The sole question in the case is the one we set down for reargument in 373 U.S. 746, 747-748, 83 S.Ct. 1461, 10 L.Ed. 678: 'whether the Florida courts, rather than solely the National Labor Relations Board, are tribunals with jurisdiction to enforce
In this case the union and the employer negotiated a collective bargaining agreement that contained an 'agency shop' clause providing that the employees covered by the contract who chose not to join the union were required 'to pay as a condition of employment, an initial service fee and monthly service fees' to the union. Nonunion employees brought suit in a Florida court to have the agency shop clause declared illegal, for an injunction against enforcement of it, and for an accounting. The Florida Supreme Court held that this negotiated and executed union-security agreement violates the 'right to work' provision of the Florida Constitution and that the state courts have jurisdiction to afford a remedy. Fla., 141 So.2d 269.
We agree with that view.
While § 8(a)(3) of the Taft-Hartley Act provides that it is not an unfair labor practice for an employer and a union to require membership in a union as a condition of employment provided the specified conditions are met, § 14(b) (61 Stat. 151, 29 U.S.C. § 164(b)) provides:
'Nothing in this Act shall be construed as authorizing the execution or application of agreements requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment in any State or Territory in which such execution or application is prohibited by State or Territorial law.'
We start from the premise that, while Congress could preempt as much or as little of this interstate field as it chose, it would be odd to construe § 14(b) as permitting a State to prohibit the agency clause but barring it from implementing its own law with sanctions of the kind involved here.
Section 14(b) came into the law in 1947, some years after the Wagner Act. The latter did not bar as a matter of federal law an agency-shop agreement. Section 8 (a)(3) of the Taft-Hartley Act also allowed it, saying that 'nothing in this Act, or in any other statute of the United States, shall preclude' one.
By the time § 14(b) was written into the Act, twelve States had statutes or constitutional provisions outlawing or restricting the closed shop and related devices -a state power which we sustained in Lincoln Federal Labor Union v. Northwestern Iron & Metal Co., 335 U.S. 525, 69 S.Ct. 251, 93 L.Ed. 212. These laws about which Congress seems to have been well informed during the 1947 debates -had a wide variety of sanctions, including injunctions, damage suits, and criminal penalties. In 1947 Congress did not outlaw union-security agreements per se; but it did add new conditions, which, as presently provided in § 8(a)(3), require that there be a 30-day waiting period before any employee is forced into a union, that the union in question is the appropriate representative of the employees, and that an employer not discriminate against an employee if he has reasonable grounds for believing that membership in the union was not available to the employee on a nondiscriminatory basis or that the employee's membership was denied or terminated for reasons other than failure to meet union-shop requirements as to dues and fees. In other words, Congress undertook pervasive regulation of union-security agreements, raising in the minds of many whether it thereby preempted the field under the decision in Hill v. Florida, 325 U.S. 538, 65 S.Ct. 1373, 89 L.Ed. 1782, and put such agreements beyond state control. That is one reason why a section, which later became § 14(b), appeared in the House bill -a provision described in the House Report as making clear and unambiguous the purpose of Congress not to preempt the field. That purpose was restated by the House Conference Report in explaining § 14(b). Senator Taft in the Senate deates stated that § 14(b) was to continue the policy of the Wagner Act and avoid federal interference with state laws in this field. As to the Wagner Act he stated, 'But that did not in any way prohibit the enforcement of State laws which already prohibited closed shops.' (Italics added.) He went on to say, 'That has been the law ever since that time. It was the law of the Senate bill; and in putting in this express prov sion from the House bill, (§ 14(b)) we in no way change the bill as passed by the Senate of the United States.