JI Case Co v. National Labor Relations Board
1944 United States Supreme Court case
JI Case Co. v. National Labor Relations Board, 321 U.S. 332 (1944), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that the employer and the union are always free to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement as a set of minimum requirements, which individual contracts between an employee and the employer may exceed. Workers at the company's factory had voted to unionize, but J.I. Case Company had refused to negotiate with the new union, and tried to enforce old contracts instead. The court upheld the NLRB's decision that they'd violated the National Labor Relations Act but said that the NLRB had to re-word the order it had issued.
Background
J.I. Case Company operated a factory in Rock Island, Illinois, and in 1941 the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) started working to organize the workers there, working to become their union. They received the proper certification from the NLRB for this, and the workers voted to join the union. However, the company refused to begin collective bargaining with the CIO. They argued that most of the workers had signed individual contracts, and these contracts were still binding.
After the union complained, the NLRB said that the company was guilty of unfair labor practices, violating the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. The Board ordered the company to start collective bargaining on terms for a new contract, to stop telling workers that their old contracts were still legally binding, and to stop having new employees sign the old contracts.
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