US · guidance
Justice Manual § 9-139.600
Transportation of Strikebreakers (29 U.S.C. § 1231)
This provision prohibits any person from:
Willfully transporting any person in interstate or foreign commerce who is employed or will be employed to obstruct or interfere by force or threats with peaceful labor picketing by employees, or employees' exercise of organizational or collective bargaining rights; or
Traveling or knowingly being transported in interstate or foreign commerce for the purpose of obstructing or interfering by force or threats with any of the above-enumerated employee activities.
The legislative history makes clear that 18 U.S.C. § 1231 was enacted to deal with professional strikebreakers who were hired by employers to physically interfere with pickets and other lawful labor activity by employees. Common carriers are specifically exempted from the application of this statute.
The penalties for violating this statute are a fine and/or imprisonment for not more than two years. For information and pleadings concerning this statute, the Labor-Management Unit, Violent Crime and Racketeering Section may be consulted.
History
[updated January 2020]
Provenance
- Source
- justice.gov
- Retrieved
- 2026-09-20
- Edition
- jm-2026-09-20
- Content hash
db45dc344260ebf96683247472025153113280022e794a834361b0c852ca83b2
The link goes to the issuing authority’s own document — the one we read to produce this record. Where a source publishes whole titles rather than sections, your browser may need a moment to jump to the provision.
Unofficial copy of government-published law, reproduced from official sources with full provenance. Not an official publication; verify against official sources before relying on it in a filing. Records in the 'guidance' corpus, and only that corpus, are sub-regulatory (interpretive guidelines, survey procedures) and are not binding law. Validity bounds follow each jurisdiction's declared temporalBasis.