Southern Pacific Transportation Company, a Corporation v. United Transportation Union, a Labor Organization, (Utu), A. H. Chesser, President

THE CASE

The defendants-appellants (Union) are, for our purposes, the representatives of the Switchmen employees of the plaintiff-appellee (Southern Pacific) and appeal from the District Court’s order dated April 3, 1972, granting a restraint of a strike called and being conducted by the Union against Southern Pacific.

A brief narration of background history is warranted. In November of 1961, certain herder agreements were entered into between Southern Pacific and the Switchmen, giving switchmen exclusive right to line switches in the performance of herding work and prohibiting the performance of this work by road crews. These agreements remained in effect until purportedly superseded by a National Agreement reached on August 2, 1971. The terms of the National Agreement were bargained for and negotiated over a period of nearly two years following a distressing national 18-day strike against the railroads, and the National Agreement was contentiously bargained for and provided that the national railroads would give the Union a 42 per cent wage hike in return for relaxation of a number of old contract work rules that had plagued the railroad industry by restricting work…