Section 15 of the Shipping Act, 1916, 39 Stat. 733, as amended, 46 U.S.C. § 814,1 requires the filing with the Federal Maritime Commission (Commission) of seven categories of agreements between a common carrier by water, or "other person subject to this chapter ' and another such carrier or person.2 Among those agreements that must be filed are those "controlling, regulating, preventing, or destroying competition." The Commission is empowered to "disapprove, cancel, or modify" any such agreement that it finds to be "unjustly discriminatory or unfair as between carriers, shippers, exporters, importers, or ports, . . . or to operate to the detriment of the commerce of the United States, or to be contrary to the public interest . . . " and is directed to approve all filed agreements that do not transgress these standards. Before approval or after disapproval, agreements subject to filing are unlawful and may not be implemented.3 Agreements that are "lawful under this section" are excepted from those provisions of the antitrust laws contained in §§ 1-11 and 15 of Title 15 of the United States Code. Violations of the section are punishable by civil fines of not more than $1,000 per day.

The issue in this case is whether § 15 of the Shipping Act requires the filing and the Commission's approval or disapproval of a collective-bargaining agreement between respondent Pacific Maritime Association (PMA), a collective-bargaining agent for a multiemployer bargaining unit made up of various employers of Pacific coast dockworkers,4 and respondent International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (Union).

* This case arose when eight municipal corporations, owners and operators of Pacific coast port facilities and not members of the PMA,5 filed a petition with the Commission asserting that a 1972 agreement between PMA and the Union was subject to filing and approval under § 15 and was violative of §§ 15, 16, and 17 of the Shipping Act6 because it was unjust, discriminatory, and contrary to the public interest. Prior to this time, the nonmember ports had negotiated separate agreements with the Union which contained terms and conditions that in some respects differed from those contained in the collective-bargaining contracts between PMA and the Union. Fringe-benefit provisions varied, depending on the result of individual negotiations.7 In some respects the ports enjoyed more flexible work rules than did PMA; the ports, for example, were often permitted to use "steady crews," whereas, under the PMA contract rotation of workers among employers was the general rule.8 The existence of separate agreements between the Union and the public ports also enable the Union to exert negotiating pressure on PMA by striking PMA while continuing to work for the individual ports. The ports, nevertheless, were permitted by virtue of separate agreements with PMA to secure their work force through the PMA-Union hiring halls9 and to make the particular fringe-benefit payments called for by their individual contracts by contributing to the fringe-benefit funds maintained by PMA.10

During contract negotiations between PMA and the Union beginning in November 1970, one of the issues raised was whether nonmembers should continue to be allowed to participate in PMA hiring-hall and fringe-benefit plans. These privileges PMA desired to eliminate.11 Ultimately, the parties arrived at a Supplemental Memorandum of Understanding described as follows by the court below:

"In the Supplemental Memorandum the parties agreed that PMA would accept contributions from all nonmembers who executed a uniform participation agreement. This standard agreement, included in the Supplemental Memorandum, would require nonmembers, as a condition of using the joint dispatching halls for jointly registered employees, to participate in all fringe benefit programs, pay the same dues and assessments as PMA members, use steady men 'in the same way a member may do so,' and be treated as a member during work stoppages." 177 U.S.App.D.C. 248, 250-251, 543 F.2d 395, 397-39 (1976) (footnotes omitted).12

It was this agreement that the public ports asserted was subject to filing and Commission action under § 15.

In October 1972, the Commission severed for initial determination the issues of its jurisdiction over the challenged agreement, and, if the Supplemental Memorandum of Understanding was otherwise covered by § 15, whether there were considerations rooted in the national labor policy that would nevertheless exempt the agreement from the filing and approval requirements of the section. Thereafter, on June 24, 1973, PMA and the Union arrived at a new collective-bargaining agreement, which included a revised nonmember participation agreement replacing the Supplemental Memorandum of Understanding. By additional order, the Commission extended its jurisdictional inquiry to include the new contract with its nonmember participation provisions, which, although revised, were deemed by the Commission to have essentially the same impact for present purposes as the Supplemental Memorandum of Understanding.

In its subsequent report and order, Pacific Maritime Assn. Coopera ive Working Arrangements, 18 F.M.C. 196 (1975), the Commission first rejected the suggestion that because the case called for accommodating the Shipping Act and the labor statutes, as well as determining whether the parties had exceeded the scope of legitimate bargaining, the Commission should not itself decide the issue but should defer to the courts or to the National Labor Relations Board.13 The Commission also rejected the argument, as it had rejected similar arguments in New York Shipping Assn.—NYSA-ILA Man-Hour/Tonnage Method of Assessment, 16 F.M.C. 381 (1973), aff'd, New York Shipping Ass'n, Inc. v. Federal Maritime Commission, 495 F.2d 1215 (CA2), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 964, 95 S.Ct. 224, 42 L.Ed.2d 178 (1974), that § 15's filing requirement was not triggered because some members of PMA were neither carriers nor "other persons subject to the act" or because PMA's contract was with a labor union, which also was neither a carrier nor "other person."14 The Commission went on to find that the purpose of the nonmember participation agreement was to place nonmembers on the same competitive basis as members of the PMA and that its effect was to control or affect competition between members and nonmembers. The Commission concluded that the agreement was thus subject to filing and approval or disapproval under § 15, unless, because it was part of a collective-bargaining contract, it fell within that category of contracts that the national labor policy placed beyond the reach of the Shipping Act. The Commission had recognized this so-called "labor exemption" in United Stevedoring Corp. v. Boston Shipping Assn., 16 F.M.C. 7 (1972), and it proceeded to adjudicate the status of the instant agreement under the criteria announced in that case.15

The Commission's ultimate conclusion was that the nonmember participation agreement was not entitled to exemption from filing under § 15, primarily because its thrust was to bring nonmembers into parity with members by requiring employers outside the bargaining unit to submit to bargaining-unit terms. The result had "a potentially severe and adverse effect upon competition," 18 F.M.C., at 208, and only a superficial effect on the collective-bargaining process. The agreement was thus subject to filing and approval under § 15.

The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit set aside the Commission's order, holding that the disputed agreement was wholly beyond the Commission's jurisdiction under § 15. 177 U.S.App.D.C. 248, 543 F.2d 395 (1976). The Commission's approach, which extends to labor agreements an exemption from Shipping Act requirements roughly equivalent to the exemption from the antitrust laws that the courts hold the labor statutes require for collective-bargaining contracts, was deemed an inadequate response to the demands of the national labor policy. Without disturbing the Commission's conclusion that the purpose and effect of the nonmember participation agreement at issue here were "to control or affect competition between members and nonmembers," 18 F.M.C. at 201, and hence that it was within the literal terms of § 15, and without holding that the agreement would qualify for an antitrust exemption under the relevant cases, the Court of Appeals ruled that any collective-bargaining contract, whatever its impact on competition, was exempt from filing with the Commission. Alternatively, the Court of Appeals held that, even if its per se rule excluding collective-bargaining agreements from the reach of § 15 was infirm, the Commission had erred in refusing to exempt from filing the particular nonmember participation agreement in question here.

We granted the petition for certiorari filed by the United States and the Commission, 430 U.S. 905, 97 S.Ct. 1172, 51 L.Ed.2d 580 (1977), which raises two issues: whether the national labor policy requires exempting collective-bargaining contracts as a class from the filing requirements of § 15 and, if not, whether the agreement at issue here is nevertheless exempt from those requirements.

We cannot agree with the holding below that, whatever their effect on competition might be, collective-bargaining contract are categorically exempt from the filing requirements of § 15 of the Shipping Act. Section 15 on its face reaches any contract between carriers "controlling, regulating, preventing, or destroying competition." If a contract is of that nature, it is within the reach of § 15 and subject to the Commission's jurisdiction, and it is quite untenable to suggest that collective-bargaining contracts never control, regulate, prevent, or destroy competition. See United Mine Workers of America v. Pennington, 381 U.S. 657, 85 S.Ct. 1585, 14 L.Ed.2d 626 (1965); Allen Bradley Co. v. Local Union No. 3, Intern. Broth. of Elec. Workers, 325 U.S. 797, 65 S.Ct. 1533, 89 L.Ed. 1939 (1945). If subject to § 15, a filed agreement must be approved by the Commission unless it is discriminatory or unfair, operates to the detriment of the commerce of the United States, or is contrary to the public interest. Because § 15 provides that an approved agreement will not be subject to the antitrust laws, it is apparent that Congress assigned to the Commission, not to the courts, the task of initially determining which anticompetitive restraints are to be approved and which are to be disapproved under the general statutory guidelines. It is equally apparent that as a substantive matter, Congress anticipated that various anticompetitive restraints, forbidden by the antitrust laws in other contexts, would be acceptable in the shipping industry.

That the Commission is the public arbiter of competition in the shipping industry is reflected in prior holdings that in reaching its decision under § 15 the Commission must "consider the antitrust implications of an agreement before approving it," FMC v. Seatrain Lines, Inc., 411 U.S. 726, 739, 93 S.Ct. 1773, 1782, 36 L.Ed.2d 620 (1973), and should approve an anticompetitive agreement only if it is " 'required by a serious transportation need, necessary to secure important public benefits or in furtherance of a valid regulatory purpose of the Shipping Act.' " FMC v. Aktiebolaget Svenska Amerika Linien, 390 U.S. 238, 243, 88 S.Ct. 1005, 1009, 19 L.Ed.2d 1071 (1968). The Commission, nevertheless, may approve agreements "even though they are violative of the antitrust laws . . . ." Seatrain, supra, 411 U.S., at 728, 93 S.Ct., at 1776.

The removal of the task of initially overseeing private restraints on competition from the regime of the antitrust laws and the courts is not a historical anachronism that we are entitled to ignore. Congress responded to Federal Maritime Board v. Isbrandtsen Co., 356 U.S. 481, 78 S.Ct. 851, 2 L.Ed.2d 926 (1958), which held that a particular system of dual rates adopted by a shipping conference violated § 14 of the Shipping Act, by suspending the effect of that decision pending full study and permanent legislation. After extensive investigation, important amendments were forthcoming in 1961, Pub.L. 87-346, 75 Stat. 763; but the Act's basic approach—that the regulation of competition in the shipping industry is to be an administrative function, subject to judicial review—was reaffirmed. Indeed, § 15 was amended "by enlarging and clarifying the [Commission's] powers over agreements filed thereunder" by, among other things the addition of the public interest standard to § 15. H.R.Rep. No. 498, 87th Cong., 1st Sess., 17-18 (1961). Section 15 was declared by the Antitrust Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, which undertook a three-year study of "the entire gamut of antitrust problems in the ocean freight industry . . . ," to be "the heart of the Shipping Act." H.R.Rep. No. 1419, 87th Cong., 2d Sess., 2, 15 (1962).

It is appropriate, therefore, that the Court has recognized the broad reach of § 15 and resisted improvident attempts to narrow it. In Volkswagenwerk Aktiengesellschaft v. FMC, 390 U.S. 261, 88 S.Ct. 929, 19 L.Ed.2d 1090 (1968), a collective-bargaining agreement between PMA and the Union included a provision requiring PMA to create a sizable fund o be used to mitigate the impact of technological unemployment upon employees. PMA reserved the right to determine how the fund was to be raised, and thereafter it settled upon a particular method by which its members would contribute to the fund. The issue then arose whether this latter agreement was within the Commission's jurisdiction under § 15. The Commission held that, although the assessment formula arrived at was within the literal language of the section, it was exempt from filing since § 15 should be applied only to those agreements that affect competition among the carriers in their dealings with the shipping and traveling public.16 The Court of Appeals affirmed; but we reversed, rejecting the Commission's "extremely narrow view of a statute that uses expansive language." 390 U.S., at 273, 88 S.Ct., at 936. In response to the Commission's expressed desire to read § 15 narrowly in order to minimize the antitrust exemption, we noted that "antitrust exemption results, not when an agreement is submitted for filing, but only when the agreement is actually approved . . . ," 390 U.S., at 273, 88 S.Ct., at 936, and that "in deciding whether to approve an agreement, the Commission is required under § 15 to consider antitrust implications." Id., at 273-274, 88 S.Ct., at 936. Hence, "[t]o limit § 15 agreements that 'affect competition,' as the Commission used that phrase . . . simply [did] not square with the structure of the statute," id., at 275, 88 S.Ct., at 937, and "would [render] virtually meaningless" major parts of § 15's filing provisions. 390 U.S., at 275 n. 23, 88 S.Ct., at 937 n. 23.

Because Volkswagenwerk dealt only with the agreed-upon assessment formula, the Court noted that no question had been raised about the validity of the underlying collective-bargaining contract. The opinion does not, therefore, determine one way or the other whether collective-bargaining contracts are ever within the reach of § 15; but the Court did emphasize the breadth of the statutory language and the determination of Congress, reflected in § 15, to "subject to the scrutiny of a specialized governmental agency the myriad of restrictive agreements in the maritime industry." 390 U.S., at 276, 88 S.Ct., at 937. At the very least, the opinion counsels against implying broad exemptions for agreements, collective-bargaining contracts or otherwise, whose impact on competition is "neither de minimis nor routine." Id., at 277, 88 S.Ct., at 938.

In the present case, the Court of Appeals' removal from the Commission's jurisdiction of all collective-bargaining contracts, regardless of how anticompetitive they might be, and whether or not exempt under the antitrust laws, would appear to be contrary to the plain terms of § 15. The Court of Appeals was not unaware that it was depriving the Commission of the power to approve or disapprove anticompetitive contracts that § 15 on its face clearly confers, but it thought its holding necessary to implement the collective-bargaining system established by the federal statutes dealing with labor-management relations, including those in the shipping industry. While there is no doubt that the courts must give all due effect to each of two seemingly overlapping statutes, we think the Court of Appeals misconceived its task here.

The principal objection to Commission jurisdiction over any bargaining agreement was that under § 15 agreements subject to filing cannot be implemented prior to approval or after disapproval. This alone was enough to exempt collective-bargaining contracts from filing under § 15, for, as the Court f Appeals understood the collective-bargaining system mandated by the National Labor Relations Act, one of its essential elements is for the parties to be legally free "to implement promptly the compromise agreements worked out in eleventh-hour bargaining sessions . . . ." 177 U.S.App.D.C., at 257, 543 F.2d, at 406. Subjecting negotiated labor agreements to filing and approval "would make nearly impossible the maintenance or prompt restoration of industrial peace." Ibid. Prompt implementation of lawful collective-bargaining agreements is indeed an important consideration, but the fears of the Court of Appeals as to the possible impact of the Commission's decision on the collective-bargaining process are exaggerated and do not justify the major surgery performed on § 15 by the decision below. In the first place, the Commission's decision would not require the filing of all or even most of the collective-bargaining contracts entered into in the shipping industry. Because § 15 applies only to agreements between at least two parties subject to the Act, see n. 1, supra, collective-bargaining contracts between the Union and a single employer would not have to be filed. Moreover, not all collective-bargaining agreements between the Union and PMA would be subject to the requirements of § 15. Under § 15, filed agreements must be approved unless they operate to the detriment of commerce, are contrary to the public interest, or otherwise fail to satisfy the specified standards. Under these standards, it would be difficult to conclude that ordinary collective-bargaining agreements establishing wages, hours, and working conditions in a bargaining unit could or would be disapproved as contrary to the public interest or detrimental to commerce. Such contracts are the product of bargaining compelled by the labor laws, which themselves were enacted pursuant to the power of Congress to regulate commerce in the public interest. They are also the kind of contracts that the courts, because of the collective-bargaining regime established by the labor laws, in the main have declared to be beyond the reach of the antitrust laws, the statutes specifically designed to protect the commerce of the United States from anticompetitive restraints.

The Commission has recognized that the vast majority of collective-bargaining arrangements cannot be deemed candidates for disapproval under § 15 and that they would be routinely approved even if filed. Consistent with its power under § 35 of the Shipping Act, 39 Stat. 738, as added, 80 Stat. 1358, 46 U.S.C. § 833a, in appropriate circumstances to exempt from § 15 filing requirements "any class of agreements between persons subject to this chapter or any specified activity of such persons,"17 the Commission, by adjudication, has determined that it will recognize a "labor exemption" from the filing requirements of § 15 for collective-bargaining contracts falling within the boundaries of the exemption defined by its announced criteria.18 In doing so, the Commission has been guided by its understanding of our cases, and those of other courts, that recognize and define an exemption from the antitrust laws for certain contracts between management and labor. It appears to be the intention of the Commission to exercise jurisdiction over only those collective-bargaining contracts that in its view would not be exempt from examination under antitrust laws and that should be reviewed under Shipping Act standards. We therefore doubt that the Commission's decision will have a broad impact on labor-management relations. At least, it has not been demonstrated at this juncture that the collective-bargaining concerns cited by the Court of Appeals are sufficient to require complete exemption for labor agreements and the consequent partial emasculation of the statutory scheme for administrative review of anticompetitive agreements. Second, the Commission, in any event, claims the authority, which it has exercised, see New York Shipping Assn.—NYSA—ILA Man-Hour/Tonnage Method of Assessment, 16 F.M.C. 381 (1973), aff'd, New York Shipping Ass'n, Inc. v. Federal Maritime Commission, 495 F.2d 1215 (CA2), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 964, 95 S.Ct. 224, 42 L.Ed.2d 178 (1974), to issue conditional approval of filed agreements pending final decision as to their legality; and it is not clear why this mechanism is not amply responsive to the fears of undue delay or why its adequacy should now be debated since the parties could have, but did not, request early, conditional approval. The Court of Appeals did not deny that the Commission could permit implementation of filed agreements prior to a final decision, but it thought the mechanism only a partial alleviation of the problem since the parties still would face the "specter" of a later administrative invalidation of perhaps a crucial part of a collective-bargaining contract. But it is not immediately obvious why provisions of a collective-bargaining contract that appear obviously illegal to the Commission should be immediately implemented pending final decision. Furthermore, if a collective-bargaining contract having serious anticompetitive aspects is not subject to filing under § 15, as the Court of Appeals would have it, the parties would in any event face the uncertainty of possible invalidation and of treble damages after long and difficult litigation in an antitrust court. At least under § 15, it would be possible that an anticompetitive collective-bargaining contract that would not survive scrutiny under the antitrust laws could be approved by the Commission, if it served important regulatory goals, and hence would be insulated from antitrust attack. Indeed, a critical aspect of the regulatory plan devised by Congress is the requirement of administrative judgment with respect to all of the specified contracts required to be filed. It was therefore error for the Court of Appeals to hold that the legality of collective-bargaining contracts, challenged as anticompetitive and nonexempt, must be judicially determined under the antitrust laws without interposition of the administrative judgment and without regard for Shipping Act considerations.

The Court of Appeals also ruled that even absent a blanket exemption from § 15 for collective-bargaining agreements, the Commission should not have exercised § 15 jurisdiction in this case but should have exempted the nonmember participation agreement from filing. In doing so, the court appeared to disagree with the Commission's weighing of the impact on shipping interests of holding the agreement exempt against the impact on collective-bargaining interests of requiring filing and approval under § 15. Perhaps because under the Act this kind of comparison must be the business of the Commission if all collective agreements are not exempt, the Court of Appeals offered little to support this alternative judgment. It suggested that the Commission had failed to realize that the nonmember participation agreement in the last analysis was merely an effort to force the public ports into a multiemployer bargaining unit against their will, an issue clearly within the National Labo Relations Board's authority and one in which the Commission should not intermeddle. The argument is wide of the mark. The Commission has not challenged the power of the Board to determine bargaining units; neither the Commission nor the parties have authority to change a unit certified by the Board. Rather than relying on the Board to resolve any bargaining-unit problem, if there was one, PMA and the Union agreed to impose bargaining-unit terms on employers outside the unit.

Furthermore, the Court of Appeals recognized that the "Supreme Court has ruled against primary jurisdiction in the NLRB for anticompetitive agreements," 177 U.S.App.D.C., at 263, 543 F.2d, at 410, but went on to conclude that we had removed from all primary administrative cognizance the entire question of accommodating collective-bargaining considerations and the public interest in competition. We doubt that our opinions should be so broadly read. Congress has not authorized the NLRB to police, modify, or invalidate collective-bargaining contracts aimed at regulating competition or to insulate bargaining agreements from antitrust attack. But here, as we have said, Congress took the different course of committing to the Commission the initial task of approving or disapproving all agreements that control, regulate, prevent, or destroy competition. However much the courts might consider this to be a judicial function, particularly when it is necessary to accommodate the possibly conflicting policies of the labor and shipping laws, we have no warrant to ignore congressional preferences written into § 15 of the Shipping Act.

Although the Court of Appeals did not otherwise challenge the content or application of the Commission's guidelines for resolving issues as to its jurisdiction over collective-bargaining agreements, the respondents urge that the Commission has misread the relevant cases. In particular, they fault the Commission's findings with respect to the competitive impact of the nonmember participation agreement and the failure to find that the terms under challenge constituted serious antitrust violations. These submissions are unsound. It is plain from our cases that an antitrust case need not be tried and a violation found before a determination can be made that a collective-bargaining agreement is not within the labor exemption, just as it is clear that denying the exemption does not mean that there is an antitrust violation.19 Insofar as the asserted exemption for collective-bargaining contracts is concerned, the Commission found all it needed to find to assume jurisdiction and proceed with the case under § 15 when it concluded that PMA and the Union had undertaken to impose employment terms and conditions on employers outside the bargaining unit. As we have previously observed:

"[T]here is nothing in the labor policy indicating that the union and the employers in one bargaining unit are free to bargain about the wages, hours and working conditions of other bargaining units or to attempt to settle these matters for the entire industry."

"[A] union forfeits its exemption from the antitrust laws when it is clearly shown that it has agreed with one set of employers to impose a certain wage scale on other bargaining units." United Mine Workers of America v. Pennington, 381 U.S., at 665-666, 85 S.Ct., at 1591.

Here, both the Commission and the Court of Appeals understood the nonmember participation agreement to req ire nonmembers to participate in all fringe-benefit plans agreed upon between the PMA and the Union, to observe PMA-determined labor policies in the event of a work stoppage, and to observe the same work rules with respect to the hiring-hall work force. The result, the Commission found, would be higher costs for nonmembers and the elimination of what the PMA considered to be "a competitive disadvantage" to its members.20 Accordingly, the Commission was warranted in finding that "the purpose of the supplemental agreement [was] . . . to place nonmembers on the same 'competitive' basis as members of the PMA." 18 F.M.C., at 201.

We are thus unpersuaded that the Commission did not make the requisite findings to sustain its view. Nor are we impressed with other arguments that in one guise or another are contentions that the Commission, for lack of ability and experience, should not purport to deal with any collective-bargaining agreement but should leave the entire matter of anticompetitive labor-management contracts to the courts and the antitrust laws. As we have said, Congress has made the Commission the arbiter of competition in the shipping industry; and if there are labor agreements so anticompetitive that they are vulnerable under the antitrust laws, it is difficult to explain why the Commission should not deal with them in the first instance and either approve or disapprove them under the standards specified in § 15.

In summary, we think the Commission was true to § 15 and that it has also demonstrated its sensitivity to the national labor policy by exempting from the filing requirements all collective-bargaining contracts that in its view would also be exempt from the antitrust laws. Because the Commission also has the power to approve filed agreements, even though anticompetitive, the Commission may also take into account any special needs of labor-management relationships in the shipping industry. We should add that since the Shipping Act contains its own standards for exempting and for approving and disapproving agreements between carriers, and because the ultimate issue in cases such as this is the accommodation of the Shipping Act and the labor laws, rather than the labor laws and the antitrust laws, it will not necessarily be a misapplication of the statutes if the exemption for collective-bargaining contracts from Shipping Act requirements is not always exactly congruent with the so-called labor exemption from the antitrust laws as understood by the courts.

The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.

It is so ordered.

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

Mr. Justice POWELL, with whom Mr. Justice BRENNAN and Mr. Justice MARSHALL join, dissenting.

The Court today holds that collective-bargaining agreements in the maritime industry are subject to the filing and prior approval requirements of § 15 of the Shipping Act 1916 (Act), 46 U.S.C. § 814. Neither statutory language nor legislative history offers specific support for this result. For well over a half a century, the agency responsible for enforcing the Act did not consider § 15 previews of maritime labor contracts to be within its mission,1 even though collective bargaining is hardly a recent development in the major ports of the Nation.2 No intervening legislation explains the Court's willingness to recognize this belated assertion of jurisdiction.3

This decision would be debatable but unexceptional were it not for the presence of a competing statute. The task confronting the Court is one of reconciling the broad language of § 15 with the distinct policy of federal labor law embodied in the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 29 U.S.C. §§ 141 et seq. It seems to me that today's ruling undercuts federal labor policy, imposing undue burdens on collective bargaining, without advancing significantly any Shipping Act objective. I therefore dissent.

* The sweeping generality of § 15 arguably would enable the statute to be applied to almost any agreement involving a party subject to the Act. But this merely accents the importance of construing its general language in light of the Act's purposes and the policies of other pertinent statutes. Section 15 has not been interpreted as reaching all agreements related to maritim transportation. See FMC v. Seatrain Lines, Inc., 411 U.S. 726, 731-734, 93 S.Ct. 1773, 1777-1779, 36 L.Ed.2d 620 (1973). Although Volkswagenwerk v. FMC, 390 U.S. 261, 88 S.Ct. 929, 19 L.Ed.2d 1090 (1968), referred to today, ante, at 55-56, emphasized the breadth of the statutory language, the Court was careful to limit its holding to avoid any suggestion that collective-bargaining agreements must comply with the requirements of § 15.

In subjecting collective-bargaining agreements to prior clearance by the Commission under § 15, the Court goes well beyond the limits established in Volkswagenwerk. There, an earlier agreement between respondent Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) and respondent International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (Union) provided for the introduction of labor-saving devices and the elimination of certain work practices. The agreement required the creation of a "Mechanization and Modernization Fund" (Mech Fund) of $29 million to be used to mitigate the impact of technological unemployment upon employees. It reserved to the PMA alone the right to determine how to raise the fund from its members. The question before the Court was whether § 15 applied to a subsequent agreement among members of the PMA setting forth various formulas for collecting the Mech Fund. The Court held that the employers' "side agreement" would have a substantial impact on stevedoring and terminal charges, and required the prior approval of the Commission. Following the suggestion of the United States,4 the Court restricted its holding to the "side agreement," explicitly disclaiming any intention to reach the underlying collective-bargaining agreement.

"It is to be emphasized that the only agreement involved in this case is the one among members of the Association allocating the impact of the Mech Fund levy. We are not concerned here with the agreement creating the Association or with the collective bargaining agreement between the Association and the ILWU. No claim has been made in this case that either of those agreements was subject to the filing requirements of § 15. Those agreements, reflecting the national labor policy of free collective bargaining by representatives of the parties' own unfettered choice, fall in an area of concern to the National Labor Relations Board, and nothing we have said in this opinion is to be understood as questioning their continuing validity. But in negotiating with the ILWU, the Association insisted that its members were to have the exclusive right to determine how the Mech Fund was to be assessed, and a clause to that effect was included in the collective bargaining agreement. That assessment arrangement, affecting only relationships among Association members and their customers, is all that is before us in this case." 390 U.S., at 278 (emphasis supplied).

¢sThe italicized language makes clear that the Volkswagenwerk Court perceived a distinction, material to Commission authority under § 15, between a collective-bargaining agreement, and implementing agreements among carriers, stevedoring contractors, and marine terminal operators.

In this case, I would follow what seems to have been the lead of the Court in Volkswagenwerk. A proper accommodation of the conflicting signals of the Shipping Act and federal labor policy requires that bona fide collective-bargaining agreements, arrived through arm's-length negotiations,5 do not fall within § 15. As in other collective-bargaining contexts, labor and management in the maritime industry would be free to reach agreement without prior Government approval or control over the substantive terms of the bargain, while the agreement itself or its implementation would be subject to scrutiny under the antitrust laws and the specific prohibitions of §§ 166 and 177 of the Act.

The prospects for peaceful resolution of labor disputes in an industry marked by a history of industrial strife, see C. Larrowe, Shape Up and Hiring Hall 1-48, 83-138 (1955); Volkswagenwerk v. FMC, 390 U.S., at 296-299, 88 S.Ct., at 948-949 (Douglas, J., dissenting in part), are not enhanced by the Court's imposition of a system of administrative prior restraints. Collective bargaining works best when the parties are free to arrive at negotiated solutions to problems without first having to secure the approval of Government regulators. The legal consequences of a bargain may be assessed after the fact, but the parties should be free to negotiate an agreement within the framework of procedures prescribed by the National Labor Relations Board (Board). Often negotiations are conducted under substantial constraints of time, and agreement is reached at the eleventh hour. If there is no agreement by the expiration date of the previous contract, or if an accord may not be executed because of a requirement of prior governmental approval, labor's "no contract, no work" tradition suggests the likelihood of a disruptive work stoppage. Moreover, the bargaining process itself may suffer where the parties know that any agreement is simply a tentative accord, subject to pre-implementation review by an administrative agency. As the Board noted in New York Shipping Assn. v. FMC, 495 F.2d 1215 (CA ), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 964, 95 S.Ct. 224, 42 L.Ed.2d 178 (1974):

"It is extremely difficult for the parties to make a meaningful judgment as to the kind of bargain they are negotiating if one or more of the key provisions on which agreement turns is subject to invalidation by the Com mission. This kind of administrative supervision will impede the process of collective bargaining and could inhibit negotiators' attempts to arrive at novel solutions to troublesome labor problems. The superimposition of the approval of the FMC over [matters that are] crucial to the agreement is likely to disrupt the process of collective bargaining and deter the speedy resolution of industrial disputes in the maritime industry." Brief for National Labor Relations Board as Amicus Curiae in Nos. 73-1919 and 73-1991 (CA2), p. 14.

Section 15 jurisdiction also entails recognition of a revisory power in the Commission over the substantive terms of collective-bargaining agreements. The Commission is empowered, after notice and hearing, to "disapprove, cancel or modify any agreement" that it finds to be "unjustly discriminatory or unfair," detrimental to commerce, contrary to the public interest, or otherwise violative of the Act. If—as the Court holds—this power is applicable to collective-bargaining agreements, it would exceed even the broad remedial authority of the Board itself, which falls short of any substantial interference with the "freedom of contract" of the parties. In H. K. Porter Co. v. NLRB, 397 U.S. 99, 90 S.Ct. 821, 25 L.Ed.2d 146 (1970), the Court held that the Board could not order an employer to grant the union a contract checkoff clause as a remedy for an acknowledged violation of the statutory duty to bargain in good faith.

"It is implicit in the entire structure of the Act that the Board acts to oversee and referee the process of collective bargaining, leaving the results of the contest to the bargaining strengths of the parties. . . . The Board's remedial powers under § 10 of the Act are broad, but they are limited to carrying out the policies of the Act itself. One of these fundamental policies is freedom of contract. While the parties' freedom of contract is not absolute under the Act, allowing the Board to compel agreement when the parties themselves are unable to agree would violate the fundamental premise on which the Act is based—private bargaining under governmental supervision of the procedure alone, without any official compulsion over the actual terms of the contract." Id., at 107-108, 90 S.Ct., at 825.

The parties cannot agree to terms that violate the law, but the remedy that is generally applied is post-execution invalidation and assessment of damages, rather than "official compulsion over the actual terms of the contract."8 Hence, the Court's recognition of such a power reposing in the Commission is fundamentally at odds with national labor policy.

The Court insists that concern over "the possible impact of the Commission's decision on the collective-bargaining process [is] exaggerated and [does] not justify the major surgery performed on § 15 by the decision below." Ante, at 57. It is suggested that few labor agreements will have to be filed, because § 15 does not apply to contracts between a union and a single employer, and the Commission has foresworn jurisdiction over agreements falling within the uncertain contours of a "labor exemption" to be developed in the course of agency a judications. Ante., at 57-58.

It is by no means clear to me that the Court's optimism is justified. Labor unions and management groups, following the course of caution, are likely to respond to today's decision by filing all labor agreements with the Commission. Respondents can take little comfort in the assertion that "routine," Brief for Petitioners 28, or "ordinary collective-bargaining agreements" will not "be subject to the requirements of § 15," ante, at 57.9 Few agreements negotiated between a union and a multiemployer bargaining association for the purpose of governing working relations at a major port are likely to be so "routine" that the parties safely may assume that they enjoy an exemption from § 15. A degree of uncertainty and delay, then, would seem an inevitable byproduct of § 15 jurisdiction over maritime labor relations.

Similarly, the possibility that the Commission may find that a particular agreement qualifies for a "labor exemption" does not offer a realistic palliative for the probable impact of the Court's decision on free collective bargaining. The Court suggests that the Commission may apply its special understanding of the requirements of anticompetitive policy,10 but there is no well-developed corpus of maritime labor-antitrust decisions to guide the formulation of labor agreements in the industry. The Commission has identified four nonexclusive, nondeterminative criteria to inform its "labor exemption" rulings.11 The brief history of the Commission's entry into the maritime labor field, however, see n. 1, supra, offers little basis for hope that its assertion of § 15 jurisdiction will not impair the collective-bargaining process. In the final analysis, the substantial penalties provided by the Act12 for "guessing wrong" make it unlikely that the disruption and uncertainty inherent in this prior-restraint scheme will be allayed significantly by the rulings of a federal agency inexpert in labor and labor-antitrust matters.13

I cannot agree that either the statutory language or the legislative history14 of § 15 requires that it be made applicable to collective-bargaining agreements. Neither contains any reference to labor agreements. Although § 15 reaches a broad spectrum of arrangements, its terms apply only to agreements among "common carriers by water" or "other persons subject to this chapter."15 Unions are not persons subject to the Act. One would have thought that if Congress had wished to include collective-bargaining agreements within the scope of § 15, it would have done so specifically or, at least, it would have provided for jurisdiction over the indispensable party to such an agreement—the labor union.16

The terms of § 15 must be construed in light of the considerations that led to federal regulation of the maritime industry17 and encouraged Congress to empower the Commission to immunize restrictive agreements among shippers and others subject to the Act from all antitrust scrutiny.18 The Court's ruling abstracts this power of approval from the particular context that prompted Congress to accord certain agreements an immunity premised on Shipping Act policies which did not necessarily reflect antitrust principles.19 InVolkswagenwerk, the Court recognized § 15 jurisdiction over an agreement among members of respondent Association, to which a grant of immunity, after Commission study and approval, would have been understandable. That agreement presented only Shipping Act considerations. As the Government pointed out in that case, the assessment formula was "not a part of [the labor] contract, involve[d] no question of labor relations, and [was] not subject to the jurisdiction of the Labor Board." See n. 4, supra. I find it difficult to believe, however, that Congress in 1916 intended to empower the Commission to approve, and thereby immunize from the reach of the antitrust laws, the varied terms of collective-bargaining agreements.

The Commission in this case found that the agreement fell within the third category of § 15—which concerns agreements "controlling, regulating, preventing, or destroying competition." Pacific Maritime Assn.—Cooperative Working Arrangements, 18 F.M.C. 196 (1975). Undoubtedly, some maritime labor agreements will pose antitrust problems. But we must recognize, as we did in FMC v. Seatrain Lines, Inc., that a broad "reading of the Commission's jurisdiction would increase the number of cases subject to potential antitrust immunity," and "conflict with our frequently expressed view that exemptions from antitrust laws are strictly construed, see, e. g., United States v. McKesson & Robbins, Inc., 351 U.S. 305, 316, 76 S.Ct. 937, 100 L.Ed. 1209 (1956) . . . ." 411 U.S., at 733, and n. 8, 93 S.Ct., at 1778. Plenary review by the Commission of all maritime labor agreements that now will have to be filed in their entirety may be avoided only by retroactive, piecemeal grants of a "labor exemption."20 The better course would be to recognize that bona fide collective-bargaining agreements, as a class, do not come within § 15.

An exemption from the filing and prior-clearance regime of § 15 would not shield collective-bargaining agreements from all scrutiny under the Shipping Act. It would remain open to the Commission to determine that a particular agreement was not the product of arm's-length negotiations, but rather was an effort to circumvent § 15 by clothing a restrictive arrangement otherwise subject to the filing requirement with the trappings of a labor accord. Moreover, even a bona fide collective-bargaining agreement, or at least action taken in its implementation, may be reviewed under §§ 16 and 17. Petitioners have not demonstrated that vindication of Shipping Act policies requires the application of § 15, in the first instance, to genuine collective-bargaining agreements. Indeed, the Commission's recognition of a "labor exemption" and its unreviewed assertion of power to accord "interim approval" to labor agreements, see n. 13, supra, suggest that the proposed remedy for an occasional evasion of the Shipping Act through the device of the collective-bargaining agreement may be likened to using "a sledge hammer to fix a watch." Volkswagenwerk v. FMC, 390 U.S., at 296, 88 S.Ct., at 948 (Douglas, J., dissenting in part).21

I respectfully dissent.