A majority of the Supreme Court held that Los Angeles was not entitled to refuse to renew a taxi company's franchise license because the Teamsters Union had pressured it not to until a dispute was resolved.

[2] Although the labor-management relationship is structured by the NLRA, certain areas intentionally have been left "'to be controlled by the free play of economic forces.'"

The Court recognized in Machinists that " 'Congress has been rather specific when it has come to outlaw particular economic weapons,' "... and that Congress' decision to prohibit certain forms of economic pressure while leaving others unregulated represents an intentional balance " 'between the uncontrolled power of management and labor to further their respective interests.'...

The drivers were entitled to strike—and to time the strike to coincide with the Council's decision—in an attempt to apply pressure on Golden State.

See Belknap, Inc. v. Hale, 463 U.S., at 493, 500, 103 S.Ct., at 3174, 3177 (employer has power to hire replacements during an economic strike); American Ship Building Co. v. NLRB, 380 U.S. 300, 318, 85 S.Ct.

But the bargaining process was thwarted when the city in effect imposed a positive durational limit on the exercise of economic self-help.

That such a condition—by a city or the National Labor Relations Board—contravenes congressional intent is demonstrated by the language of the NLRA and its legislative history.

§ 158(d) (duty to bargain in good faith "does not compel either party to agree to a proposal or require the making of a concession"); NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 45, 57 S.Ct.

[...] The legislative history, too, makes clear that the Act and the National Labor Relations Board were intended to facilitate bargaining between the parties.

This bill in no respect regulates or even provides for supervision of wages or hours, nor does it establish any form of compulsory arbitration."

In some areas of labor relations that the NLRA left unregulated, we have concluded that Congress contemplated state regulation.

Los Angeles, however, has pointed to no evidence of such congressional intent with respect to the conduct at issue in this case.

Similarly, in the transportation area, a State may not ensure uninterrupted service to the public by prohibiting a strike by the unionized employees of a privately owned local transit company.

"Free collective bargaining is the cornerstone of the structure of labor-management relations carefully designed by Congress when it enacted the NLRA."

A local government, as well as the National Labor Relations Board, lacks the authority to " 'introduce some standard of properly "balanced" bargaining power' .

or to define 'what economic sanctions might be permitted negotiating parties in an "ideal" or "balanced" state of collective bargaining.'

The city of Los Angeles refused to renew Golden State's taxicab franchise unless it settled a labor dispute with its drivers.

Nonetheless, the Court today holds that "a city cannot condition a franchise renewal in a way that intrudes into the collective-bargaining process."

[...] Today we are told that a city, not seeking to place its weight on one side or the other of the scales of economic warfare, may not condition the renewal of a taxicab franchise on the settlement of a labor dispute.

The settlement of that dispute would have enabled the company to put its taxis back on the streets where the franchise presumably contemplated they would be.

We are further told that because a State may not legislate to provide uninterrupted service to the public by prohibiting a strike of public utility employees, a city may not act upon its views of sound transportation policy to refuse to renew a taxi franchise unless the franchisee settles a labor dispute and returns its cabs to the purpose for which the franchise exists.

Such sweeping generalizations commend themselves neither to common sense nor to whatever hypothetical "intent of Congress" as can be discerned in an area so remote from the core concerns of labor-management relations addressed by federal labor law.

The entire body of this Court's labor law pre-emption doctrine has been built on a series of implications as to congressional intent in the face of congressional silence, so that we now have an elaborate pre-emption doctrine traceable not to any expression of Congress, but only to statements by this Court in its previous opinions of what Congress must have intended.

This bill in no respect regulates or even provides for supervision of wages or hours, nor does it establish any form of compulsory arbitration.'