Page:Glacier Northwest v. Teamsters.pdf/47

26 some obligation on the drivers to strike in the middle of the night or before the next day’s jobs had started. To the contrary, it was entirely lawful for the drivers to start their workday per usual, and for the Union to time the strike to put “maximum pressure on the employer at minimum economic cost to the union.” NLRB v. Insurance Agents, 361 U. S. 477, 496 (1960); see also Lumbee Farms Co-op., 285 N. L. R. B., at 506.

Nor was the onus of protecting Glacier’s economic interests if a strike was called in the middle of the day on the drivers—it was, instead, on Glacier, which could have taken any number of prophylactic, mitigating measures. What Glacier seeks to do here is to shift the duty of protecting an employer’s property from damage or loss incident to a strike onto the striking workers, beyond what the Board has already permitted via the reasonable-precautions principle. In my view, doing that places a significant burden on the employees’ exercise of their statutory right to strike, unjustifiably undermining Congress’s intent. Workers are not indentured servants, bound to continue laboring until any planned work stoppage would be as painless as possible for their master. They are employees whose collective and peaceful decision to withhold their labor is protected by the NLRA even if economic injury results.

Today, the majority fails, in multiple respects, to heed Congress’s intent with respect to the Board’s primary role in adjudicating labor disputes, despite ostensibly applying