Communications Workers of America AFL-CIO v. Southwestern Bell Tel. Co.
| Decision Date | 06 September 1983 |
| Docket Number | P,No. 81-2440,AFL-CI,81-2440 |
| Citation | 713 F.2d 1118 |
| Parties | 114 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2302, 98 Lab.Cas. P 10,436 COMMUNICATIONS WORKERS OF AMERICA,laintiff-Appellant, v. SOUTHWESTERN BELL TELEPHONE COMPANY, Defendant-Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Robert W. Rickard, Houston, Tex., for plaintiff-appellant.
Eduardo Roberto Rodriguez, Brownsville, Tex., Melanie S. Fannin, San Antonio, Tex., for defendant-appellee.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Before GARZA, REAVLEY and GARWOOD, Circuit Judges.
As a matter of procedure this case is an appeal from the district court's denial of appellant's Application for Confirmation and Enforcement of an Arbitration Award. This Court, however, must actually only determine whether the district court's interpretation of a wholly separate document, the so-called Local Overtime Agreement and its duration clause, was correct.
Plaintiff-appellant, the Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO ("the Union"), and defendant-appellee, Southwestern Bell Telephone Company ("the Company"), share a long history of collective bargaining. The most recent collective bargaining agreements between the Union and the Company have been negotiated triennially.
On August 7, 1977, the Union and the Company entered into a triennial collective bargaining agreement which contained an arbitration clause. 1 On December 7, 1977, the parties entered into a supplementary agreement concerning practices and procedures regarding overtime in the Corpus Christi Division, which included the Rio Grande Valley. This supplementary agreement, which contained no statement as to when it would terminate, was known as the Corpus Christi Local Overtime Agreement ("the Local Overtime Agreement").
In August 1978, the Company suspended twenty-eight employees as a result of a dispute concerning the assignment of overtime. The Union filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board ("the NLRB"). The charge contended that the Company's conduct had violated sections 8(a)(1) and 8(a)(5) 2 of the National Labor Relations Act ("the NLRA"). As a result, the Regional Director of the NLRB issued a complaint against the Company. After a hearing had begun, the Union and the Company entered into a settlement agreement which stated, in part, that the terms of the Local Overtime Agreement:
The settlement agreement, then, by incorporation, in effect added a duration clause to the Local Overtime Agreement.
Alleging that the Company's actions had violated the Local Overtime Agreement, the Union also filed grievances protesting the aforementioned twenty-eight suspensions. The grievance procedure failed to resolve the dispute between the parties. The parties submitted the contested matters to arbitration in accordance with the procedures set forth in the 1977 triennial collective bargaining agreement. Arbitrator James C. Vadakin, selected by the parties, held hearings, and on May 16, 1980, the Union and the Company reached an agreement in settlement of the dispute. Vadakin issued an award embodying the terms of that settlement agreement on June 16, 1980. The agreement provided in part:
Joint Exhibit 3, attached to the arbitration award, contained the settlement agreement reached in the sections 8(a)(1) and 8(a)(5) case which had been before the NLRB. In other words, through provision six of the arbitration award, the Company reaffirmed the duration clause, which the settlement agreement had added to the Local Overtime Agreement.
On May 27, 1980, after the parties had reached their agreement over the arbitrated claim, but before Vadakin had issued the award, the Company, by letter, notified the Union of the Company's intent to terminate the Local Overtime Agreement on August 9, 1980. The Company did not notify the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service ("the FMCS") or the Texas Department of Labor of the Agreement's upcoming termination, nor did it offer to meet and confer with the Union for the specific purpose of negotiating a successor contract to the Local Overtime Agreement.
In July 1980, the Union and the Company began negotiations for a new triennial collective bargaining agreement to succeed the 1977 triennial agreement. During these negotiations, the matter of the Local Overtime Agreement arose. The parties were at odds as to how the duration clause of the Agreement was to be interpreted. The Company maintained that because it had given the Union its timely notice of intent to terminate the Agreement, the Agreement would terminate on August 9. Hence, if it wanted the Agreement to continue, the Union would have to negotiate the Agreement into the 1980 collective bargaining agreement.
The Union, on the other hand, maintained that the Company's notice to terminate would not effectively terminate the Local Overtime Agreement. The Union contended that the duration clause directed that the Local Overtime Agreement could only be modified or terminated by agreement of the parties during collective bargaining. Because the Union had not agreed to the Agreement's termination, the Union asserted that the Company's notice was ineffective and that the Local Overtime Agreement continued in force. During the bargaining for the 1980 triennial agreement, the Union refused to alter or modify the Local Overtime Agreement.
In August 1980, the parties entered into a new triennial collective bargaining agreement. Although the new agreement contained a provision limiting the number of hours of overtime that the Company could assign, no provision concerned the procedure to be used to assign overtime, which had been the subject of the Local Overtime Agreement.
The 1980 triennial agreement also contained a prior agreements clause which stated, "This Agreement supersedes and cancels the 1977 Departmental Agreement and all amendments and supplements thereto."
Never having agreed on the interpretation of the Local Overtime Agreement's duration clause, the Company treated the Local Overtime Agreement as terminated after August 9, 1980, while the Union asserted the Agreement's continued vitality. In January 1981, in response to the Company's alleged violations of the Local Overtime Agreement, the Union filed a Complaint and Application for Confirmation and Enforcement of an Arbitration Award. The award involved in the complaint and application was the Vadakin arbitration award which had primarily resolved the issues regarding the suspensions of employees who had refused to work overtime. The complaint, however, only concerned the award's sixth provision, which had affirmed the Local Overtime Agreement as modified by the settlement agreement's duration clause. The Union alleged that the arbitration award, by its reaffirmation, required that the settlement agreement and Local Overtime Agreement remain in full "force and effect ... until the parties agree otherwise in the course of collective bargaining," as the first phrase of the duration clause stated. The complaint did not construe the second sentence of the duration clause.
The Union, in essence, alleged that by treating the Local Overtime Agreement as terminated, without having obtained the Union's assent in the course of collective bargaining, the Company had violated the Vadakin arbitration award reaffirmation of the Local Overtime Agreement's duration clause.
The district court, construing the duration clause, 524 F.Supp. 1031 (S.D.Tex.1981), found that the clause had given the Company the power to unilaterally terminate the Local Overtime Agreement by giving the Union notice, in compliance with section 8(d) of the NLRA, of its intent to terminate. The court then found that because the Company's notice had complied with section 8(d), the Company had effectively terminated the Local Overtime Agreement as of August 9, 1980. Because the Agreement had terminated in August, the "reaffirmation" of the duration clause which the Company had made in the June 16, 1980 arbitration award had been ineffective beyond August 9, 1980. Any "violations" of the Local Overtime Agreement after August 9 had not constituted a breach of the "reaffirmation" in the arbitration award. Accordingly, the district court denied the Union's complaint and application to enforce the award.
This Court is faced with the same two questions the district court decided. 3 First, we must determine whether the Company had the power to unilaterally terminate the Local Overtime Agreement. If we find that the Company could unilaterally effect a termination, we must decide whether the actual actions taken by the Company conformed to the requirements of section 8(d) and thereby effectively terminated the Agreement.
We readily agree with and affirm the district court's determination that the Company had the power to unilaterally terminate the Local Overtime Agreement. The district court's construction of the Agreement was not in error.
Again, the germane sentences of the duration clause state that the terms of the Local Overtime Agreement:
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