Mr. Justice White

delivered the opinion of the Court.

On February 13, 1962, Benjamin Owens filed this class action against petitioners, as officers and representatives of the National Brotherhood of Packinghouse Workers1 and of its Kansas City Local No. 12 (the Union), in the Circuit Court of Jackson County, Missouri. Owens, a Union member, alleged that he had been discharged from his employment at Swift & Company’s (Swift) Kansas City Meat Packing Plant in violation of the collective bargaining agreement then in force between Swift and the Union, and that the Union had “arbitrarily, capriciously and without just or reasonable reason or cause” refused to take his grievance with Swift to arbitration under the fifth step of the bargaining agreement’s grievance procedures.

Petitioners’ answer included the defense that the Missouri courts lacked jurisdiction because the gravamen of Owens’ suit was “arguably and basically” an unfair labor practice under § 8 (b) of the National Labor Relations Act (N, L. R. A.), as amended, 61 Stat. 141, 29 U. S. C. § 158 (b), within the exclusive jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). After a jury trial, a verdict was returned awarding Owens $7,000 compensatory and $3,300 punitive damages. The trial judge set aside the verdict and entered judgment for petitioners on the ground that the NLRB had exclusive jurisdiction *174over this controversy, and the Kansas City Court of Appeals affirmed. The Supreme Court of Missouri reversed and directed reinstatement of the jury’s verdict,2 relying orf this Court’s decisions in International Assn. of Machinists v. Gonzales, 356 U. S. 617, and in Automobile Workers v. Russell, 356 U. S. 634. 397 S. W. 2d 658. During-the appeal, Owens died, and respondent, the administrator of Owens’ estate, was substituted. We granted certiorari to consider whether exclusive jurisdiction lies with the NLRB and, if not, whether the finding of Union liability and the relief afforded Owens are consistent with governing principles of federal labor law. 384 U. S. 969. The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), Swift, and the United States have filed amicus briefs supporting petitioners. Although we conclude that state courts have jurisdiction in this type of case, we hold that federal law governs, that the governing federal standards were not applied here, and that the judgment of the Supreme Court of Missouri must accordingly' be reversed.

I.

In mid-1959, Owens, a long-time high blood pressure patient, became sick and entered a hospital on sick leave from his employment with Swift. After a long rest during which his weight and blood pressure were reduced, Owens was certified by his family physician as fit to resume his heavy work in the packing plant. However, Swift’s company doctor examined Owens upon his return and concluded that his blood pressure was too high to permit reinstatement. After securing a second authorization from another outside doctor, Owens returned to the plant, and a nurse permitted him to resume work *175on January 6, 1960. However, on January 8, when the doctor discovered Owens’ return, he was permanently discharged on the ground of poor health.

Armed with his medical evidence of fitness, Owens then sought the Union’s help in securing reinstatement, and a grievance was filed with Swift on his behalf. By mid-November 1960, the grievance had been processed through the third and into the fourth step of the grievance procedure established by the collective bargaining agreement;3 Swift adhered to its position that Owens’ poor health justified his discharge, rejecting numerous medical reports of reduced blood pressure proffered by Owens and' by the Union. Swift claimed that these reports were not based upon sufficiently thorough medical tests.

On February 6, 1961, the Union sent Owens to a new doctor at Union expense “to see if we could get some, better medical evidence so that we could go to arbitration with his case.” R., at 107. This examination did not support Owens’ position. When the Union received the report, its executive board voted not to take the Owens grievance to arbitration because of insufficient medical evidence. Union officers suggested to Owens that he accept Swift’s offer of referral to a rehabilitation center, and the grievance was suspended for that purpose. Owens rejected this alternative and demanded that the Union take his grievance to arbitration, but the Union *176refused. With his contractual remedies thus stalled at the fourth step, Owens brought this suit. The grievance was finally dismissed by the Union and Swift shortly before trial began in June 1964.4

In his charge to the jury, the trial judge instructed that petitioners would be liable if Swift had wrongfully discharged Owens and if the Union had “arbitrarily . . . and without just cause or excuse . . . refused” to press Owens’ grievance to arbitration. Punitive damages could also be awarded, the trial judge charged, if the Union’s conduct was “willful, wanton and malicious.” However, the jury must return a verdict for the defendants, the judge instructed, “if you find and believe from the evidence that the union and its representatives acted rea= sonably and in good faith in the handling and processing of the grievance of the plaintiff.” R., at 161-162. The jury then returned the general verdict for Owens which eventually was reinstated by the Missouri Supreme Court.

HH I — I

Petitioners challenge the jurisdiction of the Missouri courts on the ground that the alleged conduct of the Union was arguably an unfair labor practice and within the exclusive jurisdiction of the NLRB. Petitioners rely on Miranda Fuel Co., 140 N. L. R. B. 181 (1962), enforcement denied, 326 F. 2d 172 (C. A. 2d Cir. 1963), where a sharply divided Board held for the first time that a union’s breach of its statutory duty of fair representation violates N. L. R. A. § 8 (b), as amended. With the NLRB’s adoption of Miranda Fuel, petitioners argue, the broad pre-emption doctrine defined in San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U. S. 236, be*177comes applicable. For the reasons which follow, we reject this argument.

It is now well established that, as the exclusive bargaining representative of the employees in Owens’ bargaining unit, the Union had a statutory duty fairly to represent all of those employees, both in its collective bargaining with Swift, see Ford Motor Co. v. Huffman, 345 U. S. 330; Syres v. Oil Workers International Union, 350 U. S. 892, and in its enforcement of the resulting collective bargaining agreement, see Humphrey v. Moore, 375 U. S. 335. The statutory duty of fair representation was developed over 20 years ago in a series of cases involving alleged racial discrimination by unions certified as •exclusive bargaining representatives under the Railway Labor Act, see Steele v. Louisville & N. R. Co., 323 U. S. 192; Tunstall v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, 323 U. S. 210, and was soon extended to unions certified under the N. L. R. A., see Ford Motor Co. v. Huffman, supra. Under this doctrine, the exclusive agent’s statutory authority to represent all members of a designated unit includes a statutory obligation to serve the interests of all members without hostility or discrimination toward any, to exercise its discretion with complete good faith and honesty, and.to avoid arbitrary conduct. Humphrey v. Moore, 375 U. S., at 342. It is obvious that Owens’ complaint alleged a breach by the Union of a duty grounded in federal statutes, and that federal law therefore governs his cause of action. E. g., Ford Motor Co. v. Huffman, supra.

Although N. L. R. A. § 8 (b) was enacted in 1947, the NLRB did not until Miranda Fuel interpret a breach of a union’s duty of fair representation as an unfair labor practice. In Miranda Fuel, the Board’s majority held that N. L. R. A. § 7 gives employees “the right to be .free from unfair or irrelevant or invidious treatment by their exclusive bargaining- agent in matters affecting their *178employment,” and “that Section 8 (b)(1)(A) of the Act accordingly prohibits labor organizations, when acting in a statutory representative capacity, from taking action against any employee upon considerations or classifications which are irrelevant, invidious, or unfair.” 140 N. L. R. B., at 185. The Board also held that an employer who “participates” in such arbitrary union conduct violates § 8 (a)(1), and that the employer and the union may violate §§ 8 (a) (3) and 8 (b) (2), respectively, “when, for arbitrary or irrelevant reasons or upon the basis of an unfair classification, the union attempts to cause or does cause an employer to derogate the employment status of an employee.” 5 Id., at 186.

The Board’s Miranda Fuel decision was denied enforcement by a divided Second Circuit, 326 F. 2d 172 (1963). However, in Local 12, United Rubber Workers v. N. L. R. B., 368 F. 2d 12, the Fifth Circuit upheld the Board’s Miranda Fuel doctrine in an opinion suggesting that the Board’s approach will pre-empt judicial cognizance of some fair representation duty suits. In light of these developments, petitioners argue that Owens’ state court action was based upon Union conduct that is arguably proscribed by N. L. R. A. § 8 (b), was potentially enforceable by the NLRB, and was therefore pre-empted under the Garmon line of decisions.

A. In Garmon, this Court recognized that the broad powers conferred by Congress upon the National Labor Relations Board to interpret and to enforce the complex Labor Management Relations Act (L. M. R. A.) necessarily imply that potentially conflicting “rules of law, of remedy, and of administration” cannot be permitted to *179operate. 359 U. S., at 242. In enacting the National Labor Relations Act and later the Labor Management Relations Act,

■ “Congress did not merely lay down a substantive rule of law to be enforced by any tribunal competent to apply law generally to the parties. It went on to confide primary interpretation and application of its rules to a specific and specially constituted tribunal-. . . . Congress evidently considered that centralized administration of specially designed procedures was necessary to obtain uniform application of its substantive rules and’ to avoid these diversities and conflicts likely to result from a variety of local procedures and attitudes toward labor controversies. ... A multiplicity of tribunals and a diversity of procedures are quite as apt to produce incompatible or conflicting adjudications as are different rules of substantive law.” Garner v. Teamsters Union, 346 U. S. 485, 490-491:

Consequently, as a general rule, neither state nor federal courts have jurisdiction over suits directly involving “activity [which] is arguably subject to § 7 or § 8 of the Act.” San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U. S., at 245.

This pre-emption doctrine, however, has never been rigidly applied to cases where it could not fairly be inferred that Congress intended exclusive jurisdiction to lie with the NLRB. Congress itself has carved out exceptions to the Board’s exclusive jurisdiction: Section 303 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 61 Stat. 158, 29 U. S. C. § 187, expressly permits anyone injured by a violation of N. L. R. A. § 8 (b) (4) to recover damages in a federal court even though such unfair labor practices are also remediable by the Board; § 301 of that Act, 61 Stat. 156, 29 U. S. C. § 185, permits suits for breach of a collec*180tive bargaining agreement regardless of whether the particular breach is also an unfair labor practice within the jurisdiction of the Board (see Smith v. Evening News Assn., 371 U. S. 195); and N. L. R. A. § 14, as amended by Title VII, § 701 (a) of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, 73 Stat. 541, 29 U. S. C. § 164 (c), permits state agencies and courts to assume jurisdiction “over labor disputes over which the Board declines, pursuant to paragraph (1) of this subsection, to assert jurisdiction” (compare Guss v. Utah Labor Board, 353 U. S. 1).

In addition to these congressional exceptions, this Court has refused to hold state remedies pre-empted “where the activity regulated was a merely peripheral concern of the Labor Management Relations Act .... [or] touche'd interests so deeply rooted in local feeling and responsibility that, in the absence of compelling congressional direction, we could not infer that Congress has deprived the States of the power to act.” San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U. S., at 243-244. See, e. g., Linn v. Plant Guard Workers, 383 U. S. 53 (libel); Automobile Workers v. Russell, 356 U. S. 634 (violence); International Assn. of Machinists v. Gonzales, 356 U. S. 617 (wrongful expulsion from union membership) ; Allen-Bradley Local v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Board, 315 U. S. 740 (mass picketing). See also Hanna Mining Co. v. Marine Engineers Beneficial Assn., 382 U. S. 181. While these exceptions in no way undermine the vitality of the pre-emption rule where applicable, they demonstrate that the decision to preempt federal and state court jurisdiction over a given class of cases must depend upon the nature of the particular interests being asserted and the effect upon the administration of national labor policies of concurrent judicial and administrative remedies.

A primary justification for the pre-emption doctrine— the need to avoid conflicting rules of substantive law *181in the labor relations aréa and the desirability of leaving the development of such rules to the administrative agency created by Congress for that purpose — is not applicable to cases involving alleged breaches of the union's duty of fair representation. The doctrine was judicially developed in Steele and its progeny, and suits alleging breach of the duty remained judicially cognizable long after the NLRB was given unfair lábor practice jurisdiction over union activities by the L. M. R. A.6 Moreover,. when the Board declared in Miranda Fuel that a union’s breach of its duty of fair representation would henceforth be treated as an unfair labor practice, the Board adopted and applied the doctrine as it had been developed by the federal courts. See 140 N. L. R. B., at 184-186. Finally, as the dissenting Board members in Miranda Fuel have pointed out, fair representation duty suits often require review of the substantive positions taken and policies pursued by a union in its negotiation of a collective bargaining agreement and in its handling of the grievance machinery; as these matters are not normally within the Board’s unfair labor practice jurisdiction, it can be doubted whether the Board brings substantially greater expertise to bear on these problems than do the courts, which have been engaged in this type of review since the Steele decision.7

In addition to the above coi.iJderations, the unique interests served by the duty of fair representation doc*182trine have a profound effect, in our opinion, on the applicability of the pre-emption rule to this class of cases. The federal labor laws seek to promote industrial peace and the improvement of wages and working conditions by fostering a system of employee organization and collective bargaining. See N. L. R. A. § 1, as amended, 61 Stat. 136, 29 U. S. C. § 151. The collective bargaining system as encouraged by Congress and administered by the NLRB of necessity subordinates the interests of an individual employee to the collective interests of all employees in a bargaining unit. See, e. g., J. I. Case Co. v. Labor Board, 321 U. S. 332. This Court recognized in Steele that thé congressional grant of power to a union to act as exclusive colléctive bargaining representative, with its corresponding reduction in the individual rights of the employees so represented, would raise grave constitutional problems if unions were free to exercise this power to further racial discrimination. 323 U. S., at 198-199. Since that landmark decision, the duty of fair representation has stood as a bulwark to prevent arbitrary union conduct against individuals stripped of traditional forms of redress by. the provisions of federal labor law. Were we to hold, as petitioners and the Government urge, that the courts are foreclosed by the NLRB’s Miranda Fuel decision from this traditional supervisory jurisdiction, the individual employee injured by arbitrary or discriminatory union conduct could no loinger be assured of impartial review of his complaint, since the Board’s General Counsel has unreviewable discretion to refuse to institute an unfair labor practice complaint. See United Electrical Contractors Assn. v. Ordman, 366 F. 2d 776, cert. denied, 385 U. S. 1026.8 The existence of even a small group *183of cases in which the Board would be unwilling or unable to remedy a union’s breach of duty would frustrate the basic purposes underlying the duty of fair representation doctrine. For these reasons, we cannot assume from the NLRB’s tardy assumption of jurisdiction in these cases that Congress, when it enacted N. L. R. A. § 8 (b) in 1947, intended to oust the courts of their traditional jurisdiction to curb arbitrary conduct by the individual employee’s statutory representative.

B. There are also some intensely practical considerations which foreclose pre-emption of judicial cognizance of fair representation duty suits, considerations which emerge from the intricate relationship between the duty of fair representation and the enforcement of collective bargaining contracts. For the fact is that the question of whether a union has breached its duty of fair representation will in many cases be a critical issue in a suit under L. M. R. A. § 301 charging an employer with a breach of contract. To illustrate, let us assume a collective bargaining agreement that limits discharges to those for good.cause and that contains no grievance, arbitration or other provisions purporting 'to restrict access to the courts. If an employee is discharged without cause, either the union or the employee may sue the employer under L. M. R. A. § 301. Under this section, courts have jurisdiction over suits to enforce collective bargaining agreements even though the conduct of the employer which is challenged as a breach of contract is also arguably an unfair labor practice within the jurisdiction of *184the NLRB. Garmon and like cases have no application to § 301 suits. Smith v. Evening News Assn., 371 U. S. 195.

The rule is the same with regard to pre-emption where the bargaining agreement contains grievance and arbitration provisions which are intended to provide the exclusive remedy for breach of contract claims.9 If an employee is discharged without cause in violation of such an agreement, that the employer’s conduct may be an unfair labor practice does not preclude a suit by the union10 against the employer to compel arbitration of the employee’s grievance, the adjudication of the claim by the arbitrator, or a suit to enforce the-resulting arbitration award. See, e. g., Steelworkers v. American Mfg. Co., 363 U. S. 564.

However, if the wrongfully discharged employee himself resorts to the courts before the grievance procedures have been fully exhausted, the employer may well defend on the ground that the exclusive remedies provided by such a contract have not been éxhausted. Since the employee’s claim is based upon breach of the collective bargaining agreement, he is bound by terms of that agreement which govern the manner in which contractual rights may be enforced. For this reason, it is settled that the employee must at least attempt to exhaust exclusive grievance and -arbitration procedures established by. the bargaining agreement. Republic Steel Corp. v. Maddox, 379 U. S. *185650. However, because these contractual remedies, have been devised and are often controlled by the union and the employer, they may well prove unsatisfactory or unworkable for the individual grievant. The problem then is to determine under what circumstances the individual employee may obtain judicial review of his breach-of-contract claim despite his failure to secure relief through the contractual remedial procedures.

An obvious' situation in which the employee should not be limited to the exclusive remedial procedures established by the contract occurs when the conduct of the employer amounts to a repudiation of those contractual procedures. Cf. Drake Bakeries v. Bakery Workers, 370 U. S. 254, 260-263. See generally 6A Corbin, Contracts § 1443 (1962). In such a situation (and there may of course be others), the employer is estopped by his own conduct to rely on the unexhausted grievance and arbitration procedures as a defense to the employee’s cause of action.

We think that another situation when the employee may seek judicial enforcement of his contractual rights arises if, as is true here, the union has sole power under the contract to invoke the higher stages of the grievance procedure, and if, as is alleged here, the employee-plaintiff has been prevented from exhausting his contractual remedies by the union’s wrongful refusal to process the grievance. It is true that the employer in such a situation may have done nothing t& prevent exhaustion of the exclusive contractual remedies to which he agreed in the collective bargaining agreement. But the employer has committed a wrongful discharge in breach of that agreement, a breach which could be remedied through the grievance process to the employee-plaintiff’s benefit were it not for the union’s breach of its statutory duty of fair representation to the employee. To leave the employee remediless in such circumstances would, in our *186opinion, be a great injustice. We cannot believe that Congress, in conferring upon employers and unions the power, to establish exclusive grievance procedures, intended .to confer upon unions, such unlimited discretion to deprive injured employees of all remedies for breach of contract. Nor do we think that Congress intended to shield employers from the natural consequences of their breaches of bargaining agreements by wrongful union conduct in the enforcement of such agreements. Cf. Richardson v. Texas & N. O. R. Co., 242 F. 2d 230, 235-236 (C. A. 5th Cir.).

For these reasons, we think the wrongfully discharged employee may bring an action against his employer in the face of a defense based upon the failure to exhaust contractual remedies, provided the employee can prove that the union as bargaining agent breached its duty of fair representation in its handling of the employee’s grievance.11 We may assume for present purposes that such a breach of duty by the union is an unfair labor practice, as the NLRB and the Fifth Circuit have held. The employee’s suit against the employer, however, remains a § 301 suit, and the jurisdiction of the courts is no more destroyed by the fact that the employee, as part and parcel of his § 301 action, finds it necessary to prove an unfair labor practice by the union, than it is by the fact that the suit may involve an unfair labor practice by the employer himself. The -court is free to determine *187whether the employee is barred by the actions of his union representative, and, if not, to proceed with the case. And if, to facilitate his case, the employee joins the union as a defendant, the situation is not substantially changed. The action is still a § 301 suit, and the jurisdiction of the courts is not pre-empted under the Garmon principle. This, at the very least, is the holding of Humphrey v. Moore, supra, with respect to pre-emption, as petitioners recognize in their brief. And, insofar as adjudication of the union’s breach of duty is concerned, the result should be no different if the employee, as Owens did here, sues the employer and the union in separate actions. There would be very little to commend a rule which would permit the Missouri courts to adjudicate the Union’s conduct in an action against Swift but not in an action against the Union itself. ’ ;

For the above reasons, it is obvious that the.courts will be compelled to pass upon whether there has been a breach of the duty of fair representation in the context of many § 301 breach-of-contract actions. If a breach of duty by the union and. a breach of contract by the' employer are proven, the court must fashion an appropriate remedy. Presumably, in at least some cases, the union’s breach of duty will have enhanced or contributed to the employee’s injury.. What possible sense could there be in a rule which would permit a court, that has litigated the fault of employer and union to fashion a remedy only with respect to the employer? Under such a rule, either the employer would be compelled by the court "to pay for the union’s wrong — slight deterrence, indeed, to future union misconduct — or the injured employee would be forced to go to two tribunals to repair a single injury] Moreover, the Board would be compelled in many cases either to remedy injuries arising out of a breach of contract, a task which Congress has not assigned to it, or to leave the individual employee with*188out remedy for the union’s wrong.12 Given the strong reasons for not pre-empting duty of fair representation suits in general, and.the fact that the courts in many § 301 suits must adjudicate whether the union has breached its duty, we conclude that the courts may also fashion remedies for such a breach of duty,

It follows from the above that the Missouri courts had jurisdiction in this case. Of course, it is quite another problem to determine what remedies may be available against the Union if a breach of duty is proven. See Part IV, infra. But the unique role played by the duty of fair representation doctrine in the scheme of federal labor laws, and its important relationship to the judicial enforcement of collective bargaining agreements in the context presented here, render the Garmon pre-emption doctrine inapplicable.

III.

Petitioners contend, ’ as they did in their motion for judgment notwithstanding the jury’s verdict, that Owens failed to prove that the Union breached its duty of fair representation in its handling of Owens’ grievance. Peti*189tioners also argue that the Supreme Court of Missouri, in rejecting this contention, applied a standard that is inconsistent with governing principles of federal law with ■respect to the Union’s duty to an individual employee in its processing of grievances under the collective bargaining agreement with Swift. We agree with both contentions.

A. In holding that the evidence at trial supported the jury’s verdict in favor of Owens, the Missouri Supreme Court stated:

“The essential issue submitted to the jury was whether the union . . . arbitrarily . . . refused to carry said grievance . . . through the fifth step ....

“We have concluded that there was sufficient substantial evidence from which the jury reasonably could have found the foregoing issue in favor of plaintiff. It is notable that no physician actually testified in the case. Both sides were content to rely upon written statements. Three physicians certified that plaintiff was able to perform his regular work. Three other physicians certified that they had taken plaintiff’s blood pressure and that the readings were approximately 160 over 100. It may be inferred that such a reading does not indicate that his blood pressure was dangerously high. Moreover, plaintiff’s evidence showed that he had actually done hard physical labor periodically during the four years following his discharge. We accordingly rule this point adversely to defendants.” ' 397 S. W. 2d, at 665.

Quite obviously, the question which the Missouri Supreme Court thought dispositive of the issue of liability was whether the evidence supported Owens’ assertion that he had been wrongfully discharged by Swift, regardless of the Union’s good faith in reaching a contrary *190conclusion. This was also the major concern of the plaintiff at trial: the bulk of Owens’ evidence was directed at whether he was medically fit at the time of discharge and whether he had performed heavy work after that discharge.

A breach of the statutory duty of fair representation occurs only when a union’s conduct toward a member of the collective bargaining unit is arbitrary, discriminatory, or in bad faith. See Humphrey v. Moore, supra; Ford Motor Co. v. Huffman, supra. There has been considerable debate over the extent of this duty in the context of a union’s enforcement of the grievance and arbitration procedures in a collective bargaining agreement. See generally Blumrosen, The Worker and Three Phases of Unionism: Administrative and Judicial Control of the Worker-Union Relationship, 61 Mich. L. Rev. 1435, 1482-1501 (1963); Comment, Federal Protection of Individual Rights under Labor Contracts, 73 Yale L. J. 1215 (1964). Some have suggested that every individual employee should have the right , to have his grievance taken to arbitration.13 Others have urged that the union be given substantial discretion (if the collective, bargaining agreement so provides) to decide whether a grievance should be taken to arbitration, subject only to the duty to refrain from patently wrongful conduct such as racial discrimination or personal hostility.14

*191Though we accept the proposition that a union may not arbitrarily ignore a meritorious grievance or. process it in perfunctory fashion, we do not agree that the individual employee has an absolute right to have his grievance taken to arbitration regardless of the provisions of the applicable collective bargaining agreement. In L. M. R. A. § 203 (d), 61 Stat. 154, 29 U. S. C. § 173 (d), Congress declared that “Final adjustment by a method agreed upon by the parties is . . . the desirable method for settlement of grievance disputes arising over the application or interpretation of an existing collective-bargaining agreement.” In providing for a grievance and arbitration procedure which gives the union discretion to supervise the grievance machinery and to invoke arbitration, the employer and the union contemplate that each will endeavor in good faith to settle grievances short of arbitration. Through this settlement process, frivolous grievances are ended prior to the most costly and time-consuming step in the grievance procedures. Moreover, both sides are assured that similar complaints will be treated consistently, and major problem areas in the interpretation of the collective bargaining contract can be isolated and perhaps resolved. And finally, the settlement process furthers the interest of the union as statutory agent and as coauthor of the bargaining agreement in representing the employees in the enforcement of that agreement. See Cox, Rights Under a Labor Agreement, 69 Harv. L. Rev. 601 (1956).

If the individual employee could compel arbitration of his grievance regardless of its merit, the settlement machinery provided by the contract would be substantially undermined, thus destroying the employer’s confidence in the union’s authority and returning the individual grievant to the vagaries of independent and unsystematic negotiation. Moreover, under such a rule, a sig-. nificantly greater number of grievances would proceed to *192arbitration.15 This would greatly increase the cost of the grievance machinery and could so overburden the arbitration process' as to prevent it from functioning successfully. See NLRB v. Acme Industrial Co., 385 U. S. 432, 438; Ross, Distressed Grievance Procedures and Their Rehabilitation, in Labor Arbitration and Industrial Change, Proceedings of the 16th Annual Meeting, National Academy of Arbitrators 104 (1963). It can well be doubted whether the parties to collective bargaining agreements would long continue to provide for detailed grievance and arbitration procedures of the kind encouraged by L. M. R. A. § 203 (d), supra, if their power to settle the majority of grievances short of the costlier and more time-consuming steps was limited by a rule permitting the grievant unilaterally to invoke arbitration. Nor do we see substantial danger to the interests of the individual employee if his statutory agent is given the contractual power honestly and in good faith to settle grievances short of arbitration. For these reasons, we conclude that a union does not breach its duty of fair representation, and thereby open up a suit by the employee for breach of contract, merely because it settled the grievance short of arbitration.

For these same reasons, the standard applied here by the Missouri Supreme Court cannot be sustained. For if a union’s decision that a particular grievance lacks *193sufficient merit to justify arbitration would constitute a breach of the duty of fair representation because a judge or jury later found the grievance' meritorious, the union’s incentive to settle such grievances short of arbitration would be seriously reduced. The dampening effect on the entire grievance procedure of this reduction of the union’s freedom to settle claims in good faith would surely be substantial. Since the union’s statutory duty of fair representation protects the individual employee from arbitrary abuses of the settlement device by providing him with recourse against both employer (in a § 301 suit) and union, this severe limitation on the power to settle grievances is neither necessary nor desirable. Therefore, we conclude that the Supreme Court of Missouri erred in upholding the verdict in this case solely on the ground that the evidence supported Owens’ claim that he had been wrongfully discharged.

B, Applying the proper standard of union liability to the facts of this case, we cannot uphold the jury’s award, for we conclude that as a matter of federal law the evidence does not support a verdict that the Union breached its duty of fair representation.. As we have stated, Owens could not have established a breach of that duty merely by convincing the jury that he was in fact fit for work in I960; he must also have proved arbitrary or bad-faith conduct on the part of the Union in processing his grievance. The evidence revealed that the Union diligently supervised the grievance into the fourth step of the bargaining agreement’s procedure, with the Union’s business representative serving as Owens’ advocate throughout these steps. When Swift refused to reinstate Owens on the basis of his medical reports indicating reduced blood pressure, the Union sent him to another doctor of his own choice, at Union expense, in an attempt to amass persuasive medical evidence of Owens’ fitness for work. When this examination proved unfavorable, the Union *194concluded that it could not establish a wrongful discharge. It then encouraged Swift to find light work for Owens at the plant. When this effort failed, the Union determined that arbitration would be fruitless and suggested to Owens that he accept Swift’s offer to send him to a heart association for rehabilitation. At this point, Owens’ grievance was suspended in the fourth step in the hope that he might be rehabilitated.

In administering the grievance and arbitration machinery as statutory agent of the employees, a union must, in good faith and in a nonarbitrary manner, make decisions as to the merits of particular grievances. See Humphrey v. Moore, 375 U. S. 335, 349-350; Ford Motor Co. v. Huffman, 345 U. S. 330, 337-339. In a case such as this, when Owens supplied the Union with medical evidence supporting his position, the Union might well have breached its duty had it ignored Owens’ complaint or had it processed the grievance in a perfunctory manner. See Cox, Rights under a Labor Agreement, 69 Harv. L. Rev., at 632-634. But here the Union processed the grievance into the fourth step, attempted to gather sufficient évidence to prove Owens’ case, attempted to secure for Owens less vigorous work at the plant, and joined in the employer’s efforts to have Owens rehabilitated. Only when these efforts all proved unsuccessful did the Union conclude both that arbitration would be fruitless and that the ■ grievance should be dismissed. . There was- no evidence that any Union officer was personally hostile to Owens or that the Union acted at any time other than in good faith.16 Having concluded that *195the individual employee has no absolute right to have his grievance arbitrated under the collective bargaining agreement at issue, and that a breach of the duty of fair representation is not established merely by proof that the underlying grievance was meritorious, we must conclude that that duty was not breached here.

IV.

In our opinion, there is another important reason why the judgment of the Missouri Supreme Court cannot stand. Owens’ suit against the Union was grounded on his claim that Swift had discharged him in violation of the applicable collective bargaining agreement. In his complaint, Owens alleged “that, as a direct result of said wrongful breach of said contract, by employer . . . Plaintiff was damaged in the sum of Six Thousand, Five Hundred ($6,500.00) Dollars per year, continuing until the date of trial.” For the Union’s role in “preventing Plaintiff from completely exhausting administrative remedies,” Owens requested, and the jury awarded, compensatory damages for the above-described breach of contract plus punitive damages of $3,000. R., at 4. We hold that such damages are not recoverable from the Union in the circumstances of this case.

The appropriate remedy for a breach of a union’s duty of fair representation must vary with the circumstances of the particular breach. In this case, the employee’s complaint was that the Union wrongfully failed to afford him the arbitration remedy against his employer established by the collective bargaining agreement. But the damages sought by Owens were primarily those suffered *196because of the employer’s alleged breach of contract. Assuming for the moment that Owens had been wrongfully discharged, Swift’s only defense to a direct action for breach of contract would have been the Union’s failure to resort to arbitration, compare Republic Steel Corp. v. Maddox, 379 U. S. 650, with Smith v. Evening News Assn., 371 U. S. 195, and if that failure was itself a violation of the Union’s statutory duty to the employee, there is no reason to exempt the employer from contractual damages which he would otherwise have had to pay. See pp. 185-186, supra. The difficulty lies in fashioning an appropriate scheme of remedies.

Petitioners urge that an employee be restricted in such circumstances to a decree compelling the employer and the union to arbitrate the underlying grievance.17 It is true that the employee’s action is based on the employer’s alleged breach of contract plus the union’s alleged wrongful failure to afford him his contractual remedy of arbitration. For this reason, an order compelling arbitration should be viewed as one of the available remedies when a breach of the union’s duty is proved. But we see no reason inflexibly to require arbitration in all cases. In some cases, for example, at least part of the employee’s damages may be attributable to the union’s breach of duty, and an arbitrator may have no power under the bargaining agreement to award such damages against the union. In other cases, the arbitrable issues may be substantially resolved in the course of trying the fair representation controversy. In such situations, the court should be free to decide the contractual claim and to award the employee appropriate damages or equitable relief.

A more difficult question is, what portion of the employee’s damages may be charged to the union: in partic*197ular, may an award against a union include, as it did here, damages attributable solely to the employer’s breach of contract? We think not. Though the union has violated a statutory duty in failing to press the grievance, it ig the employer’s unrelated breach of contract which triggered the controversy and which caused this portion of the employee’s damages. The employee should have no difficulty recovering these damages from the employer, who cannot, as we have explained, hide behind the union’s wrongful failure to act; in fact, the employer may be (and probably should be) joined as a defendant in the fair representation suit, as in Humphrey v. Moore, supra. It could be a real hardship on the union to pay these damages, even if the union were given a right of indemnification against the employer. With the employee assured of direct recovery from the' employer, we see no merit in requiring the union to pay the employer’s share of the damages.18

The governing principle, then, is to apportion liability between the employer and the union according to the damage caused by the fault of each. Thus, damages attributable solely to the employer’s breach of contract should not be charged to the union, but increases if any *198in those damages caused by the union’s refusal to process the grievance should not be charged to the employer. In this case, even if the Union had breached its duty, all or almost all of Owens’ damages would still be attributable to his allegedly wrongful discharge by Swift. For these reasons, even if the Union here had properly been found liable for a breach of duty, it is clear that the damage award was improper.

Reversed.

Mr. Justice Fortas,

with whom The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Harlan join, concurring in the result.

1. In my view, a complaint by an employee that the union has breached its duty of fair representation is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the NLRB. It is a charge of unfair labor practice. See Miranda Fuel Co., 140 N. L. R. B. 181 (1962);1 Local 12, United Rubber Workers, 150 N. L. R. B. 312, enforced, 368 F. 2d 12 (C. A. 5th Cir. 1966).2 As is the case with most other *199unfair labor practices, the Board’s jurisdiction is preemptive. Garner v. Teamsters Union, 346 U. S. 485 (1953); Guss v. Utah Labor Board, 353 U. S. 1 (1957); San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U. S. 236 (1959); Local 438, Constr. Laborers v. Curry, 371 U. S. 542 (1963); Plumbers’ Union v. Borden, 373 U. S. 690 (1963); Iron Workers v. Perko, 373 U. S. 701 (1963); Liner v. Jafco, Inc., 375 U. S. 301 (1964). Cf. Woody v. Sterling Alum. Prods., Inc., 365 F. 2d 448 (C. A. 8th Cir. 1966), pet. for cert. pending, No. 946, O. T. 1966. There is no basis for failure to apply the preemption principle in the present case, and, as I shall discuss, strong reason for its application. The relationship between the union and the individual employee with respect to the processing of claims to employment rights under the collective bargaining agreement is fundamental to the design and operation of federal labor law. ' It is not “merely peripheral,” as the Court’s opinion states. It “presents difficult problems of definition of status, problems which we have held are precisely ‘of a .kind most wisely entrusted initially to the agency charged with the day-to-day administration of the Act as a whole.’ ” Iron Workers v. Perko, supra, 373 U. S., at 706. Accordingly; the judgment of the Supreme Court of Missouri should be reversed and the ■ complaint dismissed for this reason and on this basis. I agree, however, that if it were assumed that jurisdiction of the subject matter exists, the judgment would still have to be reversed because of the use by the Missouri court of an improper standard for measuring the union’s duty, and the absence of evidence to establish that the union refused further to process Owens’ grievance because of bad faith or arbitrarily.

2. I regret the elaborate discussion in the Court’s opinion of problems which are irrelevant. This is not an action by the employee against the employer, and the *200discussion of the requisites of such an action is, in my judgment, unnecessary. The Court argues that the employee could sue the employer under L. M. R. A. § 301; and that to maintain such an action the employee would have to show that he has exhausted his remedies under the collective bargaining agreement, or alternatively that he was prevented from doing so because the union breached its duty to him by failure' completely to process his claim. That may be; or maybe all he would have to show, to maintain an action against the employer for wrongful discharge is that he demanded that the union process his claim to exhaustion of available remedies, and that it refused to do so.3, I see no need for the Court to pass upon that question, which is not presented here, and which, with all respect, lends no support to the Court’s argument. The Court seems to use its discussion of the employee-employer litigation as somehow analogous to or supportive of its conclusion that the employee may maintain a court action against the union. But I do not believe that this follows. I agree that the NLRB’s unfair labor practice jurisdiction does not preclude an action under § 301 against the employer for wrongful discharge *201from employment. Smith v. Evening News Assn., 371 U. S. 195 (1962). Therefore, Owens might have maintained an action against his employer in the present case. This would be an action to enforce the collective bargaining agreement, and Congress has authorized the courts to entertain actions of this type. But his claim against the union is quite different in character, as the Court itself recognizes. The Court holds — and I think correctly if the issue is to be reached — that the union could not be required to pay damages measured by the breach of the employment contract, because it was not the union but the employer that breached the contract. I agree; but I suggest that this reveals the point for which I contend: that the employee’s claim against the-union is not a claim under the collective bargaining agreement, but a claim that the union has breached its statutory duty of fair representation. This claim, I submit, is a claim of unfair labor practice and it is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the NLRB. The Court agrees that “one of the available remedies [obtainable, the Court says, by court action] when a breach of the union’s duty is proved” is “an order compelling arbitration.” This is precisely and uniquely the kind of order which is within the province of the Board. Beyond this, the Court is exceedingly vague as to remedy: “appropriate damages or equitable relief” are suggested as possible remedies, apparently when arbitration is not available. Damages against the union, the Court admonishes, should be gauged “according to the damage caused by [its] fault” — i. e., the failure to exhaust remedies for the grievance. The Court’s difficulty, it seems to me, reflects the basic awkwardness of its position: It is attempting to force into the posture of a contract violation an alleged default of the union which is not a violation of the collective bargaining agreement but a breach of its separate and basic duty fairly *202to represent all employees in the unjt. This is an unfair labor practice, and should be treated as such.4

3. If We look beyond logic and precedent to the policy of the labor relations design which Congress has provided, court jurisdiction of this type of action seems anomalous and ill-advised. We are not dealing here with the interpretation of a contract or with an alleged breach of an employment agreement. As the Court in effect acknowledges, we are concerned with the subtleties of a union’s statutory duty faithfully to represent employees in the unit, including those who may.not be members of the union. The Court — regrettably; in my opinion — ventures to state judgments as to the metes and bounds of the reciprocal duties involved in the relationship between the union and the employee. In my opinion, this is precisely and especially the kind of judgment that Congress intended to entrust to the Board and which is well within the pre-emption doctrine that this Court has prudently stated.5 See cases cited, supra, es*203pecially the Perko and Borden cases, the facts of which strongly parallel the situation in this case. See also Linn v. Plant Guard Workers, 383 U. S. 53, 72 (1966) (dissenting opinion). The nuances of union-employee and union-employer relationships are infinite and consequential, particularly when the issue is as amorphous as whether the union was proved guilty of “arbitrary or bad-faith conduct” which the Court states as the standard applicable here. In all reason and in all good judgment, this jurisdiction should be left with the Board and not be placed in the courts, especially with the complex and necessarily confusing guidebook that the Court now publishes.

Accordingly, I join the judgment of reversal, but on the basis stated.

Mr. Justice Black,

dissenting.

The Court today opens slightly the courthouse door to an employee’s incidental claim against his union for breach of its duty of fair representation, only to shut it in his face when he seeks direct judicial relief for his underlying and more valuable breach-of-contract claim against his employer. This result follows from the Court’s announcement in this case, involving an employee’s suit against his union, of a new rule to govern an. employee’s suit against his employer. The rule is that before an employee can sue his employer under § 301 of the L. M. R. A. for a simple breach of his employment contract, the employee must prove not only that he attempted to exhaust his contractual remedies, but that his attempt to exhaust them was frustrated by “arbitrary, discriminatory, or . . . bad faith” conduct on *204the part of his union. With this new rule and its result I cannot agree.

The Court recognizes, as it must, that the jury in this case found at least that Benjamin Owens was fit for work, that his grievance against Swift was meritorious, and that Swift breached the collective bargaining agreement when it wrongfully discharged him. The Court also notes in passing that Owens* has a separate action for breach of contract pending against Swift in the state courts. Arid in Part IV of its opinion, the Court vigorously-insists that “there is no reason to exempt the employer from contractual damages which he would otherwise have had to pay,” that the “employee should have- no difficulty recovering these damages from the employer” for his “unrelated breach of contract,” and that “the employee [is] assured of direct recovery from the employer.” But this reassurance in Part IV gives no comfort to Owens, for Part IV is based on the assumption that the union breached its duty to Owens, an assumption which, in Part III of its opinion, the Court finds unsupported by the facts of this case. What this all means, though the Court does not expressly say it. is that Owens will be no more successful in his pending breach-of-contract action against Swift than he is here in his-suit against the union. For the Court makes it clear “that the question of whether a union has breached its duty of fair representation will... be a critical issue- in a suit under L. M. R. A. § 301,” that “the wrongfully discharged employee may bring an action against his employer” only if he “can prove that the union . . . breached its duty of fair representation in its handling of the employee’s grievance,” and “that the employee, as part and parcel of'his § 301 action, finds *205it necessary to prove an unfair labor practice by the union.” Thus, when Owens attempts to proceed with his pending breach-of-contract action against Swift, Swift will undoubtedly secure its prompt dismissal by pointing to the Court’s conclusion here that the union has not breached its duty of fair representation. Thus, Owens, who now has obtained a judicial determination that he was wrongfully discharged, is left remediless, and Swift, having breached its contract, is allowed to hide behind, and is shielded by, the union’s conduct. I simply fail to see how it should make one iota of difference, as far as the “unrelated breach of contract” by Swift is concerned, whether the union’s conduct is wrongful or rightful. Neither precedent nor logic supports the Court’s new announcement that it does.

Certainly, nothing in Republic Steel Corp. v. Maddox, 379 U. S. 650, supports this new rule. That was a case where the aggrieved employee attempted to “completely sidestep available grievance procedures in favor of a lawsuit.” Id., at 653. Noting that “it cannot be said . . . that contract grievance procedures are inadequate to protect, the interests of an aggrieved employee until the employee has attempted to implement the procedures and found them so,” ibid., the Court there held that the employee “must attempt use of the contract grievance procedure,” id., at 652, and “must afford the union the opportunity to act on his behalf,” id., at 653. I dissented on the firm belief that an employee should be free to litigate his own lawsuit with his own lawyer in a court before a jury, rather than being forced to entrust his claim to a union which, even if it did agree to press it, would be required to submit it to arbitration. And even if, as the Court implied, “the worker would be allowed to sue after he had presented his claim 'to the union and after he had suffered the inevitable discouragement and delay which necessarily accompanies the union’s refusal *206to press his claim,” id., at 669', I could find no threat to peaceful labor relations or to the union’s prestige in allowing an employee to by-pass completely contractual remedies in favor of a traditional breach-of-contract lawsuit for back pay or wage substitutes. Here, of course, Benjamin Owens did not “completely sidestep available grievance procedures in favor of a lawsuit.” With complete respect for the union’s authority and deference to the contract grievance procedures, he not only gave the union a chance to act on his behalf, but in every way possible tried to convince it that his claim was meritorious and should be carried through the fifth step to arbitration. In short, he did everything the Court’s opinion in Maddox said he should do, and yet now the Court says so much is not enough.

In. Maddox, I noted that the “cases really in point are those which involved agreements governed by the Railway Labor Act and which expressly refused to hold that a discharged worker must pursue collective bargaining grievance procedures before suing in a court for wrongful discharge. Transcontinental & Western Air, Inc. v. Koppal, 345 U. S. 653; Moore v. Illinois Central R. Co., 312 U. S. 630.” 379 U. S., at 666. I also observed that the Court’s decision in Maddox “raised the overruling axe so high [over those cases] that its falling is just about as certain as the changing of the seasons.” Id., at 667. In the latter observation I was mistaken. The Court has this Term, in Walker v. Southern R. Co., 385 U. S. 196, refused to overrule in light of Maddox such cases as Moore and Koppal. Noting the long delays attendant upon exhausting administrative remedies under the Railway Labor Act, the Court based this refusal on “[t]he contrast between the administrative remedy” available to Maddox and that available to Walker. If, as the Court suggested, the availability of an administrative remedy determines whether an employee can sue without first *207exhausting it, can there be any doubt that Owens who had no administrative remedy should be as .free to sue as Walker who had a slow one? Unlike Maddox, Owens attempted to implement the contract grievance procedures and found them inadequate. Today’s decision, following in the wake of Walker v. Southern R. Co., merely perpetuates an unfortunate anomaly created by Maddox in the law of labor relations.

The rule announced in Maddox, I thought, was a “brainchild” of the Court’s recent preference for arbitration. But I am unable to ascribe any such genesis to today’s rule, for arbitration is precisely what Owens sought and preferred. Today the Court holds that an employee with a- meritorious claim has no absolute right to have it either litigated or arbitrated. Fearing that arbitrators would be overworked, the Court allows unions unilaterally to determine not to take a grievance to arbitration — the first step in the contract grievance procedure at which the claim would be presented to an impartial third party — as long as the union decisions are neither “arbitrary” nor “in bad faith.” The Court derives this standard of conduct from a long line of cases holding that “[a] breach of the statutory duty of fair representation occurs only when a union’s conduct toward a member of the collective bargaining unit is arbitrary, discriminatory, or in bad faith.” What the Court overlooks is that those cases laid down this standard in the context of situations where the employee’s sole or fundamental complaint was against the union. There was not the slightest hint in those cases that the same standard would apply where the employee’s primary complaint was against his employer for breach of contract and where he only incidentally contended that the union’s conduct prevented the adjudication, by either court or arbitrator, of the underlying grievance. If the Court here were satisfied with merely holding that in this situation the employee *208could not recover damages from the union unless the union breached its duty of fair representation, then it would be one thing to say that the union did not do so in making, a good-faith decision not to take the employee’s grievance to arbitration. But if, as the Court goes on to hold, the employee cannot sue his employer for breach of contract unless his failure to exhaust contractual remedies is due to the union’s breach of its duty of fair representation, then I am quite unwilling to say that the union’s refusal to exhaust such remedies — however non-arbitrary — does not amount to a breach of its duty. Either the employee should be able to sue his employer for breach of contract after having attempted to exhaust his contractual remedies, or the union should have an absolute duty to exhaust contractual remedies on his behalf. The merits of an. employee’s grievance would thus be determined by either a jury or an arbitrator. Under today’s decision it will never be determined by either.

And it should be clear that the Court’s opinion goes much further than simply holding that an employee has no absolute right to have the imion take his grievance to arbitration. Here, of course, the union supervised the grievance into the fourth step of the contract machinery- and dropped it just prior to arbitration on its belief that the outcome of arbitration would be unfavorable. But limited only by the standard of arbitrariness, there was clearly no need for the union to go that far. Suppose, for instance, the union had a rule that it would not prosecute a grievance even to the first step unless the grievance were filed by the employee within 24 hours after it arose. Pursuant to this rule, the union might completely refuse to prosecute a grievance filed several days late. Thus, the employee, no matter how meritorious his grievance, would get absolutely nowhere. And unless he could prove that *209the union’s rule was arbitrary (a standard which no one can define), the employee would get absolutely no consideration of the merits of his grievance — either by a jury, an arbitrator, the employer, or by the union. The Court suggests three reasons for giving the union this almost unlimited discretion to. deprive injured employees of all remedies for breach of. contract. The first is that “frivolous grievances” will be ended prior to time-consuming and costly arbitration. But here no one; not even the union, suggests that Benjamin Owens’ grievance was frivolous. The union decided not to take it to arbitration simply because the union doubted the chance of success. Even if this was a good-faith doubt, I think the union had the duty to present this contested, but serious, claim to the arbitrator whose very function is to decide such claims on the basis of what he believes to be right. Second, the Court says that allowing the union to settle grievances prior to arbitration will assure consistent treatment of “major problem areas in the interpretation of the collective bargaining contract.” But can it be argued that whether Owens was “fit to work” presents a major problem in the interpretation of the collective bargaining agreement? The problem here was one of interpreting medical reports, not a collective bargaining agreement, and of evaluating other evidence of Owens’ physical condition. I doubt whether consistency is either possible or desirable in determining whether a particular employee is able to perform a particular job. Finally, the Court suggests that its decision “furthers the interest of the union as statutory agent.” I think this is the real reason for today’s decision which entirely overlooks the interests of the injured employee, the only one who has anything to lose. Of course, anything which gives the union life and death power over those whom it is supposed to represent furthers its “interest.” I simply fail to see how *210the union's legitimate role as statutory agent is undermined by requiring it to prosecute all serious grievances to a conclusion or by allowing the injured employee to sue his employer after he has given the union a chance to act on his behalf.

Henceforth, in almost every § 301 breach-of-contract suit by an employee against an employer, the employee will have the additional burden of proving that the union acted arbitrarily or in bad faith. The Court never explains what is meant by this vague phrase or how trial judges are intelligently to translate it to a jury. Must the employee prove that the union in fact acted arbitrarily, or will it be sufficient to show that the employee's grievance was so meritorious that a reasonable union would not have refused to carry it to arbitration? Must the employee join the union in his § 301 suit against the employer, or must he join the employer in his unfair representation suit against the union? However these questions are answered, today’s decision, requiring the individual employee to take on both the employer and the union in every suit against the employer and to prove not only that the employer breached its contract, but that the union acted arbitrarily, converts what would otherwise be a simple breach-of-contract action into a three-ring donnybrook. It puts an intolerable burden on employees with meritorious grievances and means they will frequently be left with no remedy. Today’s decision, while giving the worker an ephemeral right to sue his union for breach of its duty of fair representation, creates insurmountable obstacles to block his far more valuable right to sue his employer for breach of the collective bargaining agreement.

*191Mr. Justice Brennan

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Under § 8 (b)(4)(ii)(B) of the National Labor Relations Act, as amended,1 it is an unfair labor practice for a union “to threaten, coerce, or restrain any person,” with the object of “forcing or requiring any person to cease using, selling, handling, transporting, or otherwise dealing in the products of any other producer ... or to cease doing business with any other person . . . .” A proviso excepts, however, “publicity, other than picketing, for the purpose of truthfully advising the public . . . that a product or products are produced by an employer with whom the labor organization has a primary dispute and are distributed by another employer, as long as such publicity does not have an effect of inducing any individual employed by any person other than the primary employer in the course of his employment to refuse to pick up, deliver, or transport any goods, or not to perform any services, at the establishment of the employer engaged in such distribution.” (Italics supplied.) The question in this case is whether the respondent unions violated this section when they limited their secondary picketing of retail stores to an appeal to the customers of the stores not to buy the products of certain firms against which one of the respondents was on strike.

Respondent Local 760 called a strike against fruit packers and warehousemen doing business in Yakima, Washington.2 The struck firms sold Washington State *192apples to the Safeway chain of retail stores in and about Seattle, Washington. Local 760,' aided by respondent Joint Council, instituted a consumer boycott against the apples in support of the strike. They placed pickets who walked back and forth before the customers’ entrances of 46 Safeway stores in Seattle. The pickets — two at each of 45 stores and three at the 46th store — wore placards and distributed handbills which appealed to Safeway customers, and to the public generally, to refrain from buying Washington State apples, which were only one of numerous food products sold in the stores.3 *193Before the pickets appeared at any store, a letter was delivered to the store manager informing him that the picketing was only an appeal to his customers not to buy Washington State apples, and that the pickets were being expressly instructed “to patrol peacefully in front of the consumer entrances of the store, to stay away from the delivery entrances and not to interfere with the work of your employees, or with deliveries to or pickups from your store.” A copy of written instructions to the pickets— which included the explicit statement that “you are also forbidden to request that the customers not patronize the store” — was enclosed with the letter.4 Since it was desired to assure Safeway employees that they were not to cease work, and to avoid any interference with pickups or deliveries, the pickets appeared after the stores opened for business and departed before the stores closed. At all times during the picketing, the store employees continued to work, and no deliveries or pickups were obstructed. Washington State apples were handled in normal course by both Safeway employees and the employees of other employers involved. Ingress and egress by customers and others was not interfered with in any manner.

A complaint issued on charges that this conduct violated § 8 (b) (4) as amended.5 The case was submitted directly to the National Labor Relations Board on a stipulation of facts and the waiver of a hearing and proceedings before a Trial Examiner. The Board held, following *194its construction of the statute in Upholsterers Frame & Bedding Workers Twin City Local No. 61,132 N. L. R. B. 40, that “by literal wording of the proviso [to Section 8 (b) (4)] as well as through the interpretive gloss placed thereon by its drafters, consumer picketing in front of a secondary establishment is prohibited.” 132 N. L. R. B. 1172, 1177.6 Upon respondents’ petition for review and the Board’s cross-petition for enforcement, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit set aside the Board’s order and remanded. The court rejected the Board’s construction and held that the statutory requirement of a showing that respondents’ conduct would “threaten, coerce, or restrain” Safeway could only be satisfied by affirmative proof that a substantial economic impact on Safeway had occurred, or was likely to occur as a result of the conduct. Under the remand the Board was left “free to reopen the record to receive evidence upon the issue whether Safeway was in fact threatened, coerced, or restrained.” 113 U. S. App. D. C. 356, 363, 308 F. 2d 311, 318. We granted certiorari, 374 U. S. 804.

The Board’s reading of the statute — that the legislative history and the phrase “other than picketing” in the proviso reveal a congressional purpose to outlaw all picketing directed at customers at a secondary site — necessarily rested on the finding that Congress determined that such picketing always threatens, coerces or restrains the secondary employer. We therefore have a special responsibility to examine the legislative history for confirmation that Congress made that determination. Throughout the history of federal regulation of labor relations, Congress has consistently refused to prohibit peaceful picketing except where it is used as a means to achieve specific ends which experience has shown are undesirable. “In the sensitive area of peaceful picketing Congress has *195dealt explicitly with isolated evils which experience has established flow from such picketing.” Labor Board v. Drivers Local Union, 362 U. S. 274, 284. We have recognized this congressional practice and have not ascribed to Congress a purpose to outlaw peaceful picketing unless “there is the clearest indication in the legislative history,” ibid., that Congress intended to do so as regards the particular ends of the picketing under review. Both the congressional policy and our adherence to this principle of interpretation reflect concern that a broad ban against peaceful picketing might collide with the guarantees of the First Amendment.

We have examined the legislative history of the amendments to § 8 (b)(4), and conclude that it does not reflect with the requisite clarity a congressional plan to proscribe all peaceful consumer picketing at secondary sites, and, particularly, any concern with peaceful picketing when it is limited, as here, to persuading Safeway customers not to buy Washington State apples when they traded in the Safeway stores. All that the legislative history shows in the way of an “isolated evil” believed to require proscription of peaceful consumer picketing at secondary sites, was its use to persuade the customers of the secondary employer to cease trading with him in order to force him to cease dealing with, or to put pressure upon, the primary employer. .This narrow focus reflects the difference between such conduct and peaceful picketing at the secondary site directed only at the struck product. In the latter case, the union’s appeal to the public is confined to its dispute with the primary employer, since the public is not asked to withhold its patronage from the secondary employer, but only to boycott the primary employer’s goods. On the other hand, a union appeal to the public at the secondary site not to trade at all with the secondary employer goes beyond the goods of the primary employer, and seeks the public’s assistance in *196forcing the secondary employer to cooperate with the union in its primary dispute.7 This is not to say that this distinction was expressly alluded to in the debates. It is to say, however, that the consumer picketing carried on in this case is not attended by the abuses at which the statute was directed.

The story of the 1959 amendments, which we have detailed at greater length in our opinion filed today in Labor Board v. Servette, Inc., ante, p. 46, begins with the original § 8 (b)(4) of the National Labor Relations Act. Its prohibition, in pertinent part, was confined to the inducing or encouraging of “the employees of any employer to engage in, a strike or a concerted refusal . . . to . . . handle . . . any goods . . .” of a primary employer. This proved to be inept language. Three major loopholes were revealed. Since only inducement of “employees” was proscribed, direct inducement of a supervisor or the secondary employer by threats of labor trouble was not prohibited. Since only a “strike or a concerted refusal” was prohibited, pressure upon a single employee was not forbidden. Finally, railroads, airlines *197and municipalities were not “employers” under the Act and therefore inducement or encouragement of their employees was not unlawful.

When major labor relations legislation was being considered in 1958, the closing of these loopholes was important to the House and to some members of the Senate. But the prevailing Senate sentiment favored new legislation primarily concerned with the redress of other abuses, and neither the Kennedy-Ives bill, which failed of passage in the House in the Eighty-fifth Congress, nor the Kennedy-Ervin bill, adopted by the Senate in the Eighty-sixth Congress, included any revision of § 8(b) (4). Proposed amendments of § 8 (b)(4) offered by several Senators to fill the three loopholes were rejected. The Administration introduced such a bill, and it was supported by Senators Dirksen and Goldwater.8 Senator Goldwater, an insistent proponent of stiff boycott curbs, also proposed his own amendments.9 We think it is especially significant that neither Senator, nor the Secretary of Labor in testifying in support of the Administration’s bill, referred to consumer picketing as making the amendments necessary.10 Senator McClellan, who also *198offered a bill to curb boycotts, mentioned consumer picketing but only such as was “pressure in the form of dissuading customers from dealing with secondary employers.”11 (Emphasis supplied.) It was the opponents of the amendments who, in expressing fear of their sweep, suggested that they might proscribe consumer picketing. Senator Humphrey first sounded the warning early in April.12 Many months later, when the Conference bill was before the Senate, Senator Morse, a conferee, would not support the Conference bill on the express ground that it prohibited consumer picketing.13 But we have often cautioned against the danger, when interpreting a statute, of reliance upon the views of its legislative opponents. In their zeal to defeat a bill, they understandably tend to overstate its reach. “The fears and doubts of the opposition are no authoritative guide to the construction of legislation. It is the sponsors that we look to when the meaning of the statutory words is in doubt.” Schwegmann Bros. v. Calvert Distillers Corp., 341 U. S. 384, 394-395; see also Mastro Plastics Corp. v. Labor Board, 350 U. S. 270, 288; United States v. Calamaro, 354 U. S. 351, n. 9, at 358. The silence of the sponsors of amendments is pregnant with significance *199since they must have been aware that consumer picketing as such had been held to be outside the reach of § 8 (b)(4).14 We are faithful to our practice of respecting the congressional policy of legislating only against clearly identified abuses of peaceful picketing when we conclude that the Senate neither specified the kind of picketing here involved as an abuse, nor indicated any intention of banning all consumer picketing.

The House history is similarly beclouded, but what appears confirms our conclusion. From the outset the House legislation included provisions concerning secondary boycotts. The Landrum-Griffin bill,15 which was ultimately passed by the House, embodied the Eisenhower Administration’s proposals as to secondary boycotts. The initial statement of Congressman Griffin in introducing the bill which bears his name, contains no reference to consumer picketing in the list of abuses which he thought required the secondary boycott amendments.16 Later in the House debates he did discuss consumer picketing, but only in the context of its abuse when directed against shutting off the patronage of a secondary employer.

In the debates before passage of the House bill he stated that the amendments applied to consumer picketing of customer entrances to retail stores selling goods manufactured by a concern under strike, if the picketing *200were designed to “coerce or to restrain the employer of [the] second establishment, to get him not to do business with the manufacturer . . . ,” and further that, “of course, this bill and any other bill is limited by the constitutional right of free speech. If the purpose of the picketing is to coerce the retailer not to do business with the manufacturer” — then such a boycott could be stopped.17 (Italics supplied.)

The relevant changes in former § 8 (b)(4) made by the House bill substituted “any individual employed by any person” for the Taft-Hartley wording, “the employees of any employer,” deleted the requirement of a “concerted” refusal, and made it an unfair labor practice “to threaten, coerce, or restrain any person” where an object thereof was an end forbidden by the statute, e. g., forcing or requiring a secondary employer to cease handling the products of, or doing business with, a primary employer. There is thus nothing in the legislative history prior to the convening of the Conference Committee which shows any congressional concern with consumer picketing beyond that with the “isolated evil” of its use to cut off the business of a secondary employer as a means of forcing him to stop doing business with the primary employer. When Congress meant to bar picketing per se, it made its meaning clear; for example, § 8 (b)(7) makes it an unfair labor practice, “to picket or cause to be picketed . . . any employer . . . .” In contrast, the prohibition of § 8 (b) (4) is keyed to the coercive nature of the conduct, whether it be picketing or otherwise.

*201Senator Kennedy presided over the Conference Committee. He and Congressman Thompson prepared a joint analysis of the Senate and House bills. This analysis pointed up the First Amendment implications of the broad language in the House revisions of § 8 (b) (4) stating,

“The prohibition [of the House bill] reaches not only picketing but leaflets, radio broadcasts and newspaper advertisements, thereby interfering with freedom of speech.

“. . . one of the apparent purposes of the amendment is to prevent unions from appealing to the general public as consumers for assistance in a labor dispute. This is a basic infringement upon freedom of expression.” 18

This analysis was the first step in the development of the publicity proviso, but nothing in the legislative history of the proviso alters our conclusion that Congress did not clearly express an intention that amended § 8 (b)(4) should prohibit all consumer picketing. Because of the sweeping language of the House bill, and its implications for freedom of speech, the Senate conferees refused to accede to the House proposal without safeguards for the right of unions to appeal to the public, even by some conduct which might be “coercive.” The result was the addition of the proviso. But it does not follow from the fact that some coercive conduct was protected by the proviso, that the exception “other than picketing” indicates that Congress had determined that all consumer picketing was coercive.

No Conference Report was before the Senate when it passed the compromise bill, and it had the benefit *202only of Senator Kennedy’s statement of the purpose of the proviso. ' He said that the proviso preserved “the right to appeal to consumers by methods other than picketing asking them to refrain from buying goods made by nonunion labor and to refrain from trading with a retailer who sells such goods. . . . We were not able to persuade the House conferees to permit picketing in front of that secondary shop, but were able to persuade them to agree that the union shall be free to conduct informational activity short of picketing. In other words, the union can hand out handbills at the shop . . . and can carry on all publicity short of having ambulatory picketing . . . .” 19 (Italics supplied.) This explanation does not compel the conclusion that the Conference Agreement contemplated prohibiting any consumer picketing at a secondary site beyond that which urges the public, in Senator Kennedy’s words, to “refrain from trading with a retailer who sells such goods.” To read into the Conference Agreement, on the basis of a single statement, an intention to prohibit all consumer picketing at a secondary site would depart from our practice of respecting the congressional policy not to' prohibit peaceful picketing except to curb “isolated evils” spelled out by the Congress itself.

Peaceful consumer picketing to shut off all trade with the secondary employer unless he aids the union in its dispute with the primary employer, is poles apart from such picketing which only persuades his customers not to buy the struck product. The proviso indicates no more than that the Senate conferees’ constitutional doubts led Congress to authorize publicity other than picketing which persuades the customers of a secondary employer to stop all trading with him, but not such publicity which has *203the effect of cutting off his deliveries or inducing his employees to cease work. On the other hand, picketing which persuades the customers of a secondary employer to stop all trading with him was also to be barred.

In sum, the legislative history does not support the Board’s finding that Congress meant to prohibit all consumer picketing at a secondary site, having determined that such picketing necessarily threatened, coerced or restrained the secondary employer. Rather, the history shows that Congress was following its usual practice of legislating against peaceful picketing only to curb “isolated evils.”

This distinction is opposed as “unrealistic” because, it is urged, all picketing automatically provokes the public to stay away from the picketed establishment. The public will, it is said, neither read the signs and handbills, nor note the explicit injunction that “This is not a strike against any store or market.” Be that as it may, our holding today simply takes note of the fact that Congress has never adopted a broad condemnation ' of peaceful picketing, such as that urged upon us by petitioners, and an intention to do so is not revealed with that “clearest indication in the legislative history,” which we require. Labor Board v. Drivers Local Union, supra.

We come then to the question whether the picketing in this case, confined as it was to persuading customers to cease buying the product of the primary employer, falls within the area of secondary consumer picketing which Congress did clearly indicate its intention to prohibit under § 8 (b) (4) (ii). We hold that it did not fall within that area, and therefore did not “threaten, coerce, or restrain” Safeway. While any diminution in Safeway’s purchases of apples due to a drop in consumer demand might be said to be a result which causes respondents’ picketing to fall literally within the statutory prohibition, *204“it is a familiar rule, that a thing may be within the letter of the statute and yet not within the statute, because not within its spirit, nor within the intention of its makers.” Holy Trinity Church v. United States, 143 U. S. 457, 459. See United States v. American Trucking Assns., 310 U. S. 534, 543-544. When consumer picketing is employed only to persuade customers not to buy the struck product, the union’s appeal is closely confined to the primary dispute. The site of the appeal is expanded to include the premises of the secondary employer, but if the appeal succeeds, the secondary employer’s purchases from the struck firms are decreased only because the public has diminished its purchases of the struck product. On the other hand, when consumer picketing is employed to persuade customers not to trade at all with the secondary employer, the latter stops buying the struck product, not because of a falling demand, but in response to pressure designed to inflict injury on his business generally. In such case, the union does more than merely follow the struck product; it creates a separate dispute with the secondary employer.20

We disagree therefore with the Court of Appeals that the test of “to threaten, coerce, or restrain” for the purposes of this case is whether Safeway suffered or was likely to suffer economic loss. A violation of § 8 (b) (4) (ii)(B) would not be established, merely because respondents’ picketing was effective to reduce Safeway’s *205sales of Washington State apples, even if this led or might lead Safeway to drop the item as a poor seller.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is vacated and the case is remanded with direction to enter judgment setting aside the Board’s order.

It is so ordered.

Mr. Justice Douglas took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

APPENDIX TO OPINION OF THE COURT.

“Notice to Storage [sic] Manager and Store Employees.

“We are advised that you are presently engaged in selling Washington State Apples.

“The 1960 crop of Washington State Apples is being packed by non-union firms, including 26 firms in the Yakima Valley. Prior to this year, the 26 Yakima Valley firms had been parties to a collective bargaining contract with Teamsters Union Local 760 of Yakima, Washington, but this year, when a new contract was being negotiated, the employers took the position that many of the basic provisions of the prior contract, such as seniority, overtime, protection against unjust discharge, grievance procedure and union security, should be weakened or eliminated entirely. These extreme demands plus a refusal to bargain in good faith led to a strike against the employer. The union made all possible efforts to avoid this strike as did outside agencies who were assisting in the negotiations. Even the Governor of the State of Washington, the Honorable Albert D. Rosellini, intervened and suggested that the parties agree to a fact finding committee or arbitration. The union agreed to these proposals but the employers declined.

“The employer’s refusal to bargain in good faith has caused the Seattle office of the National Labor Relations *206Board to prepare a complaint against the employers, charging them with unfair labor practices in violation of federal law.

“The strike at Yakima is still continuing and in order to win this strike, we must ask the consuming public not to purchase Washington State Apples.

“Therefore, we are going to place peaceful pickets at the entrances to your store for the purpose of trying to persuade the public not to buy Washington Apples. These pickets are being instructed to patrol peacefully in front of the consumer entrances of the store, to stay away from the delivery entrances and not to interfere with the work of your employees, or with deliveries to or pickups from your store. A copy of the instructions which have been furnished to the pickets is attached herewith.

“We do not intend that any of your employees cease work as a result of the picketing. We ask that you advise your employees of our intentions in this respect, perhaps by posting this notice on your store bulletin board.

“If any of your employees should stop work as a result of our program, or if you should have any difficulties as far as pickups and deliveries are concerned, or if you observe any of the pickets disobeying the instructions which they have been given, please notify the undersigned union representative at once and we will take steps to see that the situation is promptly corrected.

“As noted above, our information indicates that you are presently selling Washington State Apples. If, however, this information is not correct and you are selling apples exclusively from another state, please notify the undersigned and we will see that the pickets are transferred to another store where Washington State Apples are actually being sold.

“Thank you for your cooperation.”

The instructions to pickets read as follows;

*207“Instructions to Pickets.

“Dear Picket:

“You are being asked to help publicize a nationwide consumer boycott aimed at non-union Washington State Apples. To make this program a success your cooperation is essential. Please read these instructions and follow them carefully.

“1. At all times you are to engage in peaceful picketing. You are forbidden to engage in any altercation, argument, or misconduct of any kind.

“2. You are to walk back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the consumer entrances to the grocery stores. If a particular store is located toward the rear of a parking lot, you are to ask the store manager for permission to walk back and forth on the apron or sidewalk immediately in front of the store; but if he denies you this permission, you are to picket only on the public sidewalk at the entrances to the parking lot. As far as large shipping centers are concerned, you will be given special instruction for picketing in such locations.

“3. You are not to picket in front of or in the area of any entrance to the store which is apparently set aside for the use of store employees and delivery men. As noted above, you are to limit your picketing to the consumer entrances to the store.

“4. This union has no dispute with the grocery stores, and you are forbidden to make any statement to the effect that the store is unfair or on strike. You are also forbidden to request that the customers not patronize the store. We are only asking that the customers not buy Washington State apples, when they are shopping at the store.

“5. Similarly, you are not to interfere with the work of any employees in the store. If you are asked by these employees what the picketing is about, you are to tell them it is an advertising or consumer picket and that *208they should keep working. Likewise if you are asked by any truck drivers who are making pickups or deliveries what the picket is about, you are to advise that it is an advertising or consumer picket and that it is not intended to interfere with pickups or deliveries (i. e. that they are free to go through).

“6. If you are given handbills to distribute, please distribute these handbills in a courteous manner and if the customers throw them on the ground, please see that they are picked up at once and that the area is kept clean.

“7. You are forbidden to use intoxicating beverages while on duty or to have such beverages on your person.

“8. If a state official or any other private party should complain to you about the picketing, advise them you have your instructions and that their complaints should be registered with the undersigned union representative.

“9. These instructions should answer most of your questions concerning this program. However, if you have any additional questions or if specific problems arise which require additional instructions, please call the undersigned.”

Mr. Justice Black,

concurring.

Because of the language of § 8 (b)(4) (ii)(B) of the National Labor Relations Act and the legislative history set out in the opinions of the Court and of my Brother Harlan, I feel impelled to hold that Congress, in passing this section of the Act, intended to forbid the striking employees of one business to picket the premises of a neutral business where the purpose of the picketing is to persuade customers of the neutral business not to buy goods supplied by the struck employer. Construed in this way, as I agree with Brother Harlan that it must be, I believe, contrary to his view, that the section abridges freedom of speech and press in violation of the First Amendment.

*209“Picketing,” in common parlance and in §8 (b)(4) (ii)(B), includes at least two concepts: (1) patrolling, that is, standing or marching back and forth or round and round on the streets, sidewalks, private property, or elsewhere, generally adjacent to someone else’s premises; (2) speech, that is, arguments, usually on a placard, made to persuade other people to take the picketers’ side of a controversy. See Mr. Justice Douglas concurring in Bakery & Pastry Drivers v. Wohl, 315 U. S. 769, 775. See also Hughes v. Superior Court, 339 U. S. 460, 464-465, and concurring opinions at 469. While “the dissemination of information concerning the facts of a labor dispute must be regarded as within that area of free discussion that is guaranteed by the Constitution,” Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U. S. 88, 102, patrolling is, of course, conduct, not speech, and therefore is not directly protected by the First Amendment. It is because picketing includes patrolling that neither Thornhill nor cases that followed it lend “support to the contention that peaceful picketing is beyond legislative control.” Giboney v. Empire Storage & Ice Co., 336 U. S. 490, 499-500. Cf. Schneider v. State, 308 U. S. 147, 160-161.1 However, when conduct not constitutionally protected, like patrolling, is intertwined, as in picketing, with constitutionally protected free speech and press, regulation of the non-protected conduct may at the same time encroach on freedom of speech and press. In such cases it is established *210that it is the duty of courts, before upholding regulations of patrolling, “to weigh the circumstances and to appraise the substantiality of the reasons advanced in support of the regulation of the free enjoyment of the rights” of speech and press. Schneider v. State, 308 U. S., supra, at 161. See also, e. g., N. A. A. C. P. v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U. S. 449, 460-462; N. A. A. C. P. v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 438-439.

Even assuming that the Federal Government has power to bar or otherwise regulate patrolling by persons on local streets or adjacent to local business premises in the State of Washington,2 it is difficult to see that the section in question intends to do anything but prevent dissemination of information about the facts of a labor dispute— a right protected by the First Amendment. It would be different (again assuming federal power) if Congress had simply barred or regulated all patrolling of every kind for every purpose in order to keep the streets around interstate businesses open for movement of people and property, Schneider v. State, supra, at 160-161; or to promote the public safety, peace, comfort, or convenience, Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296, 304; or to protect people from violence and breaches of the peace by those who are patrolling, Thornhill v. Alabama, supra, at 105. Here the section against picketing was not passed for any of these reasons. The statute in no way manifests any government interest against patrolling as such, since the only patrolling it seeks to make unlawful is that which is carried on to advise the public, including consumers, that certain products have been produced by an employer with *211whom the picketers have a dispute. All who do not patrol to publicize this kind of dispute are, so far as this section of the statute is concerned, left wholly free to patrol. Thus the section is aimed at outlawing free discussion of one side of a certain kind of labor dispute and cannot be sustained as a permissible regulation of patrolling. Cf. Carlson v. California, 310 U. S. 106, 112.

Nor can the section be sustained on the ground that it merely forbids picketers to help carry out an unlawful or criminal undertaking. Compare Giboney v. Empire Storage & Ice Co., supra. For the section itself contains a proviso which says that it shall not be construed “to prohibit publicity, other than picketing, for the purpose of truthfully advising the public, including consumers . . . that a product or products are produced by an employer with whom . . . [the picketers have] a primary dispute . . . .” Thus, it is clear that the object of the picketing was to ask Safeway customers to do something which the section itself recognizes as perfectly lawful. Yet, while others are left free to picket for other reasons, those who wish to picket to inform Safeway customers of their labor dispute with the primary employer, are barred from picketing — solely on the ground of the lawful information they want to impart to the customers.

In short, we have neither a case in which picketing is banned because the picketers are asking others to do something unlawful nor a case in which all picketing is, for reasons of public order, banned. Instead, we have a case in which picketing, otherwise lawful, is banned only when the picketers express particular views. The result is an abridgment of the freedom of these picketers to tell a part of the public their side of a labor controversy, a subject the free discussion of which is protected by the First Amendment.

I cannot accept my Brother Harlan’s view that the abridgment of speech and press here does not violate the *212First Amendment because other methods of communication are left open. This reason for abridgment strikes me as being on a par with holding that governmental suppression of a newspaper in a city would not violate the First Amendment because there continue to be radio and television stations. First Amendment freedoms can no more validly be taken away by degrees than by one fell swoop.

For these reasons I concur in the judgment of the Court vacating the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remanding the case with directions to enter judgment setting aside the Board’s order.

MR. Justice Harlan,

whom Mr. Justice Stewart joins,

dissenting.

The question in this case is whether a union involved in a labor dispute with an employer may lawfully engage in peaceful picketing at the premises of another employer in order to dissuade its customers from purchasing products of the first employer dealt in by the picketed establishment. Such activity, in the parlance of labor law, is known as secondary consumer picketing, the picketed employer being called the “secondary employer” and the other the “primary employer.”

The question is controlled by § 8 (b) of the National Labor Relations Act1 which makes it an unfair labor practice for a union

“(4) . . . (ii) to threaten, coerce, or restrain any person engaged in commerce . . . where ... an object ... is ... (B) forcing or requiring any person to cease using, selling ... or otherwise dealing in the products of any other producer, processor, *213or manufacturer, or to cease doing business with any other person . . .

with a proviso that

“nothing contained in . . . [the above provisions] shall be construed to prohibit publicity, other than picketing, for the purpose of truthfully advising the public, including consumers . . . that a product or products are produced by an employer with whom . . . [the union] has a primary dispute and are distributed by another employer, as long as such publicity does not have an effect of inducing any individual employed by any person other than the primary employer in the course of his employment to refuse to pick up, deliver, or transport any goods, or not to perform any services, at the establishment of the employer engaged in such distribution . . . .” (Emphasis added.)

The Labor Board found the Union's picketing at Safeway stores, though peaceful, unlawful per se under § 8 (b) (4) (ii) (B), and issued an appropriate order. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding the picketing lawful in the absence of any showing that Safeway had in fact been “threatened, coerced, or restrained” (113 U. S. App. D. C. 356, 360-363, 308 F. 2d 311, at pp. 315-318), and remanded the case to the Board for further proceedings. This Court now rejects (correctly, I believe) the Court of Appeals’ holding, but nevertheless refuses to enforce the Board’s order. It holds that although § 8 (b) (4) (ii) (B) does automatically outlaw peaceful secondary consumer picketing aimed at all products handled by a secondary employer, Congress has not, with “the requisite clarity” (ante, p. 63), evinced a purpose to prohibit such picketing when directed only at the products of the primary employer. Here the Union’s picketing related only to Washington apples, not to all products carried by Safeway.

*214Being unable to discern in § 8 (b)(4)(ii)(B) or in its legislative history any basis for the Court’s subtle narrowing of these statutory provisions, I must respectfully dissent.

I.

The Union’s activities are plainly within the letter of subdivision (4)(ii)(B) of § 8 (b), and indeed the Court’s opinion virtually concedes that much (ante, pp. 71-72). Certainly Safeway is a “person” as defined in those subdivisions; indubitably “an object” of the Union’s conduct was the “forcing or requiring” of Safeway, through the picketing of its customers, “to cease . . . selling, handling ... or otherwise dealing in” Washington apples, “the products of” another “producer”; and consumer picketing is expressly excluded from the ameliorative provisions of the proviso. See supra, pp. 80-81.

Nothing in the statute lends support to the fine distinction which the Court draws between general and limited product picketing. The enactment speaks pervasively of threatening, coercing, or restraining any person; the proviso differentiates only between modes of expression, not between types of secondary consumer picketing. For me, the Court’s argument to the contrary is very unconvincing.

The difference to which the Court points between a secondary employer merely lowering his purchases of the struck product to the degree of decreased consumer demand and such an employer ceasing to purchase one product because of consumer refusal to buy any products, is surely too refined in the context of reality. It can hardly be supposed that in all, or even most, instances the result of the type of picketing involved here will be simply that suggested by the Court. Because of the very nature of picketing there may be numbers of persons who will refuse to buy at all from a picketed store, either out of economic or social conviction or because they prefer *215to shop where they need not brave a picket line. Moreover, the public can hardly be expected always to know or ascertain the precise scope of a particular picketing operation. Thus in cases like this, the effect on the secondary employer may not always be limited to a decrease in his sales of the struck product. And even when that is the effect, the employer may, rather than simply reducing purchases, from the primary employer, deem it more expedient to turn to another producer whose product is approved by the union.

The distinction drawn by the majority becomes even more tenuous if a picketed retailer depends largely or entirely on sales of the struck product. If, for example, an independent gas station owner sells gasoline purchased from a struck gasoline company, one would not suppose he would feel less threatened, coerced, or restrained by picket signs which said “Do not buy X gasoline” than by signs which said “Do not patronize this gas station.” To be sure Safeway is a multiple article seller, but it cannot well be gainsaid that the rule laid down by the Court would be unworkable if its applicability turned on a calculation of the relation between total income of the secondary employer and income from the struck product.

The Court informs us that “Peaceful consumer picketing to shut off all trade with the secondary employer unless he aids the union in its dispute with the primary employer, is poles apart from such picketing which only persuades his customers not to buy the struck product,” ante, p. 70. The difference was, it is stated, “well established in the state cases by 1940,” ante, p. 64, note 7, that is, before the present federal enactment. In light of these assertions, it is indeed remarkable that the Court not only substantially acknowledges that the statutory language does not itself support this distinction (ante, pp. 71-72)2 *216but cites no report of Congress, no statement of a legislator, not even the view of any of the many commentators in the area, in any way casting doubt on the applicability of § 8 (b) (4) (ii)(B) to picketing of the kind involved here.

II.

The Court’s distinction fares no better when the legislative history of § 8 (b) (4) (ii) (B) is examined. Even though there is no Senate, House, or Conference Report which sheds light on the matter, that hardly excuses the Court’s blinding itself to what the legislative and other background materials do show. Fairly assessed they, in my opinion, belie Congress’ having made the distinction upon which the Court’s thesis rests. Nor can the Court find comfort in the generalization that “ ‘In the sensitive area of peaceful picketing Congress has dealt explicitly with isolated evils which experience has established flow from such picketing’ ” {ante, pp. 62-63); in enacting the provisions in question Congress toas addressing itself to a particular facet of secondary boycotting not dealt with in prior legislation, namely, peaceful secondary consumer picketing. I now turn to the materials which illuminate what Congress had in mind.

*217It is clear that consumer picketing in connection with secondary boycotting was at the forefront of the problems which led to the amending of the Taft-Hartley Act by the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959. See, e. g., remarks of Senator McClellan, 105 Cong. Rec. 3951, II Leg. Hist. 1007; remarks of Congressman Lafore, 105 Cong. Rec. 3928, II Leg. Hist. 1471; remarks of Congressman Griffin, infra, note 4. During Senate debate before passage of the Kennedy-Ervin bill, Senator Humphrey criticized an amendment proposed by Senator Goldwater to § 8 (b)(4) of the Taft-Hartley Act, which reflected the position of the Administration and was incorporated in substance in the Landrum-Griffin bill passed by the House. He said:

“To distribute leaflets at the premises of a neutral employer to persuade customers not to buy a struck product is one form of consumer appeal. To peacefully picket the customer entrances, with a placard asking that the struck product not be bought, is another form. I fear that consumer picketing may also be the target of the words 'coerce, or restrain.’ I fear that, in addition to the existing foreclosure of the union on strike from making any effective appeal to the employees of the so-called neutral employer, the union by this amendment is now to be effectively sealed off from even an appeal to the consumers.” 105 Cong. Rec. 6232, II Leg. Hist. 1037.

Reporting on the compromise reached by the Conference Committee on the Kennedy-Ervin and Landrum-Griffin bills, Senator Kennedy, who chaired the Conference Committee, stated:

“[T]he House bill prohibited the union from carrying on any kind of activity to disseminate informational material to secondary sites. They could not *218say that there was a strike in a primary plant. . . . Under the language of the conference, [ultimately resulting in present § 8 (b)(4) (ii)(B)] we agreed there would not be picketing at a secondary site. What was permitted was the giving out of handbills or information through the radio, and so forth.” 105 Cong. Rec. 17720, II Leg. Hist. 1389.

Senator Morse, one day later, explained quite explicitly his objection to the relevant portion of the bill reported out of the Conference Committee, of which he was a member:

“This bill does not stop with threats and with illegalizing the hot cargo agreement. It also makes it illegal for a union to 'coerce, or restrain.’ This prohibits consumer picketing. What is consumer picketing? A shoe manufacturer sells his product through a department store. The employees of the shoe manufacturer go' on strike for higher wages. The employees, in addition to picketing the manufacturer, also picket at the premises of the department store with a sign saying, ‘Do not buy X shoes.’ This is consumer picketing, an appeal to the public not to buy the product of a struck manufacturer.” 105 Cong. Rec. 17882, II Leg. Hist. 1426.3

Later the same day, Senator Kennedy spoke further on the Conference bill and particularized the union rights protected by the Senate conferees:

“(c) The right to appeal to consumers by methods other than picketing asking them to refrain from *219buying goods made by nonunion labor and to refrain from trading with a retailer who sells such goods.

“Under the Landrum-Griffin bill it would have been impossible for a union to inform the customers of a secondary employer that that employer or store was selling goods which were made under racket conditions or sweatshop conditions, or in a plant where an economic strike was in progress. We were not able to persuade the House conferees to permit picketing in front of that secondary shop, but we were able to persuade them to agree that the union shall be free to conduct informational activity short of picketing. In other words, the union can hand out handbills at the shop, can place advertisements in newspapers, can make announcements over the radio, and can carry on all publicity short of having ambulatory picketing in front of a secondary site.” 105 Cong. Rec. 17898-17899, II Leg. Hist. 1432.

The Court does not consider itself compelled by these remarks to conclude that the Conference Committee meant to prohibit all secondary consumer picketing. A fair reading of these comments, however, can hardly leave one seriously in doubt that Senator Kennedy believed this to be precisely what the Committee had done; the Court's added emphasis on the word “and” (ante, p. 70) is, I submit, simply grasping at straws, if indeed the phrase relied on does not equally well lend itself to a disjunctive reading. Cf. DeSylva v. Ballentine, 351 U. S. 570, 573. The complicated role the Court assigns to the publicity proviso (ante, pp. 70-71) makes even less understandable its failure to accord to the remarks of Senator Kennedy their proper due. The proviso, according to the Court’s interpretation, is unnecessary in regard to picketing designed to effect a boycott of the primary product and comes into play only if a complete boycott of the secondary employer is sought. Had this ingenious interpreta*220tion been intended, would not Senator Kennedy, who was at pains to emphasize the scope of activities still left to unions, have used it to refute the criticisms of Senator Morse made only shortly before?

Further, Senator Goldwater spoke in favor of the Conference bill and pointed out that in contrast to the Senate bill, which he had opposed, “[t]he House bill . . . closed up every loophole in the boycott section of the law including the use of a secondary consumer picket line . . . .” 105 Cong. Rec. 17904, II Leg. Hist. 1437.

The Court points out that the Senate had no Conference Report when it passed the compromise bill and that it had only Senator Kennedy’s statement of the purpose of the proviso. (Ante, pp. 69-70.) But I am wholly at a loss to understand how on that premise (particularly when Senator Kennedy’s remarks are supplemented by the comments of one Senator (Morse) who thought the final bill too harsh and those of another (Goldwater) who believed the Senate bill too weak) one can conclude that the members of the Senate did not mean by their vote to outlaw all kinds of secondary consumer picketing.

A reading of proceedings in the House of Representatives leads to a similar conclusion regarding the intent of that body. In criticism of the Landrum-Griffin bill, Congressman Madden stated, “It would prohibit any union from advising the public that an employer is unfair to labor, pays substandard wages, or operates a sweatshop . . . .” 105 Cong. Rec. 15515, II Leg. Hist. 1552. Since the theory of the majority regarding the publicity proviso adopted by the Conference is that it is redundant in situations where the union seeks only a boycott of the struck product, the sweep of Congressman Madden’s comment is plainly at odds with the Court’s view of § 8 (b) (4)(ii)(B).

Indicative of the contemporaneous understanding is an analysis of the bill prepared by Congressmen Thompson *221and Udall and inserted in the Congressional Record, in which a hypothetical case, as directly in point as the department store example used by Senator Morse, is suggested:

“Suppose that the employees of the Coors Brewery were to strike for higher wages and the company attempted to run the brewery with strikebreakers. Under the present law, the union can ask the public not to buy Coors beer during the strike. It can picket the bars and restaurants which sold Coors beer with the signs asking the public not to buy the product. It can broadcast the request over the radio or in newspaper advertisements.

“The Landrum bill forbids this elementary freedom to appeal to the general public for assistance in winning fair labor standards.” 105 Cong. Rec. 15540, II Leg. Hist. 1576.

The majority (ante, pp. 67-68) relies on remarks made by Congressman Griffin, the bill’s co-sponsor. When read in context what seems significant about them is that the Congressman nowhere suggests that there can be some kind of consumer picketing which does not coerce or restrain the secondary employer. Nor does he intimate any constitutional problem in prohibiting picketing that follows the struck product.4

*222After passage of the Landrum-Griffin bill, Congressman Thompson presented to the House an analysis of the differences between the House and Senate bills prepared *223by Senator Kennedy and himself. This described the nature of secondary boycotts:

“In all cases of secondary boycotts two employers are involved. The union brings pressure upon the employer with whom it has a dispute (called the ‘primary’ employer) by inducing the employees of another employer (called the ‘secondary’ employer) to go on strike — or the customers not to patronize— until the secondary employer stops dealing with the primary employer. Or the union may simply induce the employees of the secondary employer to refuse to handle or work on goods — or the customers not to buy — coming from the primary employer as a way of putting pressure upon him.” 105 Cong. Rec. 16589, II Leg. Hist. 1706. (Emphasis added.)

The prepared analysis then discusses the effect of the House bill on consumer picketing, 105 Cong. Rec. 16591, II Leg. Hist. 1708. To describe activities outlawed by the House bill, it uses the same “Coors beer” hypothetical which the earlier analysis had employed. This analysis shows beyond peradventure that Senator Kennedy did believe the language of the bill to proscribe all consumer picketing and indicates that this view was squarely placed before the House. The Court adverts to this analysis (ante, p. 69), as the genesis of the publicity proviso, but fails to acknowledge the difficulty of squaring the great concern of the Senate conferees to protect freedom of communication with the Court’s supposition that the House bill closed off no lines of communication so long as the union appeal was limited to boycott of the struck products.

Congressman Griffin placed in the Congressional Record, 105 Cong. Rec. 18022, II Leg. Hist. 1712, a preliminary report on the Conference agreement. A summary analysis of Taft-Hartley amendments states that the *224House bill “Prohibits secondary customer picketing at retail store which happens to sell product produced by manufacturer with whom union has dispute.” The Conference agreement, according to this summary, “Adopts House provision with clarification that other forms of publicity are not prohibited; also clarification that picketing at primary site is not secondary boycott.”

When Congressman Thompson spoke to the Conference agreement, he reiterated his view of the House bill and of its modification, 105 Cong. ReC. 18133, II Leg. Hist. 1720, 1721. Specifically he stated, “All appeals for a consumer boycott would have been barred by House bill.”

In the light of the foregoing, I see no escape from the conclusion that § 8 (b) (4) (ii) (B) does prohibit all consumer picketing. There are, of course, numerous times in the debates of both houses in which consumer picketing is referred to generally or the reference is made with an example of an appeal to consumers not to purchase at all from the secondary employer. But it is remarkable that every time the possibility of picketing of the sort involved in this case was considered, it was assumed to be prohibited by the House bill. Admittedly, in the House, appeals to refrain from purchase of the struck product were discussed only by opponents of the House bill; however, only one of two inferences can be drawn from the silence of the bill’s supporters. Either the distinction drawn by this Court was not considered of sufficient significance to require comment, or the proponents recognized a difference between the two types of consumer picketing but assumed that the bill encompassed both. Under either supposition, the conclusion reached by the Court in regard to the picketing involved here is untenable.

*225III.

Under my view of the statute the constitutional issue is therefore reached. Since the Court does not discuss it, I am content simply to state in summary form my reasons for believing that the prohibitions of § 8 (b)(4)(ii)(B), as applied here, do not run afoul of constitutional limitations. This Court has long recognized that picketing is “inseparably something more [than] and different” from simple communication. Hughes v. Superior Court, 339 U. S. 460, 464; see, e. g., Building Service Employees v. Gazzam, 339 U. S. 532, 537; Bakery Drivers v. Wohl, 315 U. S. 769, 776 (concurring opinion of Douglas, J.). Congress has given careful and continued consideration to the problems of labor-management relations, and its attempts to effect an accommodation between the right of unions to publicize their position and the social desirability of limiting a form of communication likely to have effects caused by something apart from the message communicated, are entitled to great deference. The decision of Congress to prohibit secondary consumer picketing during labor disputes is, I believe, not inconsistent with the protections of the First Amendment, particularly when, as here, other methods of communication are left open.5

Contrary to my Brother Black, I think the fact that Congress in prohibiting secondary consumer picketing has acted with a discriminating eye is the very thing that renders this provision invulnerable to constitutional attack. That Congress has permitted other picketing which is likely to have effects beyond those resulting from the “communicative” aspect of picketing does not, of course, in any way lend itself to the conclusion that *226Congress here has aimed to “prevent dissemination of information about the facts of a labor dispute” (ante, p. 78). Even on the highly dubious assumption that the “non-speech” aspect of picketing is always the same whatever the particular context, the social consequences of the “non-communicative” aspect of picketing may certainly be thought desirable in the case of “primary” picketing and undesirable in the case of “secondary” picketing, a judgment Congress has indeed made in prohibiting secondary but not primary picketing.

I would enforce the Board’s order.

*609Me. Justice Powell

delivered the opinion of the Court.†

The question is whether § 8 (b) (4) (ii) (B) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U. S. C. § 158 (b) (4) (ii) (B), forbids secondary picketing against a struck product when such picketing predictably encourages consumers to boycott a neutral party’s business.

I

Safeco Title Insurance Co. underwrites real estate title insurance in the State of Washington. It maintains close business relationships with five local title companies.1 The companies search land titles, perform escrow services, and sell title insurance. Over 90% of their gross incomes derives from the sale of Safeco insurance. Safeco has substahtial stockholdings in each title company, and at least one Safeco officer serves on each company’s board of directors. Safeco, however, has no control over the companies’ daily operations. It does not direct their personnel policies, and it never exchanges employees with them.

Local 1001 of the Retail Store Employees Union became the certified bargaining representative for certain Safeco employees in 1974. When contract negotiations between Safeco and the Union reached an impasse, the employees went on strike. The Union did not confine picketing to Safeco’s office in Seattle. The Union also picketed each of the five local title companies. The pickets carried signs *610declaring that Safeco had no contract with the Union,2 and they distributed handbills asking consumers to support the strike by canceling their Safeco policies.3

Safeco and one of the title companies filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board. They charged that the Union had engaged in an unfair labor practice by picketing in order to promote a secondary boycott against the title companies. The Board agreed. 226 N. L. R. B. 754 (1976).4 It found the title companies to be neutral in the dispute between Safeco and the Union. Id., at 756. The Board then concluded that the Union’s picketing violated § 8 (b) (4) (ii) (B) of the National Labor Relations Act. The Union had directed its appeal against Safeco insurance policies. But since the sale of those policies accounted for substantially all of the title companies’ business, the Board found that the Union’s action was “reasonably calculated to induce customers not to patronize the neutral parties at all.” 226 N. L. R. B., at 757. The Board therefore rejected the Union’s reliance upon NLRB v. Fruit Packers, 377 U. S. 58 (1964) (Tree Fruits), which held that §8 (b)(4)(ii)(B) allows secondary picketing against a struck product. It ordered the Union to cease picketing and to take limited corrective action.

*611The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit set aside the Board’s order. 194 U. S. App. D. C. 400, 600 F. 2d 280 (1979) (en banc). The court agreed that the title companies were neutral parties entitled to the benefit of § 8 (b) (4) (ii) (B). 201 U. S. App. D. C. 147, 151, 627 F. 2d 1133, 1137 (1979). It held, however, that Tree Fruits leaves neutrals susceptible to whatever consequences may flow from secondary picketing against the consumption of products produced by an employer involved in a labor dispute. Even when product picketing predictably encourages consumers to boycott a neutral altogether, the court concluded, § 8 (b) (4) (ii) (B) provides no protection. 201 U. S. App. D. C., at 159-160, 627 F. 2d, at 1145-1146.

We granted a writ of certiorari to consider whether the Court of Appeals correctly understood § 8 (b) (4) (ii) (B) as interpreted in Tree Fruits. 444 U. S. 1011 (1980).5 Having concluded that the Court of Appeals misapplied the statute, we now reverse and remand for enforcement of the Board’s order.

II

Section 8 (b)(4) (ii) (B) of the National Labor Relations Act makes it “an unfair labor practice for a labor organization ... to threaten, coerce, or restrain” a person not party to a labor dispute “where ... an object thereof is . . . forcing or requiring [him] to cease using, selling, handling, transporting, or otherwise dealing in the products of any other producer ... or to cease doing business with any other person. . . ,”6

In Tree Fruits, the Court held that § 8 (b) (4) (ii) (B) does not prohibit all peaceful picketing at secondary sites. There, a union striking certain Washington fruit packers picketed large supermarkets in order to persuade consumers not to buy *612Washington apples. Concerned that a broad ban against such picketing might run afoul of the First Amendment, the Court found the statute directed to an “ ‘isolated evil.’ ” The evil was use of secondary picketing “to persuade the customers of the secondary employer to cease trading with him in order to force him to cease dealing with, or to put pressure upon, the primary employer.” 377 U. S., at 63. Congress intended to protect secondary parties from pressures that might embroil them in the labor disputes of others, but not to shield them from business losses caused by a campaign that successfully persuades consumers “to boycott the primary employer’s goods.” Ibid. Thus, the Court drew a distinction between picketing “to shut off all trade with the secondary employer unless he aids the union in its dispute with the primary employer” and picketing that “only persuades his customers not to buy the struck product.” Id., at 70. The picketing in that case, which “merely follow [ed] the struck product,” did not “ ‘threaten, coerce, or restrain’ ” the secondary party within the meaning of § 8 (b)(4) (ii)(B). 377 U. S., at 72.

Although Tree Fruits suggested that secondary picketing against a struck product and secondary picketing against a neutral party were “poles apart,” id., at 70, the courts soon discovered that product picketing could have the same effect as an illegal secondary boycott. In Hoffman ex rel. NLRB v. Cement Masons Local 337, 468 F. 2d 1187 (CA9 1972), cert. denied, 411 U. S. 986 (1973), for example, a union embroiled with a general contractor picketed the housing subdivision that he had constructed for a real estate developer. Pickets sought to persuade prospective purchasers not to buy the contractor’s houses. The picketing was held illegal because purchasers “could reasonably expect that they were being asked not to transact any business whatsoever” with the neutral developer. 468 F. 2d, at 1192. “[W]hen a union’s interest in picketing a primary employer at a ‘one product’ site [di*613rectly conflicts] with the need to protect . . . neutral employers from the labor disputes of others,” Congress has determined that the neutrals’ interests should prevail. Id., at 1191.7

Cement Masons highlights the critical difference between the picketing in this case and the picketing at issue in Tree Fruits. The product picketed in Tree Fruits was but one item among the many that made up the retailer’s trade. 377 U. S., at 60. If the appeal against such a product succeeds, the Court observed, it simply induces the neutral retailer to reduce his orders for the product or “to drop the item as a poor seller.” Id., at 73. The decline in sales attributable to consumer rejection of the struck product puts pressure upon the primary employer, and the marginal injury to the neutral retailer is purely incidental to the product boycott. The neutral therefore has little reason to become involved in the labor dispute. In this case, on the other hand, the title companies sell only the primary employer’s product and perform the services associated with it. Secondary picketing against consumption of the primary product leaves responsive consumers no realistic option other than to boycott the title companies altogether. If the appeal succeeds, each company “stops buying the struck product, not because of a falling demand, but in response to pressure designed to inflict injury on [its] business generally.” Thus, “the union does more than merely follow the struck product; it creates a separate dispute with the secondary employer.” Id., at 72. Such an expansion of *614labor discord was one of the evils that Congress intended § 8 (b) (4) (ii) (B) to prevent. 377 U. S., at 63-64.

As long as secondary picketing only discourages consumption of a struck product, incidental injury to the neutral is a natural consequence of an effective primary boycott. See id., at 72-73. But the Union’s secondary appeal against the central product sold by the title companies in this case is “reasonably calculated to induce customers not to patronize the neutral parties at all.” 226 N. L. It. B., at 757.8 The resulting injury to their businesses is distinctly different from the injury that the Court considered in Tree Fruits 9 Product picketing that reasonably can be expected to threaten neutral parties with ruin or substantial loss simply does not square *615with the language or the purpose of § 8 (b)(4)(ii)(B).10 Since successful secondary picketing would put the title companies to a choice between their survival and the severance of their ties with Safeco, the picketing plainly violates the statutory ban on the coercion of neutrals with the object of “forcing or requiring [them] to cease . . . dealing in the [primary] produc[t] ... or to cease doing business with” the primary employer. § 8 (b) (4) (ii) (B); see Tree Fruits, 377 U. S., at 68.11

*616Ill

The Court of Appeals suggested that application of § 8 (b) (4)(ii)(B) to the picketing in this case might violate the First Amendment. 201 U. S. App. D. C., at 161, 627 F. 2d, at 1147. We think not. Although the Court recognized in Tree Fruits that the Constitution might not permit “a broad ban against peaceful picketing,” the Court left no doubt that Congress may prohibit secondary picketing calculated “to persuade the customers of the secondary employer to cease trading with him in order to force him to cease dealing with, or to put pressure upon, the primary employer.” 377 U. S., at 63. Such picketing spreads labor discord by coercing a neutral party to join the fray. In Electrical Workers v. NLRB, 341 U. S. 694, 705 (1951), this Court expressly held that a prohibition on “picketing in furtherance of [such] unlawful objectives” did not offend the First Amendment. See American Radio Assn. v. Mobile S.S. Assn., 419 U. S. 215, 229-231 (1974); Teamsters v. Vogt, Inc., 354 U. S. 284 (1957). We perceive no reason to depart from that well-established understanding. As applied to picketing that predictably encourages consumers to boycott a secondary business, § 8 (b) (4) (ii) (B) imposes no impermissible restrictions upon constitutionally protected speech.

Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded with directions to enforce the National Labor Relations Board’s order.

So ordered.

Mr. Justice Blackmun,

concurring in part and concurring in the result.

I join Parts I and II of the Court’s opinion, but not Part III. The plurality’s cursory discussion of what for me are difficult First Amendment issues presented by this case fails to *617take account of the effect of this Court’s decision in Police Department of Chicago v. Mosley, 408 U. S. 92 (1972), on the question whether the National Labor Relations Act’s content-based ban on peaceful picketing of secondary employers is constitutional. The failure to take Mosley into account is particularly ironic given that the Court today reaffirms and extends the principles of that case in Carey v. Brown, ante, p. 455.

In NLRB v. Fruit Packers, 377 U. S. 58, 76 (1964), Mr. Justice Black wrote a concurring opinion in which he concluded that § 8 (b) (4) (ii) (B) of the National Labor Relations Act “abridges freedom of speech and press in violation of the First Amendment.” He said:

“In short, we have neither a case in which picketing is banned because the picketers are asking others to do something unlawful nor a case in which all picketing is, for reasons of public order, banned. Instead, we have a case in which picketing, otherwise lawful, is banned only when the picketers express particular views. The result is an abridgement of the freedom of these picketers to tell a part of the public their side of a labor controversy, a subject the free discussion of which is protected by the First Amendment.” 377 U. S., at 79. (Emphasis in original.)

These views, central to Mr. Justice Black’s vision of the First Amendment, were, one would have supposed until today, “accepted” by the Court in Mosley. See 408 U. S., at 98.

I have never been fully comfortable with Mosley’s, equating all content selectivity in affording access to picketers with censorship. See Mosley, 408 U. S., at 102 (concurring statement). For this reason, I join today in Me. Justice Rehnquist’s dissenting opinion in Carey v. Brown. I concur in the result in this case, however, only because I am reluctant to hold unconstitutional Congress’ striking of the delicate balance between union freedom of expression and the ability *618of neutral employers, employees, and consumers to remain free from coerced participation in industrial strife. My vote should not be read as foreclosing an opposite conclusion where another statutory ban on peaceful picketing, unsupported by equally substantial governmental interests, is at issue.

Mr. Justice Stevens,

concurring in part and concurring in the result.

For the reasons stated by Mr. Justice Harlan and Mr. Justice Black in their separate opinions in NLRB v. Fruit Packers, 377 U. S. 58, 76, 80 (Tree Fruits), I am persuaded that Congress intended to prohibit this secondary picketing, and for the reasons stated by Mr. Justice Powell, I agree that this case is not governed by Tree Fruits. I therefore join Parts I and II of the Court’s opinion.

The constitutional issue, however, is not quite as easy as the plurality would make it seem because, as Mr. Justice Black pointed out in Tree Fruits, “we have a case in which picketing, otherwise lawful, is banned only when the picketers express particular views.” Id., at 79. In other words, this is another situation in which regulation of the means of expression is predicated squarely on its content. See Consolidated Edison Co. v. Public Service Comm’n, ante, at 546 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment). I agree with the plurality that this content-based restriction is permissible but not simply because it is in furtherance of objectives deemed unlawful by Congress. Ante, at 616. That a statute proscribes the otherwise lawful expression of views in a particular manner and at a particular location cannot in itself totally justify the restriction. Otherwise the First Amendment would place no limit on Congress’ power. In my judgment, it is our responsibility to determine whether the method or manner of expression, considered in context, justifies the particular restriction.

I have little difficulty in concluding that the restriction at issue in this case is constitutional. Like so many other kinds *619of expression, picketing is a mixture of conduct and communication. In the labor context, it is the conduct element rather than the particular idea being expressed that often provides the most persuasive deterrent to third persons about to enter a business establishment. In his concurring opinion in Bakery Drivers v. Wohl, 315 U. S. 769, 776-777, Mr. Justice Douglas stated:

“Picketing by an organized group is more than free speech, since it involves patrol of a particular locality and since the very presence of a picket line may induce action of one kind or another, quite irrespective of the nature of the ideas which are being disseminated. Hence those aspects of picketing make it the subject of restrictive regulation.”*

Indeed, no doubt the principal reason why handbills containing the same message are so much less effective than labor picketing is that the former depend entirely on the persuasive force of the idea.

The statutory ban in this case affects only that aspect of the union’s efforts to communicate its views that calls for an automatic response to a signal, rather than a reasoned response to an idea. And the restriction on picketing is limited in geographical scope to sites of neutrals in the labor dispute. Because I believe that such restrictions on conduct are sufficiently justified by the purpose to avoid embroiling neutrals in a third party’s labor dispute, I agree that the statute is consistent with the First Amendment.

Mr. Justice Brennan,

with whom Mr. Justice White and Mr. Justice Marshall join, dissenting.

NLRB v. Fruit Packers, 377 U. S. 58 (1964) (Tree Fruits), held that it was permissible under § 8 (b)(4) (ii)(B) of the *620National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)1 for a union involved in a labor dispute with a primary employer to conduct peaceful picketing at a secondary site with the object of persuading consumers to boycott the primary employer’s product. Today’s decision stunts Tree Fruits by declaring that secondary site picketing is illegal when the primary employer’s product at which it is aimed happens to be the only product which the secondary retailer distributes. I dissent.

The NLRA does not place the secondary site off limits to all consumer picketing over the dispute with the primary employer. Tree Fruits, supra, at 63. The Act only prohibits a labor union from picketing to “coerce” a secondary firm into joining the union’s struggle against the primary employer. § 8 (b) (4) (ii) (B). But inasmuch as the secondary retailer is, by definition, at least partially dependent upon the sale of the primary employer’s goods, the secondary firm will necessarily feel the pressure of labor activity pointed at the primary enterprise. Thus, the pivotal problem in secondary site picketing cases is determining when the pressure imposed by consumer picketing is illegitimate, and therefore deemed to “coerce” the secondary retailer.

Tree Fruits addressed this problem by focusing upon whether picketing at the secondary site is directed at the primary employer’s product, or whether it more broadly exhorts customers to withhold patronage from the full range of goods carried by the secondary retailer, including those goods originating from nonprimary sources. The Tree Fruits test reflects the distinction between economic damage sustained by the secondary firm solely by virtue of its dependence upon the primary employer’s goods, and injuries inflicted upon interests of the secondary firm that are unrelated to the primary dispute — injuries that are calculated to influence the secondary retailer’s conduct with respect to the primary dispute.

*621The former sort of harm is simply the result of union success in its conflict with the primary employer. The secondary firm is hurt only insofar as it entwines its economic fate with that of the primary employer by carrying the latter's goods. To be sure, the secondary site may be a battleground; but the secondary retailer, in its own right, is not enlisted as a combatant.

The latter kind of economic harm to the secondary firm, however, does not involve merely the necessary commercial fallout from the primary dispute. Appeals to boycott non-primary goods sold by a secondary retailer place more at stake for the retailer than the risk it has assumed by handling the primary employer’s product. Four considerations indicate that this broader pressure is highly undesirable from the standpoint of labor policy. First, nonprimary product boycotts distort the strength of consumer response to the primary dispute; the secondary retailer’s decision to continue purchasing the primary employer’s line becomes a function of consumer reaction to the primary conflict amplified by the impact of the boycott upon nonprimary goods. Tree Fruits, supra, at 72, and n. 20. Second, although it seems proper to compel the producer or retailer of an individual primary product to internalize the costs of labor conflict engendered in the course of the item’s production, a nonprimary product boycott may unfairly impose multiple costs upon the secondary retailer who does not wish to terminate his relationship with the primary employer. Third, nonprimary product boycotts attack interests of the secondary firm that are not derivative of the interests of the primary enterprise; because the retailer thereby becomes an independent disputant, the primary labor controversy may be aggravated and complicated. Finally, by affecting the sales of nonprimary goods handled by the secondary firm, the disruptive effect of the primary dispute is felt even by those businesses that manufacture and sell non-primary products to the secondary retailer.

These sound reasons support Tree Fruits’ conclusion that the legality of secondary site picketing should turn upon *622whether the union pickets urge only a boycott of the primary employer’s product. 377 U. S., at 63-64, 71-72.2 Concomitantly, Tree Fruits expressly rejected the notion that the coer-civeness of picketing should depend upon the extent of loss suffered by the secondary firm through diminished purchases of the primary product. Id., at 72-73. Nevertheless, the Court has now apparently abandoned the Tree Fruits approach, choosing instead to identify coerciveness with the percentage of the secondary firm’s business made up by the primary product.

The conceptual underpinnings of this new standard are seriously flawed. The type of economic pressure exerted upon the secondary retailer by a primary product boycott is the same whatever the percentage of its business the primary product composes — in each case, a decline in sales at the secondary outlet may well lead either to a decrease in purchases from the primary employer or to product substitution. To be sure, the damaging effect of this pressure upon individual secondary firms will vary, but it is far from clear that the harmfulness of a primary product boycott is necessarily correlated with the percentage of the secondary firm’s business the product constitutes. For example, a marginally profitable large retailer may handle a multiplicity of products, yet find the decrease in sales of a single, very profitable, primary product ruinous. A small healthy single product secondary retailer, on the other hand, might be able to sustain losses during a boycott, or substitute a comparable product.

*623Moreover, it is odd to treat the NLRA’s prohibition against coercion of neutral secondary parties as a means of protecting single product secondary firms from the effects of a successful primary product boycott. A single product retailer will always suffer a degree of harm incident to a successful primary product boycott, whether or not the retailer becomes the focus of union activity. Thus, a ban on coercion of neutral businesses is mismatched to the goal of averting that harm. Far more sensible would be to read the statutory ban on coercion of neutral parties as shielding secondary firms from the injuries that ensue precisely because of union conduct aimed at them. Nonprimary product boycotts fall within this category because they are specifically targeted at the secondary retailer.

Unlike the Tree Fruits rule, the test formulated by the Court in this case is not rooted in the policy of maintaining secondary firm neutrality with respect to the primary dispute. There is no ground to believe that a single product secondary retailer is more prone than a multiproduct retailer to react to a primary product boycott by joining the union in its struggle against the primary employer. On the contrary, the single product secondary firm is likely to be the primary employer’s strongest ally because of the alignment of their respective economic interests. Nor is it especially unfair to subject the single product retailer to a primary product boycott. Whatever the percentage of a retailer’s business that is constituted by a given item, the retailer necessarily assumes the risks of interrupted supply or declining sales that follow when labor conflict embroils the manufacturer of the item.

By shifting its focus from the nature of the product boycotted to the composition of the secondary firm’s business, today’s decision substitutes a confusing and unsteady standard for Tree Fruits’ clear approach to secondary site picketing. Labor unions will no longer be able to assure that their secondary site picketing is lawful by restricting advocacy of a boycott to the primary product, as ordained by Tree Fruits. *624Instead, picketers will be compelled to guess whether the primary product makes up a sufficient proportion of the retailer’s business to trigger the displeasure of the courts or the Labor Relations Board. Indeed, the Court’s general disapproval of “[p]roduct picketing that reasonably can be expected to threaten neutral parties with ruin or substantial loss . . . ,” ante, at 614, leaves one wondering whether unions will also have to inspect balance sheets to determine whether the primary product they wish to picket is too profitable for the secondary firm.

I continue to “disagree . . . that the test of ‘to threaten, coerce, or restrain’ ... is whether [the secondary retailer] suffered or was likely to suffer economic loss.” Tree Fruits, supra, at 72.3 I would adhere to the primary product test. Accordingly, I dissent.

Justice White

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case centers around the respondent union’s peaceful handbilling of the businesses operating in a shopping mall in Tampa, Florida, owned by petitioner, the Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation (DeBartolo). The union’s primary labor dispute was with H. J. High Construction Company (High) over alleged substandard wages and fringe benefits. High was retained by the H. J. Wilson Company (Wilson) to construct a department store in the mall, and neither DeBartolo nor any of the other 85 or so mall tenants had any contractual right to influence the selection of contractors.

The union, however, sought to obtain their influence upon Wilson and High by distributing handbills asking mall customers not to shop at any of the stores in the mall “until the Mall’s owner publicly promises that all construction at the Mall will be done using contractors who pay their employees fair wages and fringe benefits.”1 The handbills’ *571message was that “[t]he payment of substandard wages not only diminishes the working person’s ability to purchase with earned, rather than borrowed, dollars, but it also undercuts the wage standard of the entire community.” The handbills made clear that the union was seeking only a consumer boycott against the other mall tenants, not a secondary strike by their employees. At all four entrances to the mall for about three weeks in December 1979, the union peacefully distributed the handbills without any accompanying picketing or patrolling.

After DeBartolo failed to convince the union to alter the language of the handbills to state that its dispute did not involve DeBartolo or the mall lessees other than Wilson and to limit its distribution to the immediate vicinity of Wilson’s construction site, it filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (Board), charging the union with engaging in unfair labor practices under § 8(b)(4) of the National *572Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 61 Stat. 141, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 158(b)(4).2 The Board’s General Counsel issued a complaint, but the Board eventually dismissed it, concluding that the handbilling was protected by the publicity proviso of § 8(b)(4). Florida Gulf Coast Bldg. & Constr. Trades Coun *573 cil, 252 N. L. R. B. 702 (1980). The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the Board, 662 F. 2d 264 (1981), but this Court reversed in Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. v. NLRB, 463 U. S. 147 (1983). There, we concluded that the handbilling did not fall within the proviso’s limited scope of exempting “publicity intended to inform the public that the primary employer’s product is ‘distributed by’ the secondary employer” because DeBartolo and the other tenants, as opposed to Wilson, did not distribute products of High. Id., at 155-157. Since there had not been a determination below whether the union’s handbilling fell within the prohibition of § 8(b)(4), and, if so, whether it was protected by the First Amendment, we remanded the case.

On remand, the Board held that the union’s handbilling was proscribed by § 8(b)(4)(ii)(B). 273 N. L. R. B. 1431 (1985). It stated that under its prior cases “handbilling and other activity urging a consumer boycott constituted coercion.” Id., at 1432. The Board reasoned that “[appealing to the public not to patronize secondary employers is an attempt to inflict economic harm on the secondary employers by causing them to lose business,” and “such appeals constitute ‘economic retaliation’ and are therefore a form of coercion.” Id., at 1432, n. 6. It viewed the object of the hand-billing as attempting “to force the mall tenants to cease doing business with DeBartolo in order to force DeBartolo and/or Wilson’s not to do business with High.” Id., at 1432. The Board observed that it need not inquire whether the prohibition of this handbilling raised serious questions under the First Amendment, for “the statute’s literal language and the applicable case law require[d]” a finding of a violation. Ibid. Finally, it reiterated its longstanding position that “as a congressionally created administrative agency, we will presume the constitutionality of the Act we administer.” Ibid.

The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit denied enforcement of the Board’s order. Florida Gulf Coast Bldg. & Constr. Trades Council v. NLRB, 796 F. 2d 1328, *5741346 (1986). Because there would be serious doubts about whether § 8(b)(4) could constitutionally ban peaceful hand-billing not involving nonspeech elements, such as patrolling, the court applied our decision in NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, 440 U. S. 490 (1979), to determine if there was a clear congressional intent to proscribe such handbilling. The language of the section, the court held, revealed no such intent, and the legislative history indicated that Congress, by using the phrase “threaten, coerce, or restrain,” was concerned with secondary picketing and strikes rather than appeals to consumers not involving picketing. 796 F. 2d, at 1336-1340. The court also concluded that the publicity proviso did not manifest congressional intent to ban all speech not coming within its terms because it was “drafted as an interpretive, explanatory section” and not as an exception to an otherwise all-encompassing prohibition on publicity in § 8(b)(4). Id., at 1344. The court went on to construe the section as not prohibiting consumer publicity; DeBartolo petitioned for certiorari. Because this case presents important questions of federal constitutional and labor law, we granted the petition, 482 U. S. 913 (1987), and now affirm.

The Board, the agency entrusted by Congress with the authority to administer the NLRA, has the “special function of applying the general provisions of the Act to the complexities of industrial life.” NLRB v. Erie Resistor Corp., 373 U. S. 221, 236 (1963); see Pattern Makers v. NLRB, 473 U. S. 95, 114 (1985); NLRB v. Steelworkers, 357 U. S. 357, 362-363 (1958). Here, the Board has construed § 8(b)(4) of the Act to cover handbilling at a mall entrance urging potential customers not to trade with any retailers in the mall, in order to exert pressure on the proprietor of the mall to influence a particular mall tenant not to do business with a nonunion construction contractor. That statutory interpretation by the Board would normally be entitled to deference unless that construction were clearly contrary to the intent of Congress. Chevron U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U. S. 837, 842-843, and n. 9 (1984).

*575Another rule of statutory construction, however, is pertinent here: where an otherwise acceptable construction of a statute would raise serious constitutional problems, the Court will construe the statute to avoid such problems unless such construction is plainly contrary to the intent of Congress. Catholic Bishop, supra, at 499-501, 504. This cardinal principle has its roots in Chief Justice Marshall’s opinion for the Court in Murray v. The Charming Betsy, 2 Cranch 64, 118 (1804), and has for so long been applied by this Court that it is beyond debate. E. g., Catholic Bishop, supra, at 500-501; Machinists v. Street, 367 U. S. 740, 749-750 (1961); Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22, 62 (1932); Lucas v. Alexander, 279 U. S. 573, 577 (1929); Panama R. Co. v. Johnson, 264 U. S. 375, 390 (1924); United States ex rel. Attorney General v. Delaware & Hudson Co., 213 U. S. 366, 407-408 (1909); Parsons v. Bedford, 3 Pet. 433, 448-449 (1830) (Story, J.). As was stated in Hooper v. California, 155 U. S. 648, 657 (1895), “[t]he elementary rule is that every reasonable construction must be resorted to, in order to save a statute from unconstitutionality.” This approach not only reflects the prudential concern that constitutional issues not be needlessly confronted, but also recognizes that Congress, like this Court, is bound by and swears an oath to uphold the Constitution. The courts will therefore not lightly assume that Congress intended to infringe constitutionally protected liberties or usurp power constitutionally forbidden it. See Grenada County Supervisors v. Brogden, 112 U. S. 261, 269 (1884).

We agree with the Court of Appeals and respondents that this case calls for the invocation of the Catholic Bishop rule, for the Board’s construction of the statute, as applied in this case, poses serious questions of the validity of § 8(b)(4) under the First Amendment. The handbills involved here truthfully revealed the existence of a labor dispute and urged potential customers of the mall to follow a wholly legal course of action, namely, not to patronize the retailers doing business in the mall. The handbilling was peaceful. No picketing or *576patrolling was involved. On its face, this was expressive activity arguing that substandard wages should be opposed by abstaining from shopping in a mall where such wages were paid. Had the union simply been leafletting the public generally, including those entering every shopping mall in town, pursuant to an annual educational effort against substandard pay, there is little doubt that legislative proscription of such leaflets would pose a substantial issue of validity under the First Amendment. The same may well be true in this case, although here the handbills called attention to a specific situation in the mall allegedly involving the payment of unacceptably low wages by a construction contractor.

That a labor union is the leafletter and that a labor dispute was involved does not foreclose this analysis. We do not suggest that communications by labor unions are never of the commercial speech variety and thereby entitled to a lesser degree of constitutional protection. The handbills involved here, however, do not appear to be typical commercial speech such as advertising the price of a product or arguing its merits, for they pressed the benefits of unionism to the community and the dangers of inadequate wages to the economy and the standard of living of the populace. Of course, commercial speech itself is protected by the First Amendment, Virginia Pharmacy Bd. v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U. S. 748, 762 (1976), and however these handbills are to be classified, the Court of Appeals was plainly correct in holding that the Board’s construction would require deciding serious constitutional issues. See Consolidated Edison Co. v. Public Service Comm’n of N. Y., 447 U. S. 530, 534-535, 537 (1980); Smith v. Daily Mail Publishing Co., 443 U. S. 97, 102-103 (1979); Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe, 402 U. S. 415, 419-420 (1971).

The Board was urged to construe the statute in light of the asserted constitutional considerations, but thought that it was constrained by its own prior authority and cases in the Courts of Appeals, as well' as by the express language of *577the Act, to hold that § 8(b)(4) must be construed to forbid the handbilling involved here. Even if this construction of the Act were thought to be a permissible one, we are quite sure that in light of the traditional rule followed in Catholic Bishop, we must independently inquire whether there is another interpretation, not raising these serious constitutional concerns, that may fairly be ascribed to § 8(b)(4)(ii)(B). This the Court has done in several cases.

In NLRB v. Drivers, 362 U. S. 274, 284 (1960), for example, the Court rejected the Board’s interpretation of the phrase “restrain or coerce” to include peaceful recognitional picketing and stated:

“In the sensitive area of peaceful picketing Congress has dealt explicitly with isolated evils which experience has established flow from such picketing. Therefore, unless there is the clearest indication in the legislative history of § 8(b)(1)(A) supporting the Board’s claim of power under that section, we cannot sustain the Board’s order here. We now turn to an examination of the legislative history.”

That examination of the legislative history failed to yield the requisite “clearest indication.” Similarly, in NLRB v. Fruit Packers, 377 U. S. 58, 63 (1964) (Tree Fruits), we disagreed with the Board’s determination that § 8(b)(4)(ii)(B) prohibited all consumer picketing at a secondary establishment, no matter the economic consequences of that picketing, because our examination of the legislative history led us to “conclude that it does not reflect with the requisite clarity a congressional plan to proscribe all peaceful consumer picketing at secondary sites, and, particularly, any concern with peaceful picketing when it is limited, as here, to persuading” customers not to purchase a specific product of the secondary establishment. We once more looked for the “isolated evils” that Congress had focused on because “[b]oth the congressional policy and our adherence to this principle of interpretation *578reflect concern that a broad ban against peaceful picketing might collide with the guarantees of the First Amendment.” Id., at 62-63; see id., at 67, 71. Because there was not the required “clearest indication in the legislative history,” we rejected the Board’s interpretation that limited expressive activities. Again, in Catholic Bishop, we independently determined whether the Board’s jurisdiction extended to parochial schools in the face of a substantial First Amendment challenge, although the Board itself had previously considered the First Amendment challenge and presumably interpreted the statute cognizable of those limits. 440 U. S., at 497-499.

We follow this course here and conclude, as did the Court of Appeals, that the section is open to a construction that obviates deciding whether a congressional prohibition of handbilling on the facts of this case would violate the First Amendment.

The case turns on whether handbilling such as involved here must be held to “threaten, coerce, or restrain any person” to cease doing business with another, within the meaning of § 8(b)(4)(ii)(B). We note first that “inducting] or encouragting]” employees of the secondary employer to strike is proscribed by § 8(b)(4)(i). But more than mere persuasion is necessary to prove a violation of § 8(b)(4)(ii)(B): that section requires a showing of threats, coercion, or restraints. Those words, we have said, are “nonspecific, indeed vague,” and should be interpreted with “caution” and not given a “broad sweep,” Drivers, supra, at 290; and in applying § 8(b)(1)(A) they were not to be construed to reach peaceful recognitional picketing. Neither is there any necessity to construe such language to reach the handbills involved in this case. There is no suggestion that the leaflets had any coercive effect on customers of the mall. There was no violence, picketing, or patrolling and only an attempt to persuade customers not to shop in the mall.

The Board nevertheless found that the handbilling “coerced” mall tenants and explained in a footnote that “[a]p-*579pealing to the public not to patronize secondary employers is an attempt to inflict economic harm on the secondary employers by causing them to lose business. As the case law makes clear, such appeals constitute ‘economic retaliation’ and are therefore a form of coercion.” 273 N. L. R. B., at 1432, n. 6.3 Our decision in Tree Fruits, however, makes untenable the notion that any kind of handbilling, picketing, or other appeals to a secondary employer to cease doing business with the employer involved in the labor dispute is “coercion” within the meaning of § 8(b)(4)(ii)(B) if it has some economic impact on the neutral. In that case, the union picketed a secondary employer, a retailer, asking the public not to buy a product produced by the primary employer. We held that the impact of this picketing was not coercion within the meaning of § 8(b)(4) even though, if the appeal succeeded, the retailer would lose revenue.4

NLRB v. Retail Store Employees, 447 U. S. 607 (1980) (Safeco), in turn, held that consumer picketing urging a general boycott of a secondary employer aimed at causing him to sever relations with the union’s real antagonist was coercive and forbidden by § 8(b)(4). It is urged that Safeco rules this *580case because the union sought a general boycott of all tenants in the mall. But “picketing is qualitatively ‘different from other modes of communication,'” Babbitt v. Farm, Workers, 442 U. S. 289, 311, n. 17 (1979) (quoting Hughes v. Superior Court, 339 U. S. 460, 465 (1950)), and Safeco noted that the picketing there actually threatened the neutral with ruin or substantial loss. As Justice Stevens pointed out in his concurrence in Safeco, 447 U. S., at 619, picketing is “a mixture of conduct and communication” and the conduct element “often provides the most persuasive deterrent to third persons about to enter a business establishment.” Handbills containing the same message, he observed, are “much less effective than labor picketing” because they “depend entirely on the persuasive force of the idea.” Ibid. Similarly, the Court stated in Hughes v. Superior Court, supra, at 465:

“Publication in a newspaper, or by distribution of circulars, may convey the same information or make the same charge as do those patrolling a picket line. But the very purpose of a picket line is to exert influences, and it produces consequences, different from other modes of communication.”

In Tree Fruits, we could not discern with the “requisite clarity” that Congress intended to proscribe all peaceful consumer picketing at secondary sites. There is even less reason to find in the language of § 8(b)(4)(ii)(B), standing alone, any clear indication that handbilling, without picketing, “coerces” secondary employers. The loss of customers because they read a handbill urging them not to patronize a business, and not because they are intimidated by a line of picketers, is the result of mere persuasion, and the neutral who reacts is doing no more than what its customers honestly want it to do.

The Board argues that our first DeBartolo case goes far to dispose of this case because there we said that the only non-picketing publicity “exempted from the prohibition is publicity intended to inform the public that the primary employ*581er’s product is ‘distributed by’ the secondary employer.” . 463 U. S., at 155. We also indicated that if the handbilling were protected by the proviso, the distribution requirement would be without substantial practical effect. Id., at 157. But we obviously did not there conclude or indicate that the handbills were covered by § 8(b)(4)(ii)(B), for we remanded the case on this very issue. Id., at 157-158.5

It is nevertheless argued that the second proviso to § 8(b)(4) makes clear that that section, as amended in 1959, was intended to proscribe nonpicketing appeals such as hand-*582billing urging a consumer boycott of a neutral employer. That proviso reads as follows:

“Provided further, That for the purposes of this paragraph (4) only, nothing contained in such paragraph shall be construed to prohibit publicity, other than picketing, for the purpose of truthfully advising the public, including consumers and members of a labor organization, that a product or products are produced by an employer with whom the labor organization has a primary dispute and are distributed by another employer, as long as such publicity does not have an effect of inducing any individual employed by any person other than the primary employer in the course of his employment to refuse to pick up, deliver, or transport any goods, or not to perform any services, at the establishment of the employer engaged in such distribution.”

By its terms, the proviso protects nonpicketing communications directed at customers of a distributor of goods produced by an employer with whom the union has a labor dispute. Because handbilling and other consumer appeals not involving such a distributor are not within the proviso, the argument goes, those appeals must be considered coercive within the meaning of § 8(b)(4)(ii)(B). Otherwise, it is said, the proviso is meaningless, for if handbilling and like communications are never coercive and within the reach of the section, there would have been no need whatsoever for the proviso.

This approach treats the proviso as establishing an exception to a prohibition that would otherwise reach the conduct excepted. But this proviso has a different ring to it. It states that § 8(b)(4) “shall not be construed” to forbid certain described nonpicketing publicity. That language need not be read as an exception. It may indicate only that without the proviso, the particular nonpicketing communication the *583proviso protects might have been considered to be coercive, even if other forms of publicity would not be. Section 8(b)(4), with its proviso, may thus be read as not covering nonpicketing publicity, including appeals to customers of a retailer as they approach the store, urging a complete boycott of the retailer because he handles products produced by nonunion shops.6

The Board’s reading of § 8(b)(4) would make an unfair labor practice out of any kind of publicity or communication to the public urging a consumer boycott of employers other than those the proviso specifically deals with.7 On the facts of this case, newspaper, radio, and television appeals not to patronize the mall would be prohibited; and it would be an unfair labor practice for unions in their own meetings to urge their members not to shop in the mall. Nor could a union’s handbills simply urge not shopping at a department store because it is using a nonunion contractor, although the union could safely ask the store’s customers not to buy there because it is selling mattresses not carrying the union label. It is difficult, to say the least, to fathom why Congress would consider appeals urging a boycott of a distributor of a nonunion product to be more deserving of protection than non-picketing persuasion of customers of other neutral employers such as that involved in this case.

Neither do we find any clear indication in the relevant legislative history that Congress intended § 8(b)(4)(ii)(B) to pro*584scribe peaceful handbilling, unaccompanied by picketing, urging a consumer boycott of a neutral employer. That section was one of several amendments to the NLRA enacted in 1959 and aimed at closing what were thought to be loopholes in the protections to which secondary employers were entitled. We recounted the legislative history in Tree Fruits and NLRB v. Servette, Inc., 377 U. S. 46 (1964), and the Court of Appeals carefully reexamined, it in this case and found “no affirmative intention of Congress clearly expressed to prohibit nonpicketing labor publicity.” 796 F. 2d, at 1346. For the following reasons, for the most part expressed by the Court of Appeals, we agree with that conclusion.

First, among the concerns of the proponents of the provision barring threats, coercion, or restraints aimed at secondary employers was consumer boycotts of neutral employers carried out by picketing. At no time did they suggest that merely handbilling the customers of the neutral employer was one of the evils at which their proposals were aimed. Had they wanted to bar any and all nonpicketing appeals, through newspapers, radio, television, handbills, or otherwise, the debates and discussions would surely have reflected this intention. Instead, when asked, Congressman Griffin, cosponsor of the bill that passed the House, stated that the bill covered boycotts carried out by picketing neutrals but would not interfere with the constitutional right of free speech. 105 Cong. Rec. 15673, 2 Leg. Hist. 1615.

Second, the only suggestions that the ban against coercing secondary employers would forbid peaceful persuasion of customers by means other than picketing came from the opponents of any proposals to close the perceived loopholes in § 8(b)(4). Among their arguments in both the House and the Senate was that picketing and handbilling a neutral employer to force him to cease dealing in the products of an employer engaged in labor disputes, appeals which were then said to be legal, would be forbidden by the proposal that became § 8(b) (4)(ii)(B). The prohibition, it was said, “reaches not only *585picketing but leaflets, radio broadcasts, and newspaper advertisements, thereby interfering -with freedom of speech.” 105 Cong. Rec. 15540, 2 Leg. Hist. 1576.8 The views of opponents of a bill with respect to its meaning, however, are not persuasive:

“[W]e have often cautioned against the danger, when interpreting a statute, of reliance upon the views of its legislative opponents. In their zeal to defeat a bill, they understandably tend to overstate its reach. 'The fears and doubts of the opposition are no authoritative guide to the construction of legislation. It is the sponsors that we look to when the meaning of the statutory words is-in doubt.’” Tree Fruits, 377 U. S., at 66 (quoting Schwegmann Bros. v. Calvert Distillers Corp., 341 U. S. 384, 394-395 (1951)).

Without more, the interpretation put on the words “threaten, coerce, or restrain” by those opposed to the amendment hardly settles the matter.

Third, § 8(b)(4)(ii)(B) was one of the amendments agreed upon by a House-Senate Conference on the House’s LandrumGriffin bill and the Senate’s Kennedy-Ervin bill. An analysis of the Conference bill was presented in the House by Representative Griffin and in the Senate by Senator Goldwater. With respect to appeals to consumers, the summary said that *586the House provision prohibiting secondary consumer picketing was adopted but “with clarification that other forms of publicity are not prohibited.” 105 Cong. Rec. 18706, Leg. Hist. 1454 (Sen. Goldwater); 105 Cong. Rec. 18022, Leg. Hist. 1712 (Rep. Griffin).9 The clarification referred to was the second proviso to § 8(b)(4). See supra, at 581-582. The Court of Appeals held that although the proviso was itself confined to advising the customers of an employer that the latter was distributing a product of another employer with whom the union had a labor dispute, the legislative history did not foreclose understanding the proviso as a clarification of the meaning of § 8(b)(4) rather than an exception to a general ban on consumer publicity. We agree with this view.

In addition to the summary presented by Senator Goldwater and Representative Griffin, Senator Kennedy, the Chairman of the Conference Committee, in presenting the Conference Report on the Senate floor, 105 Cong. Rec. 17898-17899, 2 Leg. Hist. 1431-1432, stated that under the amendments as reported by the Conference Committee, a “union can hand out handbills at the shop, can place advertisements in newspapers, can make announcements over *587the radio, and can carry on all publicity short of having ambulatory picketing in front of a secondary site.” And he assured Senator Goldwater that union buy-American campaigns — that is, publicity requesting that consumers not buy foreign-made products, even though there is no ongoing labor dispute with the actual producer — would not be prohibited by the section.

Senator Kennedy included in his statement, however, the following:

“Under the Landrum-Griffin Bill it would have been impossible for a union to inform the customers of a secondary employer that that employer or store was selling goods which were made under racket conditions or sweatshop conditions, or in a plant where an economic strike was in progress. We were not able to persuade the House conferees to permit picketing in front of that secondary shop, but we were able to persuade them to agree that the union shall be free to conduct informational activity short of picketing.” 105 Cong. Rec. 17898-17899, 2 Leg. Hist. 1432.

The Board relies on this part of the Senator’s exposition as an authoritative interpretation of the words “threaten, coerce, or restrain” and argues that except as saved by the express language of the proviso, informational appeals to customers not to deal with secondary employers are unfair labor practices. The Senator’s remarks about the meaning of §8(b)(4)(ii) echoed his views, and that of others, expressed in opposing and defeating in the Senate any attempts to give more protection to secondary employers from consumer boycotts, whether carried out by picketing or non-picketing means. See n. 8, supra, and accompanying text. And if the proviso added in conference were an exception rather than a clarification, it surely would not follow, as the Senator said, that under the Conference bill, unions would be free to “conduct informational activity short of picketing” and could handbill, advertise in newspapers, and carry out *588all publicity short of ambulatory picketing in front of a secondary site. Nor would buy-American appeals be permissible, for they do not fall within the proviso’s terms. At the very least, the Kennedy-Goldwater colloquy falls far short of revealing a clear intent that all nonpicketing appeals to customers urging a secondary boycott were unfair practices unless protected by the express words of the proviso. Nor does that exchange together with the other bits of legislative history relied on by the Board rise to that level.

In our view, interpreting § 8(b)(4) as not reaching the hand-billing involved in this case is not foreclosed either by the language of the section or its legislative history. That construction makes unnecessary passing on the serious constitutional questions that would be raised by the Board’s understanding of the statute. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is

Affirmed.

Justice O’Connor and Justice Scalia concur in the judgment.

Justice Kennedy took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.