreme Court has also ruled against organized labor in two crucial cases — one that allowed non-union public employees to avoid paying dues but maintain union protections, and another that denied union organizers access to farm property.