130
Opinion of the Court
decided unfair labor practice dispute. See also Rum Creek Coal Sales, Inc. v. Caperton, 971 F. 2d 1148, 1154 (CA4 1992) (NLRA forbids state policy, under state law barring "aid or assistance" to either party to a labor dispute, of not arresting picketers who violated state trespass laws). Nor need we pause long over the assertion that nonenforcement of valid state-law claims is consistent with federal labor law by "encouraging" the operation of collective bargaining and arbitration process. Denying represented employees basic safety protections might "encourage" collective bargaining over that subject, and denying union employers the protection of generally applicable state trespass law might lead to increased bargaining over the rights of labor pickets, cf. Rum Creek, supra, but we have never suggested that labor law's bias toward bargaining is to be served by forcing employees or employers to bargain for what they would otherwise be entitled to as a matter of course. See generally Metropolitan Life, supra, at 757 (Congress did not intend to "remove the backdrop of state law . . . and thereby artificially create a no-law area") (emphasis deleted and internal quotation marks omitted).24
The precedent cited by the Commissioner and amici as supporting the broadest "hands off" view, Fort Halifax Packing Co. v. Coyne, 482 U. S. 1 (1987), is not in point. In that case we held that there was no federal pre-emption of a Maine statute that allowed employees and employers to contract for plant-closing severance payments different from those otherwise mandated by state law. That decision, however, does not even purport to address the question supposedly presented here: while there was mention of state lati-24 Were it enough simply to point to a general labor policy advanced by particular state action, the city in Golden State could have claimed to be encouraging the "friendly adjustment of industrial disputes," 29 U. S. C. § 151, and the State in Gould, the entirely "laudable," 475 U. S., at 291, purpose of "deter[ring] labor law violations and . . . reward[ing] 'fidelity to the law,' " id., at 287.
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