National Woodwork Manufacturers Ass'n v. National Labor Relations Board
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Full Opinion
NATIONAL WOODWORK MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION ET AL.
v.
NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD.
Supreme Court of United States.
*614 Charles B. Mahin argued the cause and filed briefs for petitioners in No. 110 and for respondents in No. 111.
Dominick L. Manoli argued the cause for respondent in No. 110 and for petitioner in No. 111. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Marshall, Arnold Ordman and Norton J. Come.
Briefs of amici curiae were filed by William B. Barton and Harry J. Lambeth for the Associated Builders & Contractors, Inc.; by Gerard D. Reilly and Winthrop A. Johns for the Associated General Contractors of America et al.; by Kenneth C. McGuiness and Stanley R. Strauss for the American Boiler Manufacturers Association; and by J. Albert Woll, Robert C. Mayer, Laurence Gold and Thomas E. Harris for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.
MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court.
Under the Landrum-Griffin Act amendments enacted in 1959, 73 Stat. 542, § 8 (b)(4)(A) of the National Labor Relations Act, 61 Stat. 141, became § 8 (b) (4) (B) and § 8 (e) was added. The questions here are whether, in the circumstances of these cases, the Metropolitan District Council of Philadelphia and Vicinity of the United *615 Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, AFLCIO (hereafter the Union), committed the unfair labor practices prohibited by §§ 8 (e) and 8 (b) (4) (B).[1]
Frouge Corporation, a Bridgeport, Connecticut, concern, was the general contractor on a housing project in Philadelphia. Frouge had a collective bargaining agreement with the Carpenters' International Union under which Frouge agreed to be bound by the rules and regulations agreed upon by local unions with contractors in areas in which Frouge had jobs. Frouge was therefore subject to the provisions of a collective bargaining agreement between the Union and an organization of Philadelphia contractors, the General Building Contractors Association, Inc. A sentence in a provision of that agreement entitled Rule 17 provides that ". . . No member of this District Council will handle . . . any doors . . . which have been fitted prior to being furnished on the job . . . ."[2] Frouge's Philadelphia project called for 3,600 doors. Customarily, before the doors could be hung on such projects, "blank" or "blind" doors would be mortised for the knob, routed for the hinges, and beveled to make them fit between jambs. These are tasks traditionally *616 performed in the Philadelphia area by the carpenters employed on the jobsite. However, precut and prefitted doors ready to hang may be purchased from door manufacturers. Although Frouge's contract and job specifications did not call for premachined doors, and "blank" or "blind" doors could have been ordered, Frouge contracted for the purchase of premachined doors from a Pennsylvania door manufacturer which is a member of the National Woodwork Manufacturers Association, petitioner in No. 110 and respondent in No. 111. The Union ordered its carpenter members not to hang the doors when they arrived at the jobsite. Frouge thereupon withdrew the prefabricated doors and substituted "blank" doors which were fitted and cut by its carpenters on the jobsite.
The National Woodwork Manufacturers Association and another filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board against the Union alleging that by including the "will not handle" sentence of Rule 17 in the collective bargaining agreement the Union committed the unfair labor practice under § 8 (e) of entering into an "agreement. . . whereby [the] employer . . . agrees to cease or refrain from handling . . . any of the products of any other employer . . . ," and alleging further that in enforcing the sentence against Frouge, the Union committed the unfair labor practice under § 8 (b) (4) (B) of "forcing or requiring any person to cease using . . . the products of any other . . . manufacturer . . . ." The National Labor Relations Board dismissed the charges, 149 N. L. R. B. 646.[3] The Board adopted the findings *617 of the Trial Examiner that the "will not handle" sentence in Rule 17 was language used by the parties to protect and preserve cutting out and fitting as unit work to be performed by the jobsite carpenters. The Board also adopted the holding of the Trial Examiner that both the sentence of Rule 17 itself and its maintenance against Frouge were therefore "primary" activity outside the prohibitions of §§ 8 (e) and 8 (b) (4) (B). The following statement of the Trial Examiner was adopted by the Board:
"I am convinced and find that the tasks of cutting out and fitting millwork, including doors, has, at least customarily, been performed by the carpenters employed on the jobsite. Certainly, this provision of rule 17 is not concerned with the nature of the employer with whom the contractor does business nor with the employment conditions of other employers or employees, nor does it attempt to control such other employers or employees. The provision guards against encroachments on the cutting out and fitting work of the contract unit employees *618 who have performed that work in the past. Its purpose is plainly to regulate the relations between the general contractor and his own employees and to protect a legitimate economic interest of the employees by preserving their unit work. Merely because it incidentally also affects other parties is no basis for invalidating this provision.
"I find that . . . [the provision] is a lawful work-protection or work-preservation provision and that Respondents have not violated Section 8 (e) of the Act by entering into agreements containing this provision and by thereafter maintaining and enforcing this provision." 149 N. L. R. B., at 657.
The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed the Board in this respect. 354 F. 2d 594, 599. The court held that the "will not handle" agreement violated § 8 (e) without regard to any "primary" or "secondary" objective, and remanded to the Board with instructions to enter an order accordingly. In the court's view, the sentence was designed to effect a product boycott like the one condemned in Allen Bradley Co. v. Local Union No. 3, 325 U. S. 797, and Congress meant, in enacting § 8 (e) and § 8 (b) (4) (B), to prohibit such agreements and conduct forcing employers to enter into them.
The Court of Appeals sustained, however, the dismissal of the § 8 (b) (4) (B) charge. The court agreed with the Board that the Union's conduct as to Frouge involved only a primary dispute with it and held that the conduct was therefore not prohibited by that section but expressly protected by the proviso "[t]hat nothing contained in this clause (B) shall be construed to make unlawful, where not otherwise unlawful, any primary strike or primary picketing . . . ." 354 F. 2d, at 597.
*619 We granted certiorari on the petition of the Woodwork Manufacturers Association in No. 110 and on the petition of the Board in No. 111. 384 U. S. 968. We affirm in No. 110 and reverse in No. 111.
I.
Even on the doubtful premise that the words of § 8 (e) unambiguously embrace the sentence of Rule 17,[4] this does not end inquiry into Congress' purpose in enacting the section. It is a "familiar rule, that a thing may be within the letter of the statute and yet not within the statute, because not within its spirit, nor within the intention of its makers." Holy Trinity Church v. United States, 143 U. S. 457, 459. That principle has particular application in the construction of labor legislation which is "to a marked degree, the result of conflict and compromise between strong contending forces and deeply held views on the role of organized labor in the free economic life of the Nation and the appropriate balance to be struck between the uncontrolled power of management and labor to further their respective interests." Local 1976, United Brotherhood of Carpenters v. Labor Board (Sand Door), 357 U. S. 93, 99-100. See, e. g., Labor Board v. Fruit & Vegetable Packers, 377 U. S. 58; Labor Board v. Servette, Inc., 377 U. S. 46; Labor Board v. Drivers Local Union, 362 U. S. 274; Mastro Plastics Corp. v. Labor *620 Board, 350 U. S. 270; Labor Board v. Lion Oil Co., 352 U. S. 282; Labor Board v. International Rice Milling Co., 341 U. S. 665; Local 761, Electrical Workers v. Labor Board, 366 U. S. 667.
Strongly held opposing views have invariably marked controversy over labor's use of the boycott to further its aims by involving an employer in disputes not his own. But congressional action to deal with such conduct has stopped short of proscribing identical activity having the object of pressuring the employer for agreements regulating relations between him and his own employees. That Congress meant §§ 8 (e) and 8 (b) (4) (B) to prohibit only "secondary" objectives clearly appears from an examination of the history of congressional action on the subject; we may, by such an examination, "reconstitute the gamut of values current at the time when the words were uttered."[5]
The history begins with judicial application of the Sherman Act (26 Stat. 209) to labor activities. Federal court injunctions freely issued against all manner of strikes and boycotts under rulings that condemned virtually every collective activity of labor as an unlawful restraint of trade.[6] The first congressional response to *621 vehement labor protests came with § 20 of the Clayton Act in 1914. That section purported drastically to limit the injunction power of federal courts in controversies "involving, or growing out of, a dispute concerning terms or conditions of employment." In terms, it prohibited restraining any person from "ceasing to perform any work or labor" or "from ceasing to patronize or to employ any party to such dispute, or from recommending, advising, or persuading others by peaceful and lawful means so to do." 38 Stat. 738. Labor hailed the law as a charter immunizing its activities from the antitrust laws. This expectation was disappointed when Duplex Printing Press Co. v. Deering, 254 U. S. 443, and Bedford Cut Stone Co. v. Journeymen Stone Cutters' Assn., 274 U. S. 37, held that § 20 immunized only trade union activities directed against an employer by his own employees. In Duplex, the union carried on an elaborate scheme to coerce and restrain neutral customers of the complainant manufacturer from dealing with it, with the object of using these customers as an economic lever to bring the nonunion manufacturer to terms. The Court there stated:
"The substance of the matters here complained of is an interference with complainant's interstate trade, intended to have coercive effect upon complainant, and produced by what is commonly known as a `secondary boycott,' that is, a combination not merely to refrain from dealing with complainant, or to advise or by peaceful means persuade complainant's customers to refrain (`primary boycott'), but to exercise coercive pressure upon such customers, actual or prospective, in order to cause them *622 to withhold or withdraw patronage from complainant through fear of loss or damage to themselves should they deal with it." Duplex Printing Press Co. v. Deering, supra, at 466.
Thus "primary" but not "secondary" pressures were excepted from the antitrust laws. Truax v. Corrigan, 257 U. S. 312, 330, defined "secondary boycott" as one "where many combine to injure one in his business by coercing third persons against their will to cease patronizing him by threats of similar injury. . . . The question in such cases is whether the moral coercion exercised over a stranger to the original controversy by steps in themselves legal becomes a legal wrong." See 1 Teller, Labor Disputes and Collective Bargaining § 145 (1940).[7] Commentators of the day, while noting the ambiguity which lurked in the definition, discerned its core concept: union pressure directed at a neutral employer the object of which was to induce or coerce him to cease doing business with an employer with whom the union was engaged in a labor dispute.[8]
In 1932 Congress enacted the Norris-LaGuardia Act and tipped the scales the other way. Its provisions "established that the allowable area of union activity was not to be restricted, as it had been in the Duplex case, to an immediate employer-employee relation." United *623 States v. Hutcheson, 312 U. S. 219, 231.[9] Congress abolished, for purposes of labor immunity, the distinction between primary activity between the "immediate disputants" and secondary activity in which the employer disputants and the members of the union do not stand "in the proximate relation of employer and employee . . . ." H. R. Rep. No. 669, 72d Cong., 1st Sess., 8 (1932). Thus, in Hutcheson, supra, the Court held that the Norris-LaGuardia Act immunized a jurisdictional strike trapping a neutral employer in the middle of an "internecine struggle between two unions seeking the favor of the same employer," supra, at 232. Commentators of the post-Norris-LaGuardia era, as those before, while continuing to deplore the chameleon-like qualities of the term "secondary boycott," agreed upon its central aspect: pressure tactically directed toward a neutral employer in a labor dispute not his own.[10]
Labor abuses of the broad immunity granted by the Norris-LaGuardia Act resulted in the Taft-Hartley Act prohibitions against secondary activities enacted in § 8 (b) (4) (A), which, as amended in 1959, is now § 8 (b) (4) (B). As will appear, the basic thrust of the *624 accommodation there effected by Congress was not expanded by the Landrum-Griffin amendments. The congressional design in enacting § 8 (b) (4) (A) is therefore crucial to the determination of the scope of §§ 8 (e) and 8 (b) (4) (B). Senator Taft said of its purpose:
"This provision makes it unlawful to resort to a secondary boycott to injure the business of a third person who is wholly unconcerned in the disagreement between an employer and his employees. . . . [U]nder the provisions of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, it became impossible to stop a secondary boycott or any other kind of a strike, no matter how unlawful it may have been at common law. All this provision of the bill does is to reverse the effect of the law as to secondary boycotts."[11] (Emphasis supplied.)
Senator Taft and others frequently sounded this note that § 8 (b) (4) (A) was designed to eliminate the "secondary boycott,"[12] and its proponents uniformly cited examples of union conduct which evidenced labor efforts to draw in neutral employers through pressure calculated to induce them to cease doing business with the primary employer.[13] And the Senate Committee Report carefully *625 characterized the conduct prohibited by § 8 (b) (4) (A) in the same terms:
"Thus, it would not be lawful for a union to engage in a strike against employer A for the purpose of forcing that employer to cease doing business with employer B; nor would it be lawful for a union to boycott employer A because employer A uses or otherwise deals in the goods of or does business with employer B (with whom the union has a dispute)." S. Rep. No. 105, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 22, I 1947 Leg. Hist. 428.[14]
The other subsections of § 8 (b) (4) of the Act were similarly limited to protecting employers in the position of neutrals between contending parties. The prohibition of subsection (B) against a noncertified union's forcing recognition from an employer was designed to protect the employer trapped between the union and his employees, a majority of whom may not desire to choose the union as their representative. The prohibition of subsection (C) against a demand for recognition when another union has been certified protects the employer trapped between the noncertified and the certified unions. The prohibition of subsection (D) against coercion to force an employer to assign certain work to one of two unions contesting for it protects the employer trapped between the two claims. The central theme pervading these provisions of protection for the neutral employer confirms the assurances of those sponsoring the section that in subsection (A) Congress likewise meant to protect the *626 employer only from union pressures designed to involve him in disputes not his own.[15]
Judicial decisions interpreting the broad language of § 8 (b) (4) (A) of the Act uniformly limited its application to such "secondary" situations.[16] This limitation was in "conformity with the dual congressional objectives of preserving the right of labor organizations to bring pressure to bear on offending employers in primary labor disputes and of shielding unoffending employers and *627 others from pressures in controversies not their own." Labor Board v. Denver Bldg. Trades Council, 341 U. S. 675, 692. This Court accordingly refused to read § 8 (b) (4) (A) to ban traditional primary strikes and picketing having an impact on neutral employers even though the activity fell within its sweeping terms. Labor Board v. International Rice Milling Co., 341 U. S. 665; see Local 761, Electrical Workers v. Labor Board, 366 U. S. 667. Thus, however severe the impact of primary activity on neutral employers, it was not thereby transformed into activity with a secondary objective.
The literal terms of § 8 (b)(4)(A) also were not applied in the so-called "ally doctrine" cases, in which the union's pressure was aimed toward employers performing the work of the primary employer's striking employees. The rationale, again, was the inapplicability of the provision's central theme, the protection of neutrals against secondary pressure, where the secondary employer against whom the union's pressure is directed has entangled himself in the vortex of the primary dispute. "[T]he union was not extending its activity to a front remote from the immediate dispute but to one intimately and indeed inextricably united to it." Douds v. Metropolitan Federation of Architects, 75 F. Supp. 672, 677 (D. C. S. D. N. Y. 1948); see Labor Board v. Business Machine & Office Appliance Mechanics, 228 F. 2d 553 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1955). We summarized our reading of § 8 (b) (4) (A) just a year before enactment of § 8 (e):
"It aimed to restrict the area of industrial conflict insofar as this could be achieved by prohibiting the most obvious, widespread, and, as Congress evidently judged, dangerous practice of unions to widen that conflict: the coercion of neutral employers, themselves not concerned with a primary labor dispute, through the inducement of their employees to engage *628 in strikes or concerted refusals to handle goods." Local 1976, United Brotherhood of Carpenters v. Labor Board (Sand Door), 357 U. S. 93, 100.
Despite this virtually overwhelming support for the limited reading of § 8 (b) (4) (A), the Woodwork Manufacturers Association relies on Allen Bradley Co. v. Local Union No. 3, 325 U. S. 797, as requiring that the successor section, § 8 (b) (4) (B), be read as proscribing the District Council's conduct in enforcing the "will not handle" sentence of Rule 17 against Frouge. The Association points to the references to Allen Bradley in the legislative debates leading to the enactment of the predecessor § 8 (b) (4) (A). We think that this is an erroneous reading of the legislative history. Allen Bradley held violative of the antitrust laws a combination between Local 3 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and both electrical contractors and manufacturers of electrical fixtures in New York City to restrain the bringing in of such equipment from outside the city. The contractors obligated themselves to confine their purchases to local manufacturers, who in turn obligated themselves to confine their New York City sales to contractors employing members of the local, and this scheme was supported by threat of boycott by the contractors' employees. While recognizing that the union might have had an immunity for its contribution to the trade boycott had it acted alone, citing Hutcheson, supra, the Court held immunity was not intended by the Clayton or Norris-LaGuardia Acts in cases in which the union's activity was part of a larger conspiracy to abet contractors and manufacturers to create a monopoly.
The argument that the references to Allen Bradley in the debates over § 8 (b) (4) (A) have broader significance in the determination of the reach of that section is that there was no intent on Local 3's part to influence the internal labor policies of the boycotted out-of-state *629 manufacturers of electrical equipment. There are three answers to this argument: First, the boycott of out-of-state electrical equipment by the electrical contractors' employees was not in pursuance of any objective relating to pressuring their employers in the matter of their wages, hours, and working conditions; there was no work preservation or other primary objective related to the union employees' relations with their contractor employers. On the contrary, the object of the boycott was to secure benefits for the New York City electrical manufacturers and their employees. "This is a secondary object because the cessation of business was being used tactically, with an eye to its effect on conditions elsewhere."[17] Second, and of even greater significance on the question of the inferences to be drawn from the references to Allen Bradley, Senator Taft regarded the Local 3 boycott as in effect saying, "We will not permit any material made by any other union or by any non-union workers to come into New York City and be put into any building in New York City." 93 Cong. Rec. 4199, II 1947 Leg. Hist. 1107. This clearly shows that the Senator viewed the pressures applied by Local 3 on the employers of its members as having solely a secondary objective. The Senate Committee Report echoes the same view:
"[It is] an unfair labor practice for a union to engage in the type of secondary boycott that has *630 been conducted in New York City by local No. 3 of the IBEW, whereby electricians have refused to install electrical products of manufacturers employing electricians who are members of some labor organization other than local No. 3." S. Rep. No. 105, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 22, I 1947 Leg. Hist. 428. (Emphasis supplied.)
Other statements on the floor of Congress repeat the same refrain.[18] Third, even on the premise that Congress meant to prohibit boycotts such as that in Allen Bradley without regard to whether they were carried on to affect labor conditions elsewhere, the fact is that the boycott in Allen Bradley was carried on, not as a shield to preserve the jobs of Local 3 members, traditionally a primary labor activity, but as a sword, to reach out and monopolize all the manufacturing job tasks for Local 3 members. It is arguable that Congress may have viewed the use of the boycott as a sword as different from labor's traditional concerns with wages, hours, and working conditions. But the boycott in the present cases was not used as a sword; it was a shield carried solely to preserve the members' jobs. We therefore have no occasion today to decide the questions which might arise where the workers carry on a boycott to reach out to monopolize jobs or acquire *631 new job tasks when their own jobs are not threatened by the boycotted product.[19]
It is true that the House bill proposed to amend the Clayton Act to narrow labor's immunity from the antitrust laws. H. R. 3020, § 301 (b), I 1947 Leg. Hist. 220. This was omitted from the Conference agreement. It is suggested that this history evidences that Congress meant § 8 (b) (4) (A) to reach all product boycotts with work preservation motives. The argument is premised on a statement by the House Managers in the House Conference Report that "[s]ince the matters dealt with in this section have to a large measure been effectuated through the use of boycotts, and since the conference agreement contains effective provisions directly dealing with boycotts themselves, this provision is omitted from the conference agreement." H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 510, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 65, I 1947 Leg. Hist. 569. The statement is hardly probative that § 8 (b) (4) (A) enacted a broad prohibition in face of the overwhelming evidence that its Senate sponsors intended the narrower reach. Actually the statement at best reflects that the House may have receded from a broader position and accepted that of the Senate. For § 8 (b) (4) (A) constituted the "effective provisions" referred to and the House Managers' understanding of and agreement with the reach of the section as intended by its Senate sponsors is expressed at page 43 of the same Report, I 1947 Leg. Hist. 547:
"Under clause (A) strikes or boycotts, or attempts to induce or encourage such action, were made unfair labor practices if the purpose was to force an employer or other person to cease using, selling, *632 handling, transporting, or otherwise dealing in the products of another, or to cease doing business with any other person. Thus it was made an unfair labor practice for a union to engage in a strike against employer A for the purpose of forcing that employer to cease doing business with employer B. Similarly it would not be lawful for a union to boycott employer A because employer A uses or otherwise deals in the goods of, or does business with, employer B."
In effect Congress, in enacting § 8 (b) (4) (A) of the Act, returned to the regime of Duplex Printing Press Co. and Bedford Cut Stone Co., supra, and barred as a secondary boycott union activity directed against a neutral employer, including the immediate employer when in fact the activity directed against him was carried on for its effect elsewhere.
Indeed, Congress in rewriting § 8 (b) (4) (A) as § 8 (b) (4) (B) took pains to confirm the limited application of the section to such "secondary" conduct. The word "concerted" in former § 8 (b) (4) was deleted to reach secondary conduct directed to only one individual. This was in response to the Court's holding in Labor Board v. International Rice Milling Co., 341 U. S. 665, that "concerted" required proof of inducement of two or more employees. But to make clear that the deletion was not to be read as supporting a construction of the statute as prohibiting the incidental effects of traditional primary activity, Congress added the proviso that nothing in the amended section "shall be construed to make unlawful, where not otherwise unlawful, any primary strike or primary picketing."[20] Many statements *633 and examples proffered in the 1959 debates confirm this congressional acceptance of the distinction between primary and secondary activity.[21]
II.
The Landrum-Griffin Act amendments in 1959 were adopted only to close various loopholes in the application of § 8 (b) (4) (A) which had been exposed in Board and court decisions. We discussed some of these loopholes, and the particular amendments adopted to close them, in Labor Board v. Servette, Inc., 377 U. S. 46, 51-54. We need not repeat that discussion here, except to emphasize, as we there said, that "these changes did not expand the type of conduct which § 8 (b) (4) (A) condemned, *634 that is, union pressures calculated to induce the employees of a secondary employer to withhold their services in order to force their employer to cease dealing with the primary employer." Id., at 52-53.
Section 8 (e) simply closed still another loophole.[22] in Local 1976, United Brotherhood of Carpenters v. Labor Board (Sand Door), 357 U. S. 93, the Court held that it was no defense to an unfair labor practice charge under § 8 (b) (4) (A) that the struck employer had agreed, in a contract with the union, not to handle nonunion material. However, the Court emphasized that the mere execution of such a contract provision (known as a "hot cargo" clause because of its prevalence in Teamsters Union contracts), or its voluntary observance by the employer, was not unlawful under § 8 (b) (4) (A). Section 8 (e) was designed to plug this gap in the legislation by making the "hot cargo" clause itself unlawful. The Sand Door decision was believed by Congress not only to create the possibility of damage actions against employers for breaches of "hot cargo" clauses, but also to create a situation in which such clauses might be employed to exert subtle pressures upon employers to engage in "voluntary" boycotts.[23] Hearings in late 1958 before the Senate Select Committee explored seven cases of "hot cargo" clauses in Teamsters Union contracts, the use of which the Committee found conscripted neutral employers in Teamsters organizational campaigns.[24]
*635 This loophole-closing measure likewise did not expand the type of conduct which § 8 (b) (4) (A) condemned. Although the language of § 8 (e) is sweeping, it closely tracks that of § 8 (b) (4) (A), and just as the latter and its successor § 8 (b) (4) (B) did not reach employees' activity to pressure their employer to preserve for themselves work traditionally done by them, § 8 (e) does not prohibit agreements made and maintained for that purpose.
The legislative history of § 8 (e) confirms this conclusion. The Kennedy-Ervin bill as originally reported proposed no remedy for abuses of the "hot cargo" clauses revealed at the hearings of the Select Committee. Senators Goldwater and Dirksen filed a minority report urging that a prohibition against "hot cargo" clauses should be enacted to close that loophole. Their statement expressly acknowledged their acceptance of the reading of § 8 (b) (4) (A) as applicable only "to protect genuinely neutral employers and their employees, not themselves involved in a labor dispute, against economic coercion designed to give a labor union victory in a dispute with some other employer."[25] They argued that a prohibition *636 against "hot cargo" clauses was necessary to further that objective. They were joined by Senator McClellan, Chairman of the Select Committee, in their proposal to add such a provision. Their statements in support consistently defined the evil to be prevented in terms of agreements which obligated neutral employers not to do business with other employers involved in labor disputes with the union.[26] Senator Gore initially proposed, and the Senate first passed, a "hot cargo" amendment to the Kennedy-Ervin bill which outlawed such agreements only for "common carriers subject to Part II of the Interstate Commerce Act." This reflected the testimony at the Select Committee hearings which attributed abuses of such clauses primarily to the Teamsters Union. Significantly, such alleged abuses by the Teamsters invariably involved uses of the clause to pressure neutral trucking employers not to handle goods of other employers involved in disputes with the Teamsters Union.[27]
*637 The House Labor Committee first reported out a bill containing a provision substantially identical to the Gore amendment.[28] The House Report expressly noted that since that proposal tracked the language of § 8 (b) (4) (A) "it preserved the established distinction between primary activities and secondary boycotts."[29] The substitute Landrum-Griffin bill, however, expanded the proposal to cover all industry and not common carriers alone. H. R. 8400, § 705 (b) (1) in I 1959 Leg. Hist. 683. Representative Landrum stated, "I submit if such contracts are bad in one segment of our economy, they are undesirable in all segments." 105 Cong. Rec. 14343, II 1959 Leg. Hist. 1518. In describing the substitute bill, Representative Landrum pointedly spoke of the situation "where the union, in a dispute with one employer, puts pressure upon another employer or his employees, in order to force the second employer or his employees, to stop doing business with the first employer, and `bend his knee to the union's will.' " Ibid. An analysis of the substitute bill submitted by Representative Griffin referred to the need to plug the various loopholes in the "secondary boycott" provisions, one of which is the "hot cargo" agreement.[30] In Conference Committee, the Landrum-Griffin application to all industry, and not just to common carriers, was adopted.
However, provisos were added to § 8 (e) to preserve the status quo in the construction industry, and exempt the garment industry from the prohibitions of §§ 8 (e) *638 and 8 (b) (4) (B). This action of the Congress is strong confirmation that Congress meant that both §§ 8 (e) and 8 (b) (4) (B) reach only secondary pressures. If the body of § 8 (e) applies only to secondary activity, the garment industry proviso is a justifiable exception which allows what the legislative history shows it was designed to allow, secondary pressures to counteract the effects of sweatshop conditions in an industry with a highly integrated process of production between jobbers, manufacturers, contractors and subcontractors.[31] First, this motivation for the proviso sheds light on the central theme of the body of § 8 (e), to which the proviso is an exception. Second, if the body of that provision and § 8 (b) (4) (B) were construed to prohibit primary agreements and their maintenance, such as those concerning work preservation, the proviso would have the highly unlikely effect, unjustified in any of the statute's history, of permitting garment workers, but garment workers only, to preserve their jobs against subcontracting or prefabrication by such agreements and by strikes and boycotts to enforce them. Similarly, the construction industry proviso, which permits "hot cargo" agreements only for jobsite work, would have the curious and unsupported result of allowing the construction worker to make agreements preserving his traditional tasks against jobsite prefabrication and subcontracting, but not against nonjobsite prefabrication and subcontracting. On the other hand, if the heart of § 8 (e) is construed to be directed only to secondary activities, the construction proviso becomes, as it was intended to be, a measure designed to allow agreements pertaining to certain secondary activities on the construction site because *639 of the close community of interests there,[32] but to ban secondary-objective agreements concerning nonjobsite work, in which respect the construction industry is no different from any other. The provisos are therefore substantial probative support that primary work preservation agreements were not to be within the ban of § 8 (e).[33]
The only mention of a broader reach for § 8 (e) appears in isolated statements by opponents of that provision, expressing fears that work preservation agreements would be banned.[34] These statements have scant probative value against the backdrop of the strong evidence to the contrary. Too, "we have often cautioned against the danger, when interpreting a statute, of reliance upon the views of its legislative opponents. In their zeal to defeat a bill, they understandably tend to *640 overstate its reach." Labor Board v. Fruit & Vegetable Packers, 377 U. S. 58, 66. "It is the sponsors that we look to when the meaning of the statutory words is in doubt." Schwegmann Bros. v. Calvert Distillers Corp., 341 U. S. 384, 394-395. See Mastro Plastics Corp. v. Labor Board, 350 U. S. 270, 288.
In addition to all else, "[t]he silence of the sponsors of [the] amendments is pregnant with significance. . . ." Labor Board v. Fruit & Vegetable Packers, supra, at 66. Before we may say that Congress meant to strike from workers' hands the economic weapons traditionally used against their employers' efforts to abolish their jobs, that meaning should plainly appear. "[I]n this era of automation and onrushing technological change, no problems in the domestic economy are of greater concern than those involving job security and employment stability. Because of the potentially cruel impact upon the lives and fortunes of the working men and women of the Nation, these problems have understandably engaged the solicitous attention of government, of responsible private business, and particularly of organized labor." Fibreboard Paper Prods. Corp. v. Labor Board, 379 U. S. 203. 225 (concurring opinion of STEWART, J.). We would expect that legislation curtailing the ability of management and labor voluntarily to negotiate for solutions to these significant and difficult problems would be preceded by extensive congressional study and debate, and consideration of voluminous economic, scientific, and statistical data. The silence regarding such matters in the Eighty-sixth Congress is itself evidence that Congress, in enacting § 8 (e), had no thought of prohibiting agreements directed to work preservation.[35] In fact, since the *641 enactment of § 8 (e), the Subcommittee on Employment and Manpower of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, and the Subcommittee on Unemployment and the Impact of Automation and the Select Subcommittee on Labor of the House Committee on Education and Labor have been extensively studying the threats to workers posed by increased technology and automation,[36] and some legislation directed to the problem *642 has been passed.[37] We cannot lightly impute to Congress an intent in § 8 (e) to preclude labor-management agreements to ease these effects through collective bargaining on this most vital problem created by advanced technology.
Moreover, our decision in Fibreboard Paper Prods. Corp., supra, implicitly recognizes the legitimacy of work preservation clauses like that involved here. Indeed, in the circumstances presented in Fibreboard, we held that bargaining on the subject was made mandatory by § 8 (a) (5) of the Act, concerning as it does "terms and conditions of employment," § 8 (d). Fibreboard involved an alleged refusal to bargain with respect to the contracting-out of plant maintenance work previously performed by employees in the bargaining unit. The Court recognized that the "termination of employment which . . . necessarily results from the contracting out of work performed by members of the established bargaining unit," supra, at 210, is "a problem of vital concern to labor and management . . . ," supra, at 211. We further noted, supra, at 211-212:
"Industrial experience is not only reflective of the interests of labor and management in the subject matter but is also indicative of the amenability of such subjects to the collective bargaining process. *643 Experience illustrates that contracting out in one form or another has been brought, widely and successfully, within the collective bargaining framework. Provisions relating to contracting out exist in numerous collective bargaining agreements, and `[c]ontracting out work is the basis of many grievances; and that type of claim is grist in the mills of the arbitrators.' United Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Nav. Co., 363 U. S. 574, 584."
See Local 24, Teamsters Union v. Oliver, 358 U. S. 283, 294. It would therefore be i