Jackson, J., dissenting
to generate conflicting results about the contours of the venerated right to strike, which, ironically, was the primary concern that motivated Congress to create the Board in the first place.
IV
For what it’s worth, even if the majority’s approach to deciding the Garmon question were the correct one, the majority misapplies the reasonable-precautions principle to the allegations here in a manner that threatens to impinge on the right to strike and on the orderly development of labor law.
A
1
A strike, by definition, is a “concerted stoppage of work by employees,” or “any concerted slowdown or other concerted interruption of operations by employees.” §142(2). When employees stop working, production may halt, deliveries may be delayed, and services may be canceled. At the risk of stating the obvious, this means that the workers’ right to strike inherently includes the right to impose economic harm on their employer.
Congress was well aware that organized labor’s exercise of the right to strike risks harm to an employer’s economic interests. See §151; NLRB v. Erie Resistor Corp., 373 U. S. 221, 234 (1963) (Congress’s protection of the right to strike reflects its understanding that strikes are authorized “economic weapon[s]”). Yet, Congress protected that right anyway. In fact, the threat of economic harm posed by the right to strike is a feature, not a bug, of the NLRA. The potential pain of a work stoppage is a powerful tool, and one that unquestionably advances Congress’s codified goal of achieving “equality of bargaining power between employers and employees.” §151. Unions leverage a strike’s economic harm (or the threat of it) into bargaining power, and then wield
