## Facts

- Seven Chicago-area locals of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters represented most butchers in the Chicago area.
- Jewel Tea Co. operated retail food stores with meat departments in the Chicago area.
- A multi-employer, multi-union collective bargaining agreement included a clause setting “market operating hours” for the sale of fresh meat: 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and prohibiting serving customers outside those hours.
- During bargaining, employer representatives sought to relax existing limits on fresh-meat marketing hours; the unions insisted on retaining the restriction, and the clause was accepted by most employers.
- Jewel sued the unions and an employers’ association under Sherman Act §§ 1 and 2, alleging a conspiracy to restrain competition by limiting the hours during which fresh meat could be sold.

## Issues

1. Whether federal courts should defer to the NLRB on whether the marketing-hours provision concerns a “term or condition of employment.”
2. Whether a collectively bargained clause limiting fresh-meat marketing hours is immune from Sherman Act liability under the labor exemptions because it is sufficiently related to wages, hours, and working conditions.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the Seventh Circuit and reinstated judgment for the unions.
- The Court allowed the case to proceed in court, concluding the NLRB did not have exclusive primary jurisdiction over the classification of the bargaining subject on this record.
- The Court held the marketing-hours restriction fell within the labor exemption because it was intimately related to employees’ hours and working conditions and was pursued as a labor objective through collective bargaining.
- The Court rejected treating the contract clause itself as proof of an unlawful conspiracy with non-labor actors to restrain product-market competition.

## Legal Principles

- Courts may decide whether a disputed bargaining subject is a “term or condition of employment” when there is no available procedure to obtain an NLRB determination and the case turns on controlling legal issues the courts must resolve.
- The labor exemptions to antitrust law protect bona fide, arm’s-length collective bargaining over wages, hours, and working conditions, even when the agreement has incidental effects in the product market.
- A union-employer agreement is not stripped of antitrust immunity merely because it regulates aspects of business operations, if the restraint is sufficiently and directly related to employee working conditions.
- Antitrust liability is more likely where a union combines with non-labor groups to impose a product-market restraint beyond what is connected to legitimate labor goals; absent evidence of such a combination, a work-related restraint negotiated in collective bargaining may be exempt.

## Conclusion

The Court held that a collectively bargained restriction limiting the hours during which fresh meat could be sold was shielded from Sherman Act attack because it directly affected butchers’ work schedules and conditions and was adopted through bona fide collective bargaining rather than an anticompetitive conspiracy aimed at the product market.


Local Union No. 189, Amalgamated Meat Cutters & Butcher Workmen of N. Am. v. Jewel Tea Co., 381 U.S. 676 (1965)