United Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp.

• Citation: 168 F. Supp. 308
• Decision Date: 13 December 1958
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 895.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of West Virginia
• Parties: UNITED STEELWORKERS of America, Plaintiff, v. ENTERPRISE WHEEL AND CAR CORPORATION, Defendant.

168 F. Supp. 308

UNITED STEELWORKERS of America, Plaintiff, v. ENTERPRISE WHEEL AND CAR CORPORATION, Defendant.

Civ. A. No. 895.

United States District Court S. D. West Virginia, at Huntington.

December 13, 1958.

James P. Clowes, Wheeling, W. Va., and Carney M. Layne, Huntington, W. Va., for plaintiff.

William C. Beatty and E. Jackson Boggs, Huntington, W. Va., Fitzpatrick, Marshall, Huddleston & Bolen, Huntington, W. Va., for defendant.

HARRY E. WATKINS, District Judge.

This is an action brought under Section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C.A. § 185, commonly known as the Taft-Hartley Act, regarding a grievance arbitration provision in a collective bargaining agreement which was in effect between the plaintiff union and defendant employer from April 5, 1956, to midnight April 4, 1957. On October 21, 1957, after a full hearing, this Court granted plaintiff's motion for summary judgment and ordered the defendant, pursuant to the terms of the agreement, to submit to arbitration a grievance involving the discharge of eleven employees on January 18, 1957. After the entry of that order, the grievance involved here was submitted by the parties to an umpire or arbitrator, who held hearings and rendered a "Decision and Award." That award, dated April 10, 1958, requires defendant to reinstate the aggrieved employees to their position of January 18, 1957, and further awards reimbursement of wages for all time lost because of their wrongful discharge, with the exception of a 10-day suspension period, less such amounts received for other employment since 10 days after January 18, 1957. Defendant has refused to abide by the award and, in this same action, upon the motion of the plaintiff, the Court has ordered defendant to show cause why it has not complied with the arbitrator's decision. Defendant has filed an answer setting forth its position, and after the filing of extensive briefs and oral argument, the matter has been submitted for decision.

Defendant urges first that this Court is without jurisdiction to act upon plaintiff's motion to show cause, now that the arbitrator has rendered his decision, because the motion seeks to enforce an award which defendant reads as being uniquely personal to the individual grievants, under the rationale of Association of Westinghouse Salaried Employees v. Westinghouse Electric Corporation, 1955, 348 U.S. 437, 75 S.Ct. 488, 99 L.Ed. 510. That case did not involve an arbitration provision, but held that a union had no standing to initiate an action in federal court for unpaid wages allegedly due under the provisions of a collective-bargaining contract to some 4,000 employees represented by the union. In three separate opinions, the majority of the Supreme Court held that § 301 of the Taft-Hartley Act does not authorize suits by unions for uniquely personal rights of the individual employees such as compensation.

The decision of this Court leading to the entry of the order of October 21, 1957, compelling arbitration, was based on three Supreme Court decisions handed down in June, 1957. Textile Workers Union of America v. Lincoln Mills of Alabama, 353 U.S. 448, 77 S.Ct. 912, 923, 1 L.Ed.2d 972; General Electric Company v. Local 205, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, 353 U.S. 547, 77 S.Ct. 921, 1 L.Ed.2d 1028; and Goodall-Sanford, Inc., v. United Textile Workers of America, 353 U.S. 550, 77 S.Ct. 920, 1 L.Ed.2d 1031. Those cases held that United States District Courts are given jurisdiction by § 301 of the Taft-Hartley Act to decree specific performance of an agreement to arbitrate all grievances, when that agreement is contained in a collective-bargaining contract. Plaintiff urges here that it is manifestly a part of this Court's power, under those cases, to require acquiescence in the decision of the arbitrator, onec the Court has ordered a party to such a collective-bargaining agreement to submit a grievance to arbitration.

Defendant points to one case from a district court which held that notwithstanding the Lincoln Mills, General Electric, and Goodall-Sanford cases of 1957, the Westinghouse case of 1955 prevents a union from bringing an action in district court to enforce an arbitrator's award. Textile Workers Union of America v. Cone Mills Corp., D.C.M.D.N.C. 1958, 166 F.Supp. 654. But defendant admits that there is a split of authority on this point, for the case of Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America v. A. L. Kornman Co., D.C.M.D.Tenn., December 17, 1957, 33 C.C.H. Labor Cases, par. 71, 166, held that a district court has jurisdiction under § 301 of the Taft-Hartley Act to enforce an arbitrator's award, despite the holding of the Westinghouse case, under the authority of the Lincoln Mills and companion decisions. These district court cases, Cone Mills and Kornman, are not in point here, however, because in both instances the parties had voluntarily submitted the grievance to arbitration (apparently in accordance with provisions of collective-bargaining contracts) before any action was brought in the district court. In the case at bar, on the other hand, there was no voluntary submission of a grievance to arbitration, but rather defendant only submitted the problem to arbitration after an order of this Court required it to do so.

It may well be that once an arbitration award has been made pursuant to a voluntary submission by the parties to arbitration which finally determines the rights of the parties to a grievance, particularly in situations like that in the Cone Mills case, supra, where the award concerned itself only with wages due individuals in the form of vacation payments or unemployment benefits, the union has no standing to sue, but rather the affected individuals must press their personal claims. I do not need to decide that question here, for that is not our case, although it is interesting to note that here the case is being prosecuted by the union primarily to obtain reinstatement of the workers with the monetary award a secondary consideration, and since at the time this grievance began the plaintiff union was the exclusive bargaining agent of the affected employees, the plaintiff might have enough interest in the action to bring suit even if the arbitration award were the result of voluntary submission to arbitration.

But it must be kept in mind that this action was originally brought to compel defendant to submit the grievance to arbitration, and this Court ordered the defendant to

"within 35 days from the date hereof, commence specific performance of Step Four of Article III of the agreement between Enterprise Wheel and Car Corporation and the United Steelworkers of America, dated April 4, 1956, and to expeditiously proceed with the procedure therein set forth, * * *."

Having partially complied with that order, it is too late for defendant to now urge that this Court has no jurisdiction to compel defendant to go through with arbitration. It would certainly be unfair to allow a party to go step by step through the process of arbitration, only to ignore the decision when it turns out unfavorable to that party.

As quoted above, this Court ordered defendant to proceed with the arbitration procedure of Step Four of Article III. Defendant complied with (or the parties waived) all the provisions of Step Four except the vital last sentence, which reads: "The decision of the umpire shall be final and binding on the parties." I conclude that it was inherently a part of the order of October 21, 1957, that defendant accept as final and binding the decision of the umpire, or arbitrator. To hold otherwise would have the order requiring a futile act. As stated in the recent case of Item Company v. New Orleans Newspaper Guild, 5 Cir., 256 F.2d 855, 856, decided June 26, 1958, the Supreme Court recognized in the Lincoln Mills and companion cases that § 301 of the Taft-Hartley Act created a new area of federal substantive law and "* * * declared that in this new field of law, rules are to be devised by the federal courts to determine enforceability of collective-bargaining-contract clauses for arbitration of disputes arising `between an employer and a labor organization'." In arriving at the rules to be applied by the courts in this regard, certainly Congress did not intend that federal courts should have the power to require employers and unions to submit their differences to arbitration, but those same courts should have no power to see that the parties accept the arbitrator's decision. The Lincoln Mills case found a Congressional policy favoring the peaceful settlement of labor disputes by the use of arbitration, and I think it completely consonant with the policy to hold...