In what is a crushing blow to unions, a stronghold of the Democrat Party, the Supreme Court has ruled that companies can sue unions for financial damage from strikes.

On Thursday the court ruled in favor of a concrete company in Washington that wanted to revive a lawsuit against the International Brotherhood of Teamsters which it said damaged its product.

The 8-1 decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett means the company, Glacier Northwest Inc., can pursue a lawsuit against the union in state court over an August 2017 strike in which drivers walked off the job, leaving wet concrete in their trucks. Barrett, one of the court’s six conservatives, wrote that a state court was wrong to dismiss the claims at such an early stage in proceedings based on its concern that the claims conflicted with the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), a federal law that protects union activity,” NBC News reported.
Because the union took affirmative steps to endanger Glacier’s property rather than reasonable precautions to mitigate that risk, the NLRA does not arguably protect its conduct,” she said.

The only Justice to dissent was Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was nominated by President Joe Biden, who said the decision, “risks erosion of the right to strike.”

She said that by making the decision to side with the company the court “inserts itself into this conflict, proceeding to opine on the propriety of the union’s strike activity.”
This case is Exhibit A as to why the board — and not the courts — should ordinarily take the first crack at resolving contentious, fact-bound labor disputes of this nature,” she said.