224
Opinion of the Court
bargaining process was pervasive and not the sort of peripheral regulation that would be permissible under San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U. S. 236 (1959). See 935 F. 2d, at 353. It also held that Bid Specification 13.1 was pre-empted under Machinists v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Comm'n, 427 U. S. 132 (1976), because MWRA was regulating activities that Congress intended to be unrestricted by governmental power. Because of the importance of the issue, we granted certiorari, 504 U. S. 908 (1992).
II
The NLRA contains no express pre-emption provision. Therefore, in accordance with settled pre-emption principles, we should not find MWRA's bid specification pre-empted " ' "unless it conflicts with federal law or would frustrate the federal scheme, or unless [we] discern from the totality of the circumstances that Congress sought to occupy the field to the exclusion of the States." ' " Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Massachusetts, 471 U. S. 724, 747-748 (1985) (citations omitted). We are reluctant to infer pre-emption. See Cipollone v. Liggett Group, Inc., 505 U. S. 504, 516 (1992); Rice v. Santa Fe Elevator Corp., 331 U. S. 218, 230 (1947). "Consideration under the Supremacy Clause starts with the basic assumption that Congress did not intend to displace state law." Maryland v. Louisiana, 451 U. S. 725, 746 (1981). With these general principles in mind, we turn to the particular pre-emption doctrines that have developed around the NLRA.
In Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Massachusetts, 471 U. S., at 748, we noted: "The Court has articulated two distinct NLRA pre-emption principles." The first, "Garmon preemption," see San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, supra, forbids state and local regulation of activities that are "protected by § 7 of the [NLRA], or constitute an unfair labor practice under § 8." 359 U. S., at 244. See also Garner v. Teamsters, 346 U. S. 485, 498-499 (1953) ("[W]hen
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