1. Summarize the facts of the case.
2. What is a checkoff? How important is it to a union?
3. What is the issue before the Supreme Court?
4. What was the Supreme Court’s decision on this issue?

BLACK, J….

After an election respondent United Steelworkers Union was, on october 5, 1961, certified by the National Labor Relations Board as the bargaining agent for the employees at the Danville, Virginia, plant of the petitioner, H. K. Porter Co. Thereafter negotiations commenced for a collective bargaining agreement. Since that time the controversy has seesawed between the Board, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and this Court. This delay of over eight years is not because the case is exceedingly complex, but appears to have occurred chiefly because of the skill of the company’s negotiators in taking advantage of every opportunity for delay in an Act more noticeable for its generality than for its precise prescriptions. The entire lengthy dispute mainly revolves around the union’s desire to have the company agree to “check off” the dues owed to the union by its members, that is, to deduct those dues periodically from the company’s wage payments to the employees. The record shows, as the Board found, that the company’s objection to a checkoff was not due to any general principle or policy against making deductions from employees’ wages. The company does deduct charges for things like insurance, taxes, and contributions to charities, and at some other plants it has a checkoff arrangement for union dues. The evidence shows, and the Court below found, that the company’s objection was not because of inconvenience, but solely on the ground that the company was “not going to aid and comfort the union.” Efforts by the union to obtain some kind of compromise on a checkoff request were all met with the same staccato response to the effect that the collection of union dues was the “union’s business” and the company was not going to provide any assistance. Based on this and other evidence the Board found, and the Court of Appeals approved the finding, that the refusal of the company to bargain about the checkoff was not made in good faith, but was done solely to frustrate the making of any collective bargaining agreement….

We granted certiorari to consider whether the Board in these circumstances had the power to remedy the unfair labor practice by requiring the company to agree to check off the dues of the workers. 396 U.S. 817. For reasons to be stated we hold that while the Board does have power under the National Labor Relations Act, 61 Stat. 136, as amended, to require employers and employees to negotiate, it is without power to compel a company or a union to agree to any substantive contractual provision of a collective bargaining agreement.

Since 1935 the story of labor relations in this country has largely been a history of governmental regulation of the process of collective bargaining. In that year Congress decided that disturbances in the area of labor relations led to undesirable burdens on and obstructions of interstate commerce, and passed the National Labor Relations Act, 49 Stat. 449….

The object of this Act was not to allow governmental regulation of the terms and conditions of employment, but rather to ensure that employers and their employees could work together to establish mutually satisfactory conditions. The basic theme of the Act was that through collective bargaining the passions, arguments, and struggles of prior years would be channeled into constructive, open discussions leading, it was hoped, to mutual agreement. But it was recognized from the beginning that agreement might in some cases be impossible, and it was never intended that the Government would in such cases step in, become a party to the negotiations and impose its own views of a desirable settlement. This fundamental limitation was made abundantly clear in the legislative reports accompanying the 1935 Act….

In 1947 Congress reviewed the experience under the Act and concluded that certain amendments were in order.

Accordingly Congress amended the provisions defining unfair labor practices and said in Section 8(d) that:

For the purposes of this section, to bargain collectively is the performance of the mutual obligation of the employer and the representative of the employees to meet at reasonable times and confer in good faith with respect to wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment or the negotiation of an agreement, or any question arising thereunder, and the execution of a written contract incorporating any agreement reached if requested by either party, but such obligation does not compel either party to agree to a proposal or require the making of a concession.

In discussing the effect of that amendment, this Court said it is “clear that the Board may not, either directly or indirectly, compel concessions or otherwise sit in judgment upon the substantive terms of collective bargaining agreements.” NLRB v. American Ins. Co., 343 U.S. 395, 404 (1952). Later this court affirmed that view stating that “it remains clear that Section 8(d) was an attempt by Congress to prevent the Board from controlling the settling of the terms of collective bargaining agreements.” NLRB v. Insurance Agents, 361 U.S. 477, 487 (1960). The parties to the instant case are agreed that this is the first time in the 35-year history of the Act that the Board has ordered either an employer or a union to agree to a substantive term of a collective bargaining agreement….