National Labor Relations Board v. Mountain Pacific Chapter of the Associated General Contractors, Inc.

Lewis, a colored hodcarrier, had almost twenty years’ experience in servicing bricklayers and plasterers. He was dropped from union membership in 1949 by Building and Common Laborers Union of America, Local No. 242, AFL-CIO, for nonpayment of dues. Lewis applied for work at the hiring hall maintained by this Union and in effect embraced by a contract entered into between Mountain Pacific Chapter, Seattle Chapter and Tacoma Chapter, Associated General Contractors of America and Western Washington District Council of International Hodcarriers, Building and Common Laborers of America, A'FL-CIO, in behalf of Local 242 and other Unions and the employers and organizations of employers who are defendants here.

There was a well established policy of the Union, during the time these contracts were negotiated and afterward, that the dispatcher should do all in his “power to procure employment for such brothers of the hiring hall [Union members] as may desire situations in preference to any and all nonunion men.”

After Lewis had been dropped for nonpayment of dues, both before and after the present renewal of the contract had been executed by'the parties, he was consistently refused work…