RENZEL CO v. WAREHOUSEMEN UNION 38 44 (1939)

Plaintiff applied for an injunction restraining the defendants from picketing its place of business and from interfering with the conduct of its business by means of boycott, secondary boycott, or similar activities. Defendants appeared by demurrer only. Upon the return to an order to show cause, a temporary injunction was issued from which the appeal is taken.

The allegations of the complaint which are here admitted to be true, are that plaintiff, engaged in the wholesale grocery business in the city of San Jose, had in its employ about forty employees in the capacity of warehousemen and teamsters, none of whom was a member of a labor organization; that for a long time past the plaintiff had paid its employees wages in excess of the prevailing labor union scale and had no labor dispute with any of its employees regarding wages, working conditions, or otherwise. That the defendant Warehousemen's Union I.L.A. No. 38–44 was an unincorporated labor union having not more than six members. That on July 15, 1937, the defendant Montes, as business agent of that union, called upon plaintiff and “demanded that plaintiff sign a contract with them whereby all its employees would be compelled to join said labor union or be discharged and that plaintiff should agree to employ union men exclusively”. That plaintiff refused to sign such a contract, whereupon defendants caused pickets to be placed in front of plaintiff's warehouse carrying signs reading “unfair to organized labor”. That, in addition to the use of such pickets, the defendants placed a boycott, or “secondary boycott”, upon plaintiff's business by circularizing its customers with letters announcing that plaintiff was “unfair to organized labor” and by following plaintiff's trucks in the delivery of merchandise and by visiting and soliciting the customers not to trade with plaintiff.

The temporary injunction from which the appeal is taken was entered on August 11, 1937. At that time, the effective statute declaring the policy of the state in relation to agreements between employers and employees was the act of May 26, 1933 (Deering's Gen.Laws Supp.1933, Act 4104). Section 1 of that act declared the public policy to be that: “Negotiation of terms and conditions of labor should result from voluntary agreement between employer and employees. * Therefore it is necessary that the individual workman have full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of his own choosing, to negotiate the terms and conditions of his employment *.” Section 2 of the act then declared that every “promise hereafter made * between any employee or prospective employee and his employer * whereby either party thereto undertakes or promises to join or to remain a member of some specific labor organization * is hereby declared to be contrary to public policy *.”

It is argued by appellants that the statute was designed to prohibit only the so-called “yellow dog” contract whereby an employer forced his employees to become and remain members of a company union, organized and dominated by the employer, or forced them to agree not to join any union. But it is manifest that the statute went far beyond that when it denounced a contract requiring the employees to join “some specific labor organization”.

Here it is conceded that all the acts of defendants of which the plaintiff complained were acts designed for the sole purpose of compelling the employer to force his employees to join in the type of contract denounced by the act. By stipulation of the parties the cause was argued and heard with McKay v. Retail Automobile Salesmen's Local Union No. 1067 et al., Cal.App., 89 P.2d 426, this day decided and, for the reasons stated therein, the acts of the defendants herein were conducted for an unlawful purpose since they were all designed to compel the plaintiff by unlawful means to do an act which was expressly declared unlawful.

The order appealed from is affirmed.

NOURSE, Presiding Justice.

We concur: STURTEVANT, J.; SPENCE, J.