Because if you defy a court decision prohibiting such a secondary strike, the union rapidly ends up in contempt of court and leaders can end up going to jail.

See here for Supreme Court doctrine for how union violations of labor law rapidly are converted into criminal contempt.

This past June the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ordered that employers can “require” that their employees be forbidden to fraternize, date, or spend time together even on their own time. ("Big Brother On and Off the Job", Harold Meyerson, Washington Post, August 10, 2005 Read it Here)
For co-workers this is more then sobering this is frightening. Since, for them, under this ruling, there will be no more nights out bowling together; no more family barbecues; no more attending church together; no more going to ball games, or dance recitals together; no more freedom of association.
Freedom of Association has long been held to be right protected by the 1<sup>st</sup&gt and 14<sup>th</sup&gt Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
The Supreme Court, in numerous rulings, has clearly underscored the freedom of association. In 1960 Justice Potter Stewart, writing for court in Bates vs. Little Rock, declared, "Like freedom of speech and a free press, the right of peaceable assembly was considered by the Framers of our Constitution to lie at the foundation of a government based upon the consent of an informed citizenry -- a government dedicated to the establishment of justice and the preservation of liberty. And it is now beyond dispute that freedom of association for the purpose of advancing ideas and airing grievances is protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from invasion by the States."
While it is clear the anti-labor NLRB intended their ruling to hinder the ability of working men and women to organize, the slippery slope this places all who cherish individual liberty upon could cause a quick slide into a septic tank of an archaic feudalism of lords ruling over serfs and of government being the master over the people.
So what are a free people to do? In a word do not accept the ruling. Fight to have it repealed, overturned, eradicated, whatever. And if that does not work then a free person must ignore, as un-American, its mandate. Never consent to it as being legitimate, for it flies directly into the face of freedom.
When the great American Founding father Thomas Jefferson spoke his famous refrain, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” he probably did not foresee that those words would be over used while at the same time their meaning become so callously disregarded by the very government of the nation he and so many early American patriots dedicate themselves to establishing.
Today the volume of Jefferson’s words must be increased in order to prevent this generation and the next from being lulled into a docile state of acceptance of cherished freedoms being embezzled by usurpers in positions of authority.
It is by the increase of volume that the familiar call to action “eternal vigilance” will once again awaken our nations’ passion for freedom. And once awaken we must continue, eternally, the noble vigilant task of keeping our freedoms. This must be done, for if we cannot secure, protect and maintain our freedoms within America herself, how can we truly believe that we are capable to propel even the imagination of freedom beyond our borders?

Cross-posted from Nathan's blog:

There's nothing new or shocking about this decision.  Except for the briefest of periods, 1935-47, secondary boycotts have always been illegal in the US, for good reason.  The law of secondary boycotts is pretty complex, though, and it's easily misunderstood.  Here are a few of the basics.

It isn't accurate to say that this is simply a "speech" question.  In this area as in others, courts have traditionally recognized that picketing is "speech plus" (that is, an act combined with speech) and can therefore be regulated more closely than "pure" speech.

Nor is  it accurate to say that the union would commit a "crime" if it "asks for help."  First of all, a violation of the National Labor Relations Act is not criminal:  it is a civil violation remedied by an injunction and subject to damages, just as an employer's unfair labor practice could be.  If the NLRB's order is enforced by a court, after a full hearing, a further violation would amount to contempt of court, but that too would normally be a civil violation.  [Addition:  The Muniz case to which Nathan cites proves the point:  the union there first violated the NLRA, then violated a court order and was found in civil contempt.  Only after it continued the violations was it found in civil contempt.  In that respect, it was like J.P. Stevens and other rogue employers whose repeated violations led to criminal contempt proceedings.]

 Second, and more important, the union remains free to picket the primary employer, both at its main offices and wherever it performs work.  No doubt the general contractor has established or would establish a reserved gate where the picketing can take place.

Third, the union also remains free to engage in non-picketing requests for help such as handbilling, speeches, advertisements, consumer boycotts, etc.  The only thing the NLRA forbids in this context is a secondary boycott, such as  picketing OTHER employers to force them to cease doing business with the primary employer.

One P.S. on the Ruzicka case itself.  The decision condemned by Nathan affirmed dismissal of some of the employer's claims and simply remanded for trial two others, one for invasion of privacy and one for damages for violation of the ban on secondary boycotts.  the trial court had dismissed the charges without submitting them to the jury.

The invasion of privacy claim involved allegations that private investigators hired by the union went to the company owner's house, went onto his property, and videotaped him and his family at 11 on a Saturday night.  If true, that would almost certainly constitute an invasion of privacy.  The only way to determine whether it was true, was through a trial at which the jury would determine the facts.  That is just what the 8th Circuit ordered.

The court's decision was the same on Ruzicka's claim for damages because of the union's secondary activity.  The court found that Ruzicka had presented sufficient evidence to merit a jury decision on its claim that the union's picketing had violated Section 8(b)(4) of the National Labor Relations Act, despite the union's denial.  It therefore remanded for a jury decision on the merits of the claim.

After reading the decision, I can't for the life of me figure out why Nathan regards it as shocking.  This is just a run-of-the-mill decision, like hundreds of others that fill the pages of the federal reports.  Union's occasionally violate the law, just as employers do.  When they violate Section 8(b)(4) or invade someone's privacy, they get sued.  That's a big deal?  Perhaps Nathan is still mad that Congress banned secondary boycotts nearly 60 years ago, but that fight is long over.  Like it or not, the law is the law, and anyone who breaks it has to be prepared to pay the penalty.

To respond to Scylla's questions:

US law allows primary strikes and picketing --- that is, activity directed against the employer with whom the union has the dispute.  It forbids secondary strikes and picketing, that is, activity directed against OTHER employers such as suppliers and customers (and in the construction situation, other subcontractors).  It's perfectly legal for members of another union to honor a picket line at the primary employer's place of business, although if the second union's collective bargaining agreement waives its members' rights to engage in sympathy strikes, those employees would be subject to discipline by their own employer.  "Hoping" that other employees will respect the picket line ISN'T against the law; engaging in seconday activity to force them or their employers to do so IS.

 General strikes are a pipe dream here, especially with private sector union density now expressed in a single digit.  In theory, though, a general strike would be legal, provided it didn't involve secondary activity or violate general laws like those forbidding trespass, interfering with traffic, or the like.

So Nathan's real beef IS with the ban on secondary boycotts after all.  It's hardly worth arguing about that --- they were against state law for many, many decades before Congress passed the Wagner Act, have been against federal labor law since 1947, and will likely be against the law forever.  Yes, there are good reasons for that ban.  Secondary boycotts enormously widen the scope of a labor dispute and injure many people --- workers as well as employers --- who have no part in the primary dispute.  When the other employers actually do become allies of the primary employer, for example when a subcontractor performs struck work, the union can picket and strike them, too.  That's a very reasonable balance struck by Congress and maintained ever since, no matter which party controls Washington.

 The "slave labor" argument was silly when unions made it in 1947, silly when they repeated it during the Landrum-Griffin debates in 1959, and silly now.  All it did was take the unions out of the debate, so that the final versions of those laws were drafted with minimal union input.  Even the pro-labor senators in those years got frustrated with unions who refused to participate in negotiations even over such obviously improper conduct as "blackmail picketing" (to force an employer to violate the law) or mob looting of union pension funds.

No law forces workers to "stay working or face contempt of court proceedings."  Any worker can quit any job he or she finds repellant, even if the reason is to support some other union.  That's why there's no "slavery" involved in the ban on secondary boycotts.  The only thing they may not do is to "strike" (that is, refuse to work without quitting the job) against some employer other than the one with which the union has a dispute.

 Nathan keeps trying to turn this into a free speech issue.  It isn't.  Unions and their supporters can call the employer any nasty name in the book without violating the law.  They can urge the primary employer's employees to strike, can persuade replacements not to enter the struck workplace, can ask the public to boycott the offender, and any number of other things.  They can give speeches, hold rallies, publish books and articles, go on TV or radio, and write diatribes in blogs.  All that amounts to free speech.  When they seek to coerce others, however (and that's what causing a strike at some neutral employer's business amounts to), the law quite properly makes them liable to injunctions and damages.

 But all this is old hat.  Labor fought that battle in 1947 and several times thereafter, losing each time.  So far as I can tell, there's absolutely no sentiment in Washington or anywhere else outside of the labor blogs for changing the law at this late date.  Trying to fight on that front now would only divert resources from battles that might be winnable.

Thanks, Nathan.

Can't ordinary people collectively and effectively resist corporatism/globalism outside the framework of unions and the laws that regulate them? Since that seems like a deadend. When can we start over? Even in our affluence, we have become slaves in every sense. And so our view of what is possible has become limited by contexts we no longer question. We become expert at applying mandated templates.

The collective action must be political, I suppose, beyond individual bargains or working relationships subject to regulation. Perhaps when enough people reach the point where they feel they have nothing more to lose or simply rediscover the ability to make sacrifices for a good only their children or grandchildren will see, perhaps then someone will come up with novel, effective ways to break the paradigm.

I just hope it happens before it's too late to turn back--when there's nothing left in the law that people and communities can use to restore a proper balance between their human interests and the increasingly ruthless economic interests that run the show.

I think Nathan and Dennis are missing each other's points.

Dennis is right that, if Ruzicka workers were PICKETTING (that is, a lot of people holding signs walking around in a circle outside the entrance) then this decision is nothing new. The reason they are getting in trouble with the law has nothing to do with the fact that they were SAYING/ASKING that other workers refuse to work. The problem is that they were picketting a companywith whom they were not in a dispute.

Caveat: If Ruzicka workers were picketting their primary employer but asking other, non-primary workers to join them -- and if that's what's getting them in trouble -- then Nathan is 100% right that this is a very dangerous and precedent-setting case.

Assuming that the union was picketting someone else, Nathan is wrong to identify this as clearly a "free speech" issue, because there is nothing that prevented these workers from standing outside the university and asking other workers, or handing out leaflets that ask other workers, to refuse to work. After the DeBartolo case came out of the Supreme Court, it's been clear that the NLRA's 8(b)(4) ban ("secondary boycotts") is trumped by the First Amendment, and that no pure speech activity can be banned by the NLRA's 8(b)(4) ban. But what the courts have held is that PICKETTING is not pure speech activity, and hence PICKETTING can be regulated by labor law. In reality, after the DeBartolo case it's more accurate to say that labor law bans Secondary Picketting, not secondary "boycotts", because the Supreme Court upheld as legal a secondary "boycott".

However, Dennis is wrong to suggest that the ban on Secondary Picketting is in any way good for workers or good for our country. We would not have the labor movement we have today if not for this tactic. This is the tactic that built, for example, the Teamsters union.

It also points to the fundamental power discrepancy between Labor and Capital. There is no limitation on a Corporation's ability to decide for itself who to do business with, or which goods to handle, or how to interact with other Corporations. But that is precisely the sort of limitation that this 8(b)(4) ban places on labor. It says that workers are prevented from deciding for themselves how to interact with other workers. It even makes certain kind of contractual agreements between worker/management ILLEGAL, if those arrangements give the workers too much power. These restrictions permanently shifted the balance of power away from workers, and towards management. As such, they're anti-democratic and, yes, "Slave Labor" laws, because they take away basic worker freedoms.