AMERICAN BRAKE SHOE CO., ETC. v. LOCAL NO. 149, ETC., 8085.

• Citation: 285 F.2d 869
• Decision Date: 06 January 1961
• Docket Number: No. 8085.,8085.
• Parties: AMERICAN BRAKE SHOE COMPANY, WINCHESTER, VIRGINIA, PLANT OF AMERICAN BRAKEBLOK DIVISION, WINCHESTER, VIRGINIA, Appellant, v. LOCAL NO. 149 INTERNATIONAL UNION, UNITED AUTOMOBILE, AIRCRAFT, AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENT WORKERS OF AMERICA (UAW-AFL-CIO), Winchester, Virginia, Appellee.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (4th Circuit)

285 F.2d 869 (1961)

AMERICAN BRAKE SHOE COMPANY, WINCHESTER, VIRGINIA, PLANT OF AMERICAN BRAKEBLOK DIVISION, WINCHESTER, VIRGINIA, Appellant, v. LOCAL NO. 149 INTERNATIONAL UNION, UNITED AUTOMOBILE, AIRCRAFT, AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENT WORKERS OF AMERICA (UAW-AFL-CIO), Winchester, Virginia, Appellee.

No. 8085.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued June 6, 1960.

Decided January 6, 1961.

Flournoy L. Largent, Jr., Winchester, Va. (Largent, Anderson & Larrick, Winchester, Va., on brief), for appellant.

Lowell Goerlich, Washington, D. C. (J. Lynn Lucas, Luray, Va., and Harold A. Cranefield, Detroit, Mich., on brief), for appellee.

Before HAYNSWORTH and BOREMAN, Circuit Judges, and CHARLES F. PAUL, District Judge.

CHARLES F. PAUL, District Judge.

Appellant, Employer, appeals from an order of the District Court requiring specific enforcement of the award of an arbitrator, whose appointment grows out of a labor dispute, in this suit brought by the Appellee, Union, for the purpose of securing such order of enforcement, by virtue of § 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act (U.S.C.A., Title 29, § 185(a).

Employer contends that the arbitrator's award exceeds his authority under the contract and the submission and that, insofar as the award requires payment of back wages to four individual employees, the District Court was without jurisdiction, at the suit of the Union, to order enforcement since the claims involved are uniquely personal to the four employees individually.

The dispute arises under an Agreement between the parties, effective for the period February 27, 1956, to March 1, 1958. The Agreement contains the usual provisions that the management of the business, the direction of the working force, and the right to hire, promote, demote and transfer employees, shall rest with Employer. The appropriate clause contains a proviso that these rights "will not be used for purposes of discrimination against any employee."

The wage provisions of the Agreement refer to "Exhibit A" attached to the Agreement. Exhibit A lists, by title, some forty different job classifications, with the hourly rates applicable to each. Six of these job classifications are subdivided into classifications denominated A, B and C. These are referred to by the parties as "multiple job classifications". The two with which this dispute is concerned are "Machine Repairman A, B and C", and "Maintenance Man A, B and C". Except for the job titles, neither the Agreement nor Exhibit A contains any written description of the job content of, or the skills requisite for, any classification or subdivision thereof.

Article V of the Agreement, entitled "Grievance Procedure", sets forth a four-step procedure for settling disputes between the parties. Paragraph Fifth of this article provides for compulsory arbitration and is quoted in the margin.¹

Disputes having arisen between the parties, on August 31, 1956, the Union filed with the Employer a written Statement of Grievance, the material portions of which are copied in the margin.² The grievances were not satisfactorily settled between the parties, and the Union served upon the Employer a written "Demand for Arbitration", dated October 12, 1956. Under the heading, "Claim or Relief Sought", this notice stated the matters with which we are concerned in the language quoted in the margin.³ On October 18, 1956, the parties executed a stipulation agreeing to submit the matters for abitration to an arbitrator to be selected and to act under the "Voluntary Labor Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association."

Mr. G. Allen Dash, Jr. was chosen from a panel of the American Arbitration Association, and he held hearings on January 16 and 17, 1957, at which, among other matters, the Union introduced evidence that ten of the employees had been given work assignments, the job content of which were "basically the same in every significant particular" as the jobs of other employees having higher job classifications and about whose job classifications there is no controversy. Employer took the position that the matter of up-grading an employee's job classification was none of the arbitrator's business, and offered no evidence and refused to participate in this phase of the arbitration proceedings.

At this point it might be well to point out two other provisions of the basic labor Agreement. The Agreement contains provisions against strikes and lockouts during its effective period. In Article II, Section 2, the Agreement provides that "should any difference arise between the Company and the Union * * * as to the meaning or application of the provisions of this Agreement, the Company and the Bargaining Committee shall make an earnest effort to settle such differences in the manner provided in Article V of this Agreement."

The arbitrator disposed of "Grievance No. 2" in the "Demand for Arbitration" by finding for Employer on that issue. The effect is to limit this case to the dispositions made of the matters arising on "Grievance No. 4". In connection with his disposition of these issues, the arbitrator handed down a carefully considered and excellently prepared Opinion, which occupies some twenty-two pages of the printed record.

In the Opinion, and in his award based thereon, the arbitrator disposed of the issues regarding the violation of seniority provisions by ruling thereon in favor of Employer. He denied the Union's demand that Employer be required to set up definite written criteria for the various job classifications and their subdivisions on the ground that to do so would require him to add to or subtract from or modify the terms of the Agreement, a function prohibited by the provisions of the Agreement relating to arbitration.

The arbitrator did find that there is implicit in the Agreement, in the light of the construction placed upon it by the parties in settling prior disputes with respect thereto, a measuring rod sufficiently definite to afford workable principles in order practicably to settle disputes over job classifications. The method is to examine the work content of a job classification as established by the work assignments of employees over whose job classification there is no controversy, and to compare that with the work assignments of the employee seeking a higher rating. If the jobs are the same "in every significant particular", then the complaining employee is entitled to the higher classification.

Lest we do less than justice to the arbitrator's carefully worded statement of the principle enunciated, and the limitations thereof, in trying thus to paraphrase and epitomize his findings, two paragraphs from the arbitrator's Opinion with respect thereto are quoted in the margin.⁴

With respect to six of the ten specific cases presented in evidence at the hearing, the arbitrator, with a nice appreciation of the limits of his function, found that they had not been sufficiently developed in the grievance procedures precedent to the aritration. He pointed out that the whole scheme of the grievance procedures contemplated the exhaustion of pre-arbitration efforts at voluntary settlement between the parties, and he referred these six cases back to the parties for that purpose. He directed that they be processed in consonance with the Opinion.

With respect to the other four individual employees, the arbitrator found that their cases had been processed sufficiently in the pre-arbitration grievance procedures, found that they were entitled to the requested reclassifications, and ordered that they be made effective retroactively to August 31, 1956.

Employer's first attack upon the award is based on its contention that, in reclassifying the four employees referred to in his award, the arbitrator necessarily added to the terms of the Agreement by establishing criteria for job classifications dehors the four corners of the instrument, and that he should have referred the "cases back to the parties without decision."

With respect to this contention, the District Court said: "If, as provided by Article II, Sect. 2, the `meaning or application' of any provision of the Agreement is to be settled under Article V it would seem that the meaning or application of the provisions of Article V itself are included in those subject to arbitration." With this disposition of the Employer's contention, we heartily agree. Even if we disagreed with the arbitrator's finding that he was discovering the "meaning or application" of the Agreement (which we do not), we could not, under principles which are now familiar, review and disturb the arbitrator's finding. To substitute court ruling for the contracted-for finality of an arbitrator's findings would seriously impair, if not effectively emasculate, the provisions for arbitration and the submission thereto as instruments for industrial peace. The function of arbitration is to serve as a substitute for, not a prelude to, litigation.

Employer's contention seems to be that, under the Agreement, it has the right to make work assignments and unilaterally to determine the job classification within which the work falls. If, as the arbitrator found was done here, it assigns two men, on different shifts, to the same job, and assigns one of them to a job classification carrying a higher hourly rate than the other, Employer is forced to take the position that no arbitrable issue has been raised. On the contrary, it would seem that Employer has used its asserted rights for the purposes of discrimination against one employee in direct contravention of the proviso in the section of the Agreement entitled "Management".

Employer cites three cases as...