Allen-Bradley Local No. 1111 v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Board
Headline: State may limit violent or obstructive picketing: Court upheld a Wisconsin order banning mass picketing, threats, obstruction, and home picketing, letting states enforce public safety rules alongside federal labor law.
Holding:
- Makes it lawful for states to bar violent or obstructive mass picketing near workplaces.
- Allows courts to enforce state board orders protecting employees' access to work and their homes.
- Does not remove federal labor rights when employee status remains unchanged.
Summary
Background
A Wisconsin manufacturing company and a union of its employees had a labor contract that the union cancelled. The union called a strike beginning May 11, 1939, while the company kept operating. The company complained to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Board that striking employees engaged in mass picketing, blocked factory entrances and nearby streets, threatened workers, required passes to enter, damaged property, and picketed workers’ homes. The state Board found unfair labor practices and ordered the union to stop those activities. Wisconsin courts enforced that order, and the case was brought to the United States Supreme Court.
Reasoning
The Court addressed whether the state order conflicted with the National Labor Relations Act. It read the Wisconsin law narrowly, noting the state had applied only portions that forbid mass picketing, threats, obstruction of factory entrances and public ways, and home picketing. The Court found the federal law did not clearly preclude States from regulating violence, threats, and interference with access to work, especially where the federal Board had not acted and the order did not change any employee’s federal status. Because the state order did not deprive workers of rights protected by federal law, the Court sustained it.
Real world impact
The decision lets States enforce orders that stop violent or obstructive picketing and protect employees’ access to workplaces and homes. The ruling is narrow: it upholds one type of state regulation as applied here and does not resolve broader conflicts between state laws and federal labor policy.
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