Wash. Supreme Court published opinion — 897239.pdf

Citation: Wash. Supreme Court published opinion — 897239.pdf
Jurisdiction: Washington (state)
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Original Source: https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/897239.pdf ↗

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the NLRA is concerned with ensuring an equitable bargaining process,
not with the substantive terms that may emerge from such bargaining.
"The evil Congress was addressing thus was entirely unrelated to local
or federal regulation establishing minimum terms of employment." Such
regulation provides protections to individual union and nonunion
workers alike, and thus "neither encourage[s] nor discourage[s] the
collective-bargaining processes that are the subject of the NLRA."
Furthermore, pre-emption should not be lightly inferred in this area,
since the establishment of labor standards falls within the traditional
police power of the State. . . . It is true that the Maine statute gives
employees something for which they otherwise might have to bargain.
That is true, however, with regard to any state law that substantively
regulates employment conditions. Both employers and employees come
to the bargaining table with rights under state law that form a "backdrop"
for their negotiations .... [T]he mere fact that a state statute pertains to
matters over which the parties are free to bargain cannot support a claim
of pre-emption, for "there is nothing in the NLRA ... which expressly
forecloses all state regulatory power with respect to those issues ... that
may be the subject of collective bargaining."

!d. at 20-22 (some alterations in original) (citations and internal quotation marks

omitted) (quoting Metro. Life Ins. Co., 471 U.S. at 754-55; Malone v. White Motor

Corp., 435 U.S. 497, 504-05, 98 S. Ct. 1185, 55 L. Ed. 2d 443 (1978)). We similarly

conclude that Proposition 1, which establishes a minimum wage and other employee

protections, "is not pre-empted by the NLRA, since its establishment of a minimum