Beck v. Communications Workers of America (C.W.A.)
| Decision Date | 24 October 1985 |
| Docket Number | 83-1956,Nos. 83-1955,AFL-CIO,s. 83-1955 |
| Citation | 776 F.2d 1187 |
| Parties | 120 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2957, 103 Lab.Cas. P 11,650 Harry E. BECK, Jr.; Doris R. Ambrose; Jacqueline S. Brandon; Mary Anna Cox; Sally B. DiMauro; Rue T.F. Downey; Kathleen A. Heil; John J. Hurley; Harriett Lipschultz; Clay B. Lutz; Barbara McGaughey; Roland R. Merkle; Ethel T. Merryman; Doris J. Morrow; Marion F. Northrop; Frances M. Philips; Vivian Reedy; Barbara A. Russell; Lois A. Stallings; Harry B. Swartz, Sr., Appellees, v. COMMUNICATIONS WORKERS OF AMERICA (C.W.A.), an unincorporated Labor Organization; C.W.A. Committee on Political Education (C.W.A. COPE); C.W.A. District II; Local 2100 of C.W.A.; Local 2101 of C.W.A.; Local 2108 of C.W.A.; Local 2110 of C.W.A., Appellants, and Local 2350 of C.W.A.; American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (), a Federation of National and International Labor Organizations; Committee on Political Education; Maryland State ; American Telephone & Telegraph, a Corporation; C & P Telephone Company of Maryland, a Corporation, Defendants. Harry E. BECK, Jr.; Doris R. Ambrose; Jacqueline S. Brandon; Mary Anna Cox; Sally B. DiMauro; Rue T.F. Downey; Kathleen A. Heil; John J. Hurley; Harriett Lipschultz; Clay B. Lutz; Barbara McGaughey; Roland R. Merkle; Ethel T. Merryman; Doris J. Morrow; Marion F. Northrop; Frances M. Philips; Vivian Reedy; Barbara A. Russell; Lois A. Stallings; Harry B. Swartz, Sr., Appellants, v. COMMUNICATIONS WORKERS OF AMERICA (C.W.A.), an unincorporated Labor Organization; C.W.A. Committee on Political Education (C.W.A. COPE); C.W.A. District II; Local 2100 of C.W.A.; Local 2101 of C.W.A.; Local 2108 of C.W.A.; Local 2110 of C.W.A., Appellees, and Local 2350 of C.W.A.; American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (), a Federation of National and International Labor Organizations; Committee on Political Education; Maryland State ; American Telephone & Telegraph, a Corporation; C & P Telephone Company of Maryland, a Corporation, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Laurence Gold, Washington, D.C. (James Coppess; George Kaufmann, Washington, D.C., on brief), for appellants/cross-appellees.
Edwin Vieira, Jr., Manassas, Va. (Joseph J. Hahn, Chicago, Ill., on brief), for appellees/cross-appellants.
Before WINTER, Chief Judge, and RUSSELL and CHAPMAN, Circuit Judges.
Plaintiffs in this suit are twenty non-union employees 1 of either the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT & T) or its subsidiary Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company (C & P) and, as such, are subject to an "agency shop" agreement 2 negotiated between the employers and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and its locals as the exclusive bargaining agents of such employees under the terms of section 8(a)(3) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 29 U.S.C. Sec. 158(a)(3). 3 Plaintiffs are required under the agreement to pay agency fees to CWA through its locals in an amount equivalent to the dues paid by union members. Their complaint is that defendants CWA and its locals have expended a part of their agency fees for purposes unrelated to "collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment." Plaintiffs' claim such expenditures constitute a violation of their First Amendment rights of free speech and association justiciable under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1331 and 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, and a violation of defendants' duty to fairly represent all employees justifiable under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1337 and 29 U.S.C. Sec. 185(a). 4 Plaintiffs sought a declaratory judgment against defendants establishing the illegality of the excessive exactions, injunctive relief against continued illegal exactions by CWA and its locals, and monetary judgment for past illegal collections by CWA and its locals.
CWA alleged in its answer that "all actions taken by CWA defendants [were] consistent with the duties and obligations imposed [upon CWA] as recognized or certified collective bargaining representative of the plaintiffs under the National Labor Relations Act." They also asserted that plaintiffs were without standing to maintain the action, that plaintiffs had failed to exhaust available internal union remedies, that the court lacked jurisdiction over the subject matter of the action, and that the action was barred by the statute of limitations.
After informal discovery, defendant CWA moved to dismiss the action for failure of plaintiffs first to exhaust internal union procedures or, alternatively, for a stay pending such exhaustion. 5 CWA submitted in support of the motion a resolution of the Executive Committee of CWA adopted on June 19, 1974. This resolution provided that:
Any member or non-member who is covered by a collective bargaining agreement containing a 'Union Shop' or 'Agency Shop' provision shall have the right to object to the expenditure of a portion of dues or agency fees for activities or causes primarily political in nature, and shall be entitled to the refund of a portion of such dues under the terms, conditions and procedures contained in this statement of policy.
The resolution further provided that the Administrative Committee of the Executive Board of CWA should determine the approximate annual proportion of dues or agency fees spent for activities or causes primarily political in nature as of March 31st of each year. By affidavit, defendants said that for the year ending March 31, 1976, the impermissible expenditures for political purposes amounted to 7.63 percent of the fees collected. CWA also alleged that its auditors were attempting to arrive at, for use in succeeding years, a figure estimating the proportion of expenditures made by the unions for political purposes. Should any member or non-member object to the allocation determination, he could appeal to the Executive Board and from the Executive Board to the Union Convention. 6
The district judge advised both parties that, preliminary to a hearing on defendants' motion for summary judgment based on their rebate procedure, he wished the advice of counsel on the impact of Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209, 97 S.Ct. 1782, 52 L.Ed.2d 261 (1977) on the issues in the case. Counsel for CWA responded in a letter dated June 3, 1977 and incorporated as a part of the record in this case. After indicating that Street 7 and Hanson 8 arose under the RLA and that Abood dealt with public employees, CWA's counsel expressed the opinion that Abood was not directly in point. But he added:
The principal opinion's discussion [in Abood ] of national labor policy and decisions under the National Labor Relations Act would seem to indicate that the principles of Hanson and Street interpreting the Railway Labor Act apply equally to non-railway employees. Several lesser courts have so held. The problem is that the Supreme Court appears to use the terms 'ideological purpose,' 'political purposes,' and 'purposes other than collective bargaining,' interchangeably. The Court gives little guidance as to which expenditures it considers to be refundable to an agency fee payor.
CWA's counsel concluded his letter with this statement:
If plaintiffs are willing to agree that the Supreme Court decisions mean only that the Union defendants must make a provision for pro-rata refund of that portion of the dues dollar expended upon political activities, the procedure is in effect [under the resolution of the Executive Committee] and this case should be settled. If plaintiffs intend to insist upon a much broader interpretation of those expenses for which they feel they are not responsible, no settlement is in sight.... [and plaintiffs must proceed under the appeal procedure established by the resolution.] 9
Plaintiffs did not agree to submission to CWA's internal union remedies and the matter came on for determination by the district judge. Finding exhaustion of internal union remedies not required, 10 the district judge proceeded to find that the agency shop agreement was valid subject to the limitation that CWA could not "collect and disburse [as the exclusive bargaining agent under such agreement] such 'agency fees' for purposes other than 'collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment' without seriously implicating the first amendment rights of free speech and association of fee payors who object." Beck v. Communications Workers, 468 F.Supp. 93, 96 (D.Md.1979) (quoting Abood, 431 U.S. at 225-226, 97 S.Ct. at 1794-1795). On the basis of that finding, he denied defendants' motion to dismiss and granted a declaratory judgment that collections by the union from objecting employees in an amount "beyond that allocable to collective bargaining, contract administration and grievance adjustment" were illegal as violative of "the first amendment rights of the plaintiffs." 468 F.Supp. at 97. He ruled that it was necessary to determine "what proportion of the union's total expenditures is attributable to activities other than collective bargaining, contract administration and grievance adjustment," and, in that determination, he said: "[t]he burden of proving such proportion rests upon the union, but '[a]bsolute precision in the calculation of such proportion is not, of course, to be expected or required.' " Id. (quoting Allen, 373 U.S. at 122, 83 S.Ct. at 1163-64). Finally, he provided that if the parties were unable to agree within thirty days on the amount to be refunded under the guidelines as stated by him, the matter of allocation should be referred to a master for the purpose of determining "what portion of the agency fees the defendant has collected improperly."
Since there was no agreement between the parties on the proper allocation, a special master was appointed. At the initial hearings before him, the special master received twenty-eight days of testimony...
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Beck v. Communications Workers of America (C.W.A.)
....... I. . The plaintiffs are twenty employees of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and the Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company. Both employers have negotiated collective bargaining agreements with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). Both collective bargaining agreements contain an "agency shop" provision, which requires the employer to deny employment to any employee who refuses either to join the CWA or to pay the CWA agency fees equivalent to union dues. The plaintiffs are employees who are not members of the union, and ......
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