Page:Glacier Northwest v. Teamsters.pdf/40

Rh Our Fansteel decision stands for the principle that “employees ha[ve] the right to strike but they ha[ve] no license to commit acts of violence or to seize their employer’s plant.” Id., at 253. The facts of that case involved 95 striking employees who effected a “sit-down strike by taking over and holding two of [their employer’s] key buildings.” Id., at 248 (internal quotation marks omitted). The employees subsequently engaged in “a pitched battle” in which they “resisted the attempt by the sheriff to evict and arrest them.” Id., at 249. We held that the NLRA did not condone this conduct, which would “put a premium on resort to force” and would “subvert the principles of law and order which lie at the foundations of society.” Id., at 253.

Congress’s incorporation of Fansteel’s limitation into the NLRA establishes that, while employees have the right to withhold their labor peaceably, subsequent affirmative acts of violence, or seizure of an employer’s premises, are not protected labor practices.

As a general matter, the dispute in this case is over whether employees can withhold their labor if doing so risks damage to their employer’s property. As explained above, by carefully restricting limitations on the right to strike in the NLRA itself, Congress has indicated that the act of peacefully walking off the job is protected strike conduct even if economic harm incidentally results. What is not protected is any subsequent affirmative step to destroy or seize the employer’s property. This is the statutory backdrop against which the Board has developed the narrow requirement that striking employees must take reasonable precautions before or when they strike in order to forestall or address foreseeable, imminent, and aggravated injury to