Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Steamship Clerks Union, Local 1066

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

Labor unions have historically been instruments of solidarity, forged in an ostensible effort to counterbalance the weight of concentrated industrial power. It is, therefore, ironic — but not unprecedentedly so, inasmuch as “irony is no stranger to the law,” Amanullah v. Nelson, 811 F.2d 1, 17 (1st Cir.1987) — that unions themselves sometimes engage in exclusionary membership practices. The court below detected such an elitist strain in the operation of the Steamship Clerks Union, Local 1066 (the Union), determining that the Union’s policy requiring prospective members to…