International Pocketbook Workers' Union v. Orlove

Bond, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. These appeals by a labor union and employees of the appellees, engaged in a strike to bring about the organization of a union in their trade in Baltimore, are taken from decrees enjoining some activities in the prosecution of the strike, and from orders adjudging the defendants to have been guilty of contempt in exceeding the limits imposed by a similar injunction issued at a preliminary stage in the contest. The firm of Orlove & Schwartz, and Fox, trading as M. J. Fox & Company, maintain in Baltimore City establishments for the manufacture of pocketbooks and bags. They have had open shops, employing workers without regard to their connection or lack of connection with a union, .and dealing with each singly.

Each shop occupies an upper floor of a building, and one employs about fifty-five workers, while the other employs a hundred. There are a few skilled workers, mostly men, used, and the larger portion of each force is made up of ⁵⁰⁰ ■unskilled girls and boys, from fourteen up to twenty and more years of age. All employees have been paid weekly, except that discharges have terminated employments during a week upon payment of wages for each day of work up to the times of discharges. The wages have run from $8 to as high as $40 a week, with overtime payments made, to some of the men, at least.

There are few manufacturers at this work in Baltimore, only about two hundred persons being employed at it in the whole city. The larger part of the manufacturing is done in New York or nearby, but there are a few other factories in the northeastern part of the country. The chief labor union for this trade, appellant in two of these appeals, has its headquarters in New York City. There is dispute as to the initiation of the effort to organize the union in Baltimore.

The existing union in New York is suspected of having initiated it, for the obvious advantages to its members in having employees organized in all competing establishments. One of its representatives explained in the testimony the advantage to be gained in the ability to defend high wages paid and the Saturday half holiday allowed, in union shops, against the effect of underselling by manufacturers paying lower wages for longer hours. But the actual evidence in the case is that this move originated among the men workers in the Fox shop, late in the year 1928. Those workers, the testimony is, dissatisfied with their wages and hours and some of their working conditions ■ — and there were some allegations of unreasonable discharges and a blacklist of discharged men to prevent employment elsewhere in the trade — began discussing the desirability of organizing a union, and at the dinner hour engaged in conversations with the men workers of the Orlove & Schwartz shop, and after a time arranged with a designer at the Fox shop, Yinclair, who; had worked in New York, that he have a representative of the unión in New York come help in the formation of a union here.

Such is the direct testimony of the workers, and the appellee Fox testified that, in a talk early in the movement here, one of his workmen, David ⁵⁰¹ Snyder, said that he, Snyder, had started the whole thing, and to some extent regretted it. Whether this evidence presents the whole story is unimportant, however, fox in the view, taken by this court there would be no wrong in the mere fact of origination of the movement in New York rather than in .Baltimore. As is conceded, there is a clear right in the workers to organize a union and secure collective bargaining if they can, and, so long as it is of their own free will, it is a matter of indifference whether they conclude1 to do so upon their own initiative or upon outside suggestion and persuasion. Exchange Bakery and Restaurant, Inc., v. Rifkin, 245 N. Y. 260, 263 ; Stearns Lumber Co. v. Howlet, 260 Mass. 45, 66 .

The local union was formed so far as to be able to hold a first meeting in January of 1929. The meetings, and the discussions among workmen, were noticed by the employers,, and they procured the names of workmen attending the meetings. Then each shop discharged a few of the union men, apparently, as this court reads the evidence, because of their activity in organizing' the union. The two employers were, and remained throughout, firm in their decision to maintain open shops and not to bargain with a union, collectively.

Thereupon, during the month of February, a New York, representative of the union, Shiplacoff, wrote a series of letters to each employer, asking for an interview, but these were not answered. At the instance of Shiplacoff, Rabbi Israel, of Baltimore, who is chairman of a commission of Jewish rabbis interested in industrial and social problems, had a conference with the employers, investigated the wages and conditions at the shops, and made recommendations for changes. The employers, however, maintained their position on the question of having to deal with a union of the workers, and at the end of February a strike was called, and a large portion of the workers stopped work within the next few days. So far as appears, those leaving at that time did so1 quite voluntarily, at least.

Evidence of attempts of some ⁵⁰² of them to persuade- remaining employees to join them indicates much zeal on their part in the effort they were making'. . The existence of the strike, under the auspices of the New York and Baltimore unions, was advertised in newspapers; and, as a step in the preparations, the union managers arranged in advance for bail for striking employees who might be arrested. The New York union, furthermore, arranged to pay the striking employees during the strike their ordinary wages in full. The strike was conducted quietly, with no public disturbances.

And policemen detailed ’to- watch over it reported nothing objectionable except that in a few instances striking employees on the sidewalks below the shops accosted some of those entering or coming from work. Pickets were employed. On the sidewalk below one place two men walked in opposite directions, passing and repassing, and at the other place four men walked similarly in pairs. They wore placards or banners, eighteen inches square, announcing the strike, at first with the additional statement that the employers were unfair to labor, but after the issue of the preliminary injunction merely announcing the strike under the auspices of the union.

The statement was appended that the New York union was affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. .There was testimony that placards or banners were required by the police department of the city to be carried by pickets, and that now and then pickets were warned by a policeman against walking without banners, but the exact requirement, and the purpose of it, were not explained, testimony on this having been excluded. The employers testified that the pickets tried to catch up with the workers on the street, that a greater number of employees than usual had lunch brought in to- them while the place was picketed, and that at the closing hour the girls went home in bunches to a greater degree than usual. Efforts by pickets to come near enough to see packages being loaded on wagons were testified to. There was 'testimony of striking employees loitering on nearby corners, but not engaged ⁵⁰³ in picketing.

And there was testimony, all contradicted, of scattered instances of threats by various employees on the strike to others remaining. Some of these instances, if true, seem unimportant; some seem strained in construction to bring them within the classes of strike activities which have been held wrong in cases, elsewhere. But a few other activities testified to sound more serious. There is evidence, however, of merely peaceful persuasion of employees to join the strike, and the scattered instances of threatening do not appear sufficient to show a general purpose and method of coercion of employees.

During the progress of the strike, the employers advertised in Philadelphia for workers, and secured three men, who, after they went to work, cut and destroyed material given them. Supposed confessions of the men, stricken out of the evidence by tbe court as mere hearsay statements in this case; have nevertheless been inserted in the record by tbe appellees, but they cannot, of conrse, be considered on the appeal. The testimony contains, denials of any implication of the present appellants in the actions of those men. It is admitted, however, that when the men were arrested in Baltimore, the union secured bail for them, and that counsel engaged by the union represented two. of the men arrested.

The respective employers, on March 14th, and March 15th, 1929, filed bills of complaint against, the two unions, the Mew York union and the Baltimore union, and their agents, and former employees directing the strike, and prayed that the defendants be enjoined from further interfering with the businesses, of the plaintiffs, from threatening, intimidating, or interfering with the employees or their families, or with others who. might desire .to. enter the employment, from injuring or destroying property or material, from unlawfully assembling, from maintaining pickets for the purpose of attempting to' prevent, by intimidation, coercion, or threats., any person from working for the plaintiffs, or entering tlieir employ. And at the time of the filing of the bills, preliminary injunctions were issued in exact accordance with ⁵⁰⁴ these prayers, except that the carrying by the pickets of placards designed to create public prejudice against the ■ plaintiffs was restrained in addition. Answers were filed denying the important averments of the complaints, motions to dissolve the injunctions were filed, and after a hearing the preliminary injunctions were modified slightly. On May 11th, 1929, petitions were filed alleging failure to< comply with the terms of the injunctions, and praying that the defendants be required to show cause why they should not be attached for contempt of court.

After a hearing of testimony on these petitions had been begun, the proceeding was by agreement of all concerned converted into1’ a hearing on the whole case, on the two< bills of complaint and answers, and on the petitions charging contempt of court, all in one proceeding. And after hearing all the evidence and the argument, the trial court signed decrees enjoining the defendants “from unlawfully interfering or causing any person or persons to interfere with the business of the plaintiffs, by threatening, intimidating or coercing the employees of the plaintiffs or any person who may desire to enter the plaintiff’s employ, or any member of the family of any such employee or person who may desire to enter such employ; from injuring or destroying the property or materials belonging to the plaintiffs; from unlawfully assembling or causing persons to unlawfully assemble or unlawfully parade on the streets adjoining or in front of the property of the plaintiffs carrying placards designed to create public prejudice against the plaintiffs for the purpose of threatening, intimidating ox coercing the employees of the plaintiffs, or for the purpose of preventing by intimidation, coercion or threats any person from working for the plaintiffs.” This made permanent the injunctions as they had been issued preliminarily, with their modifications. And the 'Circuit Court, in addition, passed orders adjudging the individual defendants guilty of contempt of court in acts complained of in the conduct of the strike, but, in view of a disclaimer of any intentional violation of the previous injunctions, imposed no punishment for the contempt. ⁵⁰⁵ The defendants on their appeals urge that the orders adjudging them to he in contempt constitute proper subjects of appeal, notwithstanding the lack-of any punishment imposed, because they adjudicate questions of right in the maintenance or conduct of the strike. But this we think incorrect.

Settlement of any questions, of right in such orders, over and above the findings of contempt, must be, in effect, injunctions restraining future conduct, for the cases are concerned only with such injunctions. But simultaneously with the signing of the orders, the preliminary injunctions and the orders, so far as, they might have involved restraints for the future, or anything more than the findings of past contempts, were superseded and ended by tbe final decrees. And those decrees and the injunctions issued under them are the only rulings now open and subject to, review, unless it can be held that the findings of past contempts are reviewable even though no punishments were imposed for them. And this, we think, cannot be held.

There is no injury to be redressed. It is true that the Act of 1927, chapter 593, embodied in article 5, section 31, of tbe Code, has given a right of appeal “from an o'rder remedial in its nature adjudging in contempt of court any party to a cause or any person not a party thereto (except orders passed requiring the payment of alimony) ”; but we take it that this right of appeal, like rights given by the statutes, in similar unqualified terms, of appeal from other adjudications, supposes the existence of some injury from the orders to bo redressed by appeal. The orders in the contempt proceedings aro not, therefore, now subject to review on appeal. As the final injunctions in the cases are, however, identical in words with the preliminary injunctions which were being applied in these orders, the orders show possible interpretations and applications of the final decrees.

The injunctions decreed do not draw precisely the line of distinction between what the defendants may do and what they may not. And one of the objections of the appellants is that, in the prohibitions of unlawful activities in the