Whether a union's unlawful secondary boycott is shielded by the work-preservation defense

QUESTIONS PRESENTED To increase pressure on an employer with whom it has a labor dispute (a “primary” employer), a union sometimes decides to coerce or threaten “secondary” employers to stop doing business with the primary employer. This union tactic is called a secondary boycott. In the National Labor Relations Act, Congress outlawed this “dangerous practice of unions,” which expands industrial conflicts by involving neutral employers in union disputes with primary employers. Nat? Woodwork Mfrs. Ass’n v. NLRB, 386 U.S. 612, 627 (1967). Here, the International Longshoremen’s Association (“ILA”) has a dispute with the South Carolina State Ports Authority (““SCSPA”) over lift-equipment jobs at the Port of Charleston’s new Leatherman Terminal. SCSPA uses state employees not represented by ILA for these jobs, as it has for decades at Charleston’s other terminals. ILA wants these jobs for its members. To get them, ILA filed a $300 million lawsuit, not against SCSPA, but against maritime carriers that called at Leatherman. In conflict with decisions of other courts of appeals and this Court, the Fourth Circuit shielded ILA’s unlawful secondary boycott behind the judicially-created “work preservation” defense, eviscerating the NLRA’s prohibition of this tactic. The questions presented are: 1. Whether a union’s unlawful secondary boycott is shielded by the work-preservation defense because the targeted secondary employer could choose to take its business elsewhere and, in that way, can “control” the primary employer’s work assignments. 2. Whether a union’s unlawful secondary boycott is shielded by the work-preservation defense even when no bargaining unit jobs are threatened. ii RULE 14.1(B) STATEMENT OF