United Electrical, R. & M. Wkrs. v. Worthington Corp., 5083.

• Decision Date: 31 July 1956
• Docket Number: No. 5083.,5083.
• Citation: 236 F.2d 364
• Parties: UNITED ELECTRICAL, RADIO AND MACHINE WORKERS OF AMERICA (U.E.) AMALGAMATED LOCAL 259, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. WORTHINGTON CORPORATION (HOLYOKE WORKS), Defendant, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

236 F.2d 364 (1956)

UNITED ELECTRICAL, RADIO AND MACHINE WORKERS OF AMERICA (U.E.) AMALGAMATED LOCAL 259, et al., Plaintiffs, Appellants, v. WORTHINGTON CORPORATION (HOLYOKE WORKS), Defendant, Appellee.

No. 5083.

United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.

Heard April 5, 1956.

Decided July 31, 1956.

Allan R. Rosenberg, Boston, Mass., for appellants.

Francis J. Vaas, Boston, Mass., with whom Robert D. Hartshorne, Jr., Thomas F. Fennell II, New York City, and Ropes, Gray, Best, Coolidge & Rugg, Boston, Mass., were on brief, for appellee.

Before MAGRUDER, Chief Judge, and WOODBURY and HARTIGAN, Circuit Judges.

MAGRUDER, Chief Judge.

Plaintiffs in this civil action seek specific enforcement of an arbitration award, money damages, and a declaratory judgment. The complaint named as plaintiffs a labor union local, the collective bargaining representative for employees of defendant Company at its plant in Holyoke, Mass.; the president of the Union, suing on behalf of the members thereof, who were alleged to be too numerous to join as parties; and two individual members of the Union, Frank F. Parker and C. Herbert Salter, suing on their own behalf. The complaint as amended alleges that the individual plaintiffs are citizens of Massachusetts and that all the employee members of the plaintiff Union are citizens of Massachusetts or of Connecticut. The defendant is a Delaware corporation, employing members of the Union at Holyoke, Mass., in an industry affecting commerce. At all relevant dates in this case, plaintiff Union and defendant Company were parties to a collective bargaining agreement the material terms of which will be stated below.

On April 15, 1954, defendant discharged Salter and notified Parker that he would be discharged on June 1, 1954. The reason assigned for the discharges, in a statement read to each was "harmful publicity affecting the Company and the tension and unrest created among the employees in connection with your appearance before the Sub-Committee of the House Un-American Activities Committee at Albany on April 9th * * *." The statements indicated that the Company might reconsider its action if the employees in question asked to be heard again by the committee in order to clear their records. It appears from stories published in a Holyoke newspaper during the preceding week that at the Albany hearing Parker and Salter were accused of being Communists, that Salter while testifying invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to questions relating to his alleged membership in the Communist Party and to Communist influence in the Union, and that Parker, who had been subpoenaed but was not required to take the stand, chose not to testify before the committee.

On April 27 the Union invoked the grievance provisions of the collective bargaining agreement with respect to these discharges by filing a written "Grievance Record." The Grievance Record is a form printed in multiple copies, with spaces provided for indicating the details of grievance, the management decision at each step, and Union agreement or disagreement with each such decision. The grievance procedure in the contract is a conventional four-step system, but the Grievance Record in this case indicates that the parties immediately waived the first three steps so as to go directly to top-level conference. Under the caption "Details of Grievance," the Union stated in the Grievance Record:

"The Company has unfairly and in violation of the Contract between this Union and Worthington Corp. introduced arbitrary new conditions for continued employment of its workers. Under the new working conditions introduced unilaterally by Company and not negotiated with the Union, C. Herbert Salter has been suspended and Frank Parker has been put on verbal notice of suspension. The Union asks the Salter\'s suspension be lifted and that he be paid of all time lost at his average pay as a result of the Company\'s action and the Frank Parker\'s notice of suspension be rescinded." sic

Two substantive provisions of the collective agreement are relevant to the grievance thus asserted. In one the Company recognizes plaintiff Union "as the sole and exclusive collective bargaining agency" for the employees covered by the contract. In the other, it was agreed that "The Management of the plant and direction of the working force is vested exclusively in the Company, including * * * the right to * * * discharge for proper cause, * * * subject to the terms of this agreement."

No agreement having been reached between the Union and Company representatives under the grievance procedure, the Union by letter dated May 11, 1954, invoked the arbitration provision of the contract, which was as follows:

"In the event that the two parties to this Agreement fail to make satisfactory adjustment of any dispute arising under this Agreement, such dispute * * * shall be referred to a Board of Arbitration * * *. The Board of Arbitration shall not have the right or authority to add to, subtract from, or alter any of the provisions, nor shall it have jurisdiction over matters not included in this Agreement."

At the arbitration hearing, which took place in October, 1954, the Company maintained that the grievance was not arbitrable and that the Board of Arbitration had no jurisdiction with respect to it, but it participated in the hearing on the merits, stating that such participation was without waiver of its position respecting arbitrability and jurisdiction. Both sides called witnesses, introduced documentary evidence, and subsequently submitted briefs.

The chairman and the Union arbitrator concurred in an opinion and award on February 4, 1955, with the Company arbitrator issuing a dissenting opinion. The majority decision ruled that the dispute was arbitrable and not beyond the jurisdiction of an arbitration tribunal, that the discharges of Parker and Salter were not justified under the contract, and that they should be reinstated with back pay.

Upon the refusal of the Company to carry out this award, the present suit was brought. The central allegation of the complaint is that the refusal to comply with the award was a violation of the contract, particularly the provision that: "A decision reached by any two members of the Board shall be binding on both parties to this Agreement." Jurisdiction was alleged to lie under § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 61 Stat. 156, 29 U.S.C.A. § 185, as to plaintiff Union and under the diversity jurisdiction (28 U.S.C. § 1332) as to all the plaintiffs. The relief demanded was a decree for specific performance of the arbitration award, plus additional money damages and a declaratory judgment of the rights of the parties.

Defendant moved for summary judgment on the grounds that the Board of Arbitration had no jurisdiction to decide the matter submitted to it and that the district court has no jurisdiction over the subject matter. The motion was allowed and the complaint dismissed, the district court's Memorandum of Decision, 136 F.Supp. 31, indicating that the single ground for decision was that exclusive jurisdiction over the dispute, as the district court found it to have been framed by the Union, was in the National Labor Relations Board. The appeal by all the plaintiffs from this dismissal is here under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

Defendant's contentions on this appeal are that the written Grievance Record established the scope of the dispute submitted to arbitration, that the statements in this Grievance Record were equivalent to a charge of refusal to bargain in violation of § 8(a) (5) of the Labor Management Relations Act, 61 Stat. 141, 29 U.S.C.A. § 158(a) (5), and therefore that jurisdiction over the dispute could lie only in the National Labor Relations Board. On the other hand, plaintiffs contend here that the scope of the dispute was not solely defined by the terms of the Grievance Record, that neither the Grievance Record nor the Union position as subsequently stated framed the dispute in terms of an unfair labor practice, and that, even if the dispute partly or entirely involved an unfair labor practice, the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board was not exclusive if the same facts also amounted to a breach of contract.

It will be seen, then, that the difference between the parties largely turns upon the application to this case of what has come to be known as the "pre-emption" doctrine, a concept developed through a series of Supreme Court decisions in the field of labor relations under both the original Wagner Act and the Taft-Hartley Act. The part of the doctrine pertinent here stems from the holding of Garner v. Teamsters, Chauffeurs and Helpers Local Union, 1953, 346 U.S. 485, 74 S.Ct. 161, 98 L.Ed. 228, that union conduct which might be an unfair labor practice under § 8(b) could not be enjoined by a state court. The entire development is summarized in Weber v. Anheuser-Busch, Inc., 1955, 348 U.S. 468, 474-477, 75 S.Ct. 480, 99 L.Ed. 546, whose holding was expressed in these words:

"But where the moving party itself alleges unfair labor practices, where the facts reasonably bring the controversy within the sections prohibiting these practices, and where the conduct, if not prohibited by the federal Act, may be reasonably deemed to come within the protection afforded by that Act, the state court must decline jurisdiction in deference to the tribunal which Congress has selected for determining such issues in the first instance." 348 U.S. at page 481, 75 S.Ct. at page 488.

Aside from cases involving violence, e. g., United Automobile, Aircraft & Agricultural Implement Workers v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Board, 1956, 351 U.S. 266, 76 S.Ct. 794, the only exception to the present strict doctrine that has appeared was a case permitting a compensatory state tort remedy not available from the National Labor Relations Board, United Construction Workers v. Laburnum Construction Corp., 1954, 347 U.S. 656, 74...