Industrial concrete, once prepared, must be poured and set promptly. Glacier Concrete, a mid-sized company in Washington state, sends mixer trucks filled with concrete to jobsites every day. In 2017, some 13 mixer trucks filled with concrete were on the road when the Teamsters Union called a strike among the drivers of Glacier Concrete. Many of the mixer truck drivers returned their trucks to the company yard, filled with wet concrete, and walked away without emptying and cleaning their load. The concrete “froze” in the mixer trucks.
Glacier Concrete lost thousands of dollars in wasted concrete and spent many thousands of dollars to remove the frozen concrete from the mixer trucks, which trucks may have been permanently injured. The cost was immense. Glacier Concrete sued the Teamsters in state court for tort damages. After the case worked its way through the lower state courts, the Washington Supreme Court determined that the Teamsters only applied economic pressure as permitted by federal law. No remedy is available at state law because federal law pre-empts tort remedy for ordinary economic damage from a strike.
The Supreme Court took the case to consider where to draw a line between the intentional destruction of property and the permitted use of a tactical economic weapon. Intentional destruction of property on behalf of a union during a strike, examples of which include putting sugar in a gas tank or setting fire to an out-building, is not protected by federal law from state law tort liability.
On January 10, 2023, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Glacier Northwest, Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, during which many questions focused upon the distinction between a grocery union allowing milk to sour by walking out on strike and the Teamsters allowing many thousands of dollars of concrete to freeze in a mixer truck. The first activity is protected by federal law from state tort liability. The important question is whether the concrete mixer truck misconduct is similarly protected.
The Supreme Court will rule during the next few months. With luck, a more crisp definition of impermissible sabotage will emerge. We will report the result here.