Section 26 Retail Store Employees Union (1980)?Limits of Product Boycott Doctrine

• Library: Employer-Employee Law 2008

The Tree Fruits decision—NLRB v. Fruit & Vegetable Packers & Warehousemen, Local 760 (Tree Fruits), 377 U.S. 58 (1964)—established that unions could picket to discourage the purchase of one or more struck products distributed by a secondary but did not establish the limits of such picketing when a boycott would cut off all trade with the secondary. In NLRB v. Retail Store Employees Union, Local 1001, 447 U.S. 607 (1980), the Supreme Court resolved this issue and decided that picketing aimed at a total or substantial boycott of a secondary violates NLRA § 8(b)(4)(B), 29 U.S.C. § 158(b)(4)(B).

In Retail Store Employees Union, a union having a dispute with Safeco picketed various title insurance companies that sold policies underwritten by Safeco. Approximately 90% of the policies sold were underwritten by Safeco, and an effective boycott would have forced the companies either to stop doing business completely or to stop doing business with Safeco. The majority opinion distinguished Tree Fruits:

As long as secondary picketing only discourages consumption of a struck product, incidental injury to the neutral is a natural consequence of an effective primary boycott. But the Union’s secondary appeal against the central product sold by the title companies in this case is “reasonably calculated to induce customers not to patronize the neutral parties at all.” The resulting injury to their...