Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union v. National Labor Relations Board
United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
466 F.2d 380 (1972)
The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (Union) (defendant) struck against Coca Cola Bottling Works, Inc. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) (plaintiff) found the employer committed an unfair labor practice by refusing to hire permanently replaced strikers for later job openings, a reversal of the NLRB's own pre-1968 rule that an employer owed a permanently replaced striker nothing beyond treatment as a new applicant. The NLRB had abandoned that older rule in 1968's Laidlaw decision, prompted by the Supreme Court's ruling in NLRB v. Fleetwood Trailer Co., 389 U.S. 375 (1967), holding that former strikers were entitled to reinstatement offers as vacancies from departing replacements arose. When the NLRB sought enforcement of its order applying this new Laidlaw rule, the court of appeals had to decide whether the NLRB could apply its 1968 policy shift retroactively, since the change came through case-by-case adjudication rather than formal rulemaking.
Whether the retroactive application of a newly adopted rule is appropriate when the inequities of applying such a rule far outweigh the interests that such retroactive application might further.