Apex Decision

Because unions are combinations in potential restraint of trade, indiscriminate application of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to them would raise hob with U. S. Labor. In particular, unions would lose their most potent weapon: the strike.

This week, in the case of Apex Hosiery Co. v. a branch of the C. I. O. hosiery workers' union in Philadelphia, the U. S. Supreme Court decided the status of unions under the Sherman Act. Essence of the decision: strikes (including sitdowns), organizational drives, other normal union activities are not within the act's purview. But unions "are to some extent and in some circumstances subject to the act" (i.e., when price control, other trade restraints are primary purposes rather than incidental effects).

Chief Justice Hughes, in one of his rare dissents (with Justices McReynolds, Roberts), acidly noted that businessmen get no such exemption. Said he: ". . . Purposes to promote . . . labor organization cannot . . . justify the direct and intentional restraint they imposed upon inter state commerce."

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