Williams v. Molpus

• Decision Date: 30 April 1999
• Docket Number: No. 97-2148,97-2148
• Citation: 171 F.3d 360
• Parties: 160 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2803, 137 Lab.Cas. P 10,414 Robert WILLIAMS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Howard MOLPUS, et al., Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 360

171 F.3d 360

160 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2803, 137 Lab.Cas. P 10,414

Robert WILLIAMS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Howard MOLPUS, et al., Defendants-Appellees.

No. 97-2148.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued Dec. 18, 1998.

Decided March 18, 1999.

Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc Denied April 30, 1999.^*

Barbara M. Harvey (argued and briefed), Detroit, MI, for Plaintiff-Appellant.

Patricia M. Morrow (argued and briefed), Roberto L. Mercado (briefed), Dean & Fulkerson, Troy, MI, for Defendants-Appellees Ryder Systems, Inc., Ryder Automotive Carrier Group, Inc. Complete Auto Transit, Inc., Commercial Carriers, Inc. and Transport Support, Inc.

Wayne A. Rudell (argued and briefed), Rudell & O'Neill, Dearborn, MI, for Defendants-Appellees General Drivers and Helpers Local No. 332 and Howard Molpus.

Before: MERRITT, NORRIS, and GILMAN, Circuit Judges.

GILMAN, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which MERRITT, J., joined. ALAN E. NORRIS, J. (p. 369), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

GILMAN, Circuit Judge.

After submitting the winning bid for the renewal of General Motors's yard and haul-away work at two of GM's plants in Flint, Michigan, Ryder Automotive Carrier Group, Inc. ("Ryder") assigned the yard work at both plants to Transport Support, Inc. ("TSI") and the haul-away work at both plants to Complete Auto Transit, Inc. ("Complete"). Both TSI and Complete are wholly-owned subsidiaries of Ryder. The union representing the employees of both subsidiaries then negotiated a rider to the national collective bargaining agreement. According to the rider, the employees of Complete (the company that had the previous contract for yard work at one of the GM plants in question) could transfer to TSI to perform yard work. Their seniority dates, however, would be "endtailed" after the current TSI employees.

Robert Williams, a long-term employee of Complete, filed a grievance with the Central-Southern Joint Arbitration Committee ("CSJAC"), the dispute resolution body established by the national collective bargaining agreement. He protested (1) the reassignment of Complete's yard work to TSI, and (2) the endtail provision. After his grievance was denied, Williams filed suit against the union as well as against Ryder, Complete, and TSI (the latter three being collectively referred to hereafter as "the Employers"). The district court granted summary judgment in favor of all of the defendants. Williams appeals, claiming that he had raised genuine issues of material fact regarding the union's breach of its duty of fair representation and the Employers' breach of contract. Viewing all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, we conclude that the district court erred in granting summary judgment in favor of the defendants. We therefore REVERSE the district court's decision and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

I. BACKGROUND

Between 1969 and 1992, Williams had been variously employed by Complete as both a haul-away driver and as a yard worker. In 1992, he was working as a haul-away driver at GM's Buick City plant. Complete employed over 200 workers in that year, some of whom performed the yard work at the Truck & Bus plant, another GM facility in Flint. During that time, TSI employed only nine workers. TSI was in charge of the yard work at the Buick City plant.

Local 332 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represented the employees of both Complete and TSI. Howard Molpus was their union representative. Molpus's son was one of the nine TSI employees.

In 1992, GM announced that it was accepting bids on all of its yard work and haul-away work at both the Buick City and the Truck & Bus plants. Ryder submitted the winning bid, thus continuing to perform the work that it had done under a prior contract with GM. Under the new contract, Ryder reassigned the yard work at both plants to TSI and the haul-away work at the two plants to Complete.

The unionized carhaul industry operates under a master collective bargaining agreement, known as the National Master Automobile Transporters Agreement ("NMATA"). Both Complete and TSI are signatories to NMATA. Two specific provisions of NMATA are at issue in this appeal. The first is Article 5, which deals with seniority, specifically "terminal seniority." Terminal seniority applies to the employee's most recent date of employment at a specific terminal. Article 5 refers to two different methods of merging terminal seniority lists. One such method is endtailing (whereby transferring employees are placed at the bottom of a terminal seniority list, although they retain their company seniority dates for fringe benefits), and the other is dovetailing (whereby two or more merged seniority lists recognize the original terminal seniority dates of each employee). According to Section 2 of Article 5, dovetailing is the preferred method: "Terminal seniority rights for all employees covered by this Agreement shall prevail unless the Supplements or other provision of this Agreement provide specifically to the contrary." Section 8 of Article 5, however, states that "the above rules are intended solely as general standards," and that "the Employers, the Union and the National or Area Joint Arbitration Committees may mutually agree to such disposition of questions of seniority which, in their judgment, is appropriate under the circumstances."

The second NMATA provision at issue in this appeal is the Work Preservation Agreement ("WPA"), which deals with the reassignment of work. The 1991-1995 NMATA modified Article 33, adding a new WPA. This provision provides in pertinent part as follows:

[T]he signatory Employer agrees that it will not ... assign or divert work, operations or services presently performed by, or hereafter assigned to its employees to other business entities, owned and/or controlled by the signatory Employer, its parent, subsidiaries, or affiliates of the Employer not signatory to this Agreement.

Ryder signed the WPA as the parent corporation of the signatory employers, including both Complete and TSI.

After Ryder won the GM bid, TSI and the union negotiated a rider to NMATA, arranging a new incentive-based pay schedule for the yard work performed by TSI employees. The rider also provided that Complete employees could transfer to TSI to perform yard work at any time, without the usual limited window of opportunity to do so. Transferring Complete employees would retain their prior company seniority dates for purposes of fringe benefits, but their terminal seniority dates would be endtailed after the nine current TSI employees.

This rider was presented to and ratified by the TSI employees. The parties dispute whether the rider was ever presented to the Complete employees for ratification. Williams claims that although the Complete employees voted on whether they should have the opportunity to transfer to TSI, they were denied the opportunity to vote on the treatment of their seniority status upon transfer. The union's position is that the Complete employees only had a right to vote on the part of the rider that "affected" them, that being whether they should have the opportunity to follow their former yard work to TSI. It argues that unless and until Complete employees transfer to TSI, they are not "affected" by the endtail provision.

In August of 1992, the rider was presented to CSJAC, as required by Article 2 of NMATA. CSJAC approved the rider. The minutes reflect that the union representative, Howard Molpus, assured CSJAC that the rider had been ratified by the "affected members," without further specificity.

On September 1, 1992, Williams chose to transfer to TSI. Because of the rider's endtail provision, he was assigned a new terminal seniority date that placed him behind the existing TSI employees.

Later that month, Williams and two similarly situated Complete transferees filed a grievance, protesting the reassignment of the yard work to TSI, the requirement that they transfer employment to TSI in order to continue performing yard work previously performed by Complete employees, and the loss of terminal seniority due to the transfer. The parties dispute the extent to which the union representative, Howard Molpus, assisted the transferees in presenting their grievances. After consideration, CSJAC denied Williams's grievance and upheld the rider, including the provision stating that the seniority of transferring Complete employees be endtailed behind the existing TSI employees.

Williams subsequently filed this lawsuit, claiming that (a) Ryder, Complete, and TSI should be considered as a single employer, (b) the Employers breached Articles 5 and 33 of NMATA, and (c) the union breached its duty of fair representation in negotiating and ratifying the TSI rider, as well as in failing to assist Williams in presenting his grievance. The district court granted summary judgment for both the union and the Employers, holding that (1) the single employer theory is irrelevant and unsupported, (2) CSJAC's finding that the negotiation of the endtail did not breach Article 5 of NMATA is binding, unless Williams can establish that the union breached its duty of fair representation, (3) CSJAC's finding that the transfer of work from Complete to TSI did not breach the WPA is binding, unless Williams can establish that the union breached its duty of fair representation, (4) neither the union nor its representative breached this duty, and (5) Williams was not "affected" by the TSI rider and did not, therefore, have a right to vote on its endtail provision prior to his transfer.

Williams appeals, claiming that he had presented genuine issues of material fact for trial, and that the district court improperly resolved reasonable inferences from these facts in favor of the union and the Employers rather than in his favor. He specifically alleges that the union breached its duty of fair representation in its...