LABOR LAW - WHEN A "LABOR DISPUTE" EXISTS WITHIN MEANING OF THE NORRIS-LAGUARDIA ACT

Two recent Supreme Court decisions, interpreting the Norris-LaGuardia Act at its most troublesome area, confirm the Congressional revision of the rules governing scrimmages between capital and labor in the federal courts. In holding in Lauf v. Shinner that the struggle by an outside union for unionization of a shop, none of whose employees were affiliated with the organizing union, and in New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery Co. that agitation by members of a negro racial protective organization to compel employment of negro workers were "labor disputes" within the meaning of section 13, the Supreme Court has substantially put to rest apprehensions that the recent federal anti-injunction legislation would be "construed" into ineffectiveness as was section 20 of the Clayton Act before it. A freedom from the impediments of the federal equity injunction greater than at any time since the rise of the labor movement now seems assured. A victory for labor has been attained, though it remains to be seen whether further interpretation, statutory change, or restrictive legislation by the states will render it pyrrhic.

The present purpose is to appraise the legal foundations of that victory and to indicate the effect of these decisions in that contemporary legal-economic panorama wherein the federal labor injunction plays an important part.