Labor Law: Ineffective Injunctions

Few weapons of the law raise the hackles of organized labor faster than the antistrike injunction. In the early 20th century, most labor injunctions in volved private industry, favored management and were enforced. Now they are being used in the public sector, favor state or city governments — and are ignored or appealed to death.

Strictly speaking, an injunction is simply an order by a court requiring that its interpretation of the law be com plied with. Willful failure to comply is contempt of court, and fines and jail sentences can be imposed. Overuse of the device in the early days of trade unionism made "government by injunction" a burning political issue; by 1930, Felix Frankfurter and Nathan Greene, in a classic book on the subject, were proposing a new law and writing that "injunctions ought never to become rou tine." Two years later, the Norris-La Guardia Act virtually eliminated them in federal courts, and later Supreme Court rulings eventually curbed state courts as well.

Tried & Failed. As a result, employer-obtained labor injunctions largely disappeared. Even the Taft-Hartley Act, which gave the President power to seek an 80-day strike injunction when the na tional health or safety was imperiled, did not make much difference. In the 20 years since it became law, it has been invoked only 28 times.

All of this action, however, affected just the private sector. For public employees, it remains true that strikes are illegal and that any attempt to strike can be fought with an injunction. In a famous 1946 case, a strike by John L. Lewis' United Mine Workers against coal mines then operated by the Government was smashed by a federal court order that eventually cost the union $700,000 in fines and Lewis himself $10,000. Nonetheless, work stoppages by Government employees are increasing phenomenally; there were 142 last year, more than three times the total of the year before. And in many cases, injunctions were tried and failed.

Two Remedies. In the recent spate of teacher walkouts across the country, injunctions have had little effect. Earlier this month, police and firemen on strike in Youngstown, Ohio, ignored an injunction to go back to work. In order to get around the legal ban against public-employee strikes, the unions have labeled their walkouts "mass resignations" and "professional study days." The courts have issued injunctions anyway, but the unions block the injunctions with appeals and indifference. They are rarely punished, the reason being that as part of the eventual settlement the unions obtain a promise that the government will help bury any legal consequences that might otherwise proceed from the strike.