BROTHERHOOD OF LOC. FIRE. & ENG. v. Seaboard Coast Line R. Co.
| Citation | 413 F.2d 19 |
| Decision Date | 04 June 1969 |
| Docket Number | No. 26043,26044.,26043 |
| Parties | BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE FIREMEN AND ENGINEMEN et al., Appellants, v. SEABOARD COAST LINE RAILROAD COMPANY et al., Appellees. BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE FIREMEN AND ENGINEMEN et al., Appellants, v. SEABOARD COAST LINE RAILROAD COMPANY et al., Appellees. |
| Court | United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (5th Circuit) |
Thomas W. McAliley, Beckham & McAliley, Neal P. Rutledge, John H. Wolf, Miami, Fla., for appellants.
Allan Milledge, Milledge & Horn, Richard L. Horn, Miami, Fla., John W. Weldon, Edward A. Charron, Jacksonville, Fla., for appellees.
Before THORNBERRY and DYER, Circuit Judges, and KEADY, District Judge.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen Firemen and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers Engineers had a history of tripartite collective bargaining negotiations and agreements with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company ACL. The ACL later merged with the Seaboard Air Line Railroad Company SAL, which had no such history of tripartite agreements, to form the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad Company Seaboard. In anticipation of the merger, both unions separately entered into employee protective agreements, providing for the merger and consolidation of collective bargaining agreements existing on the constituent railroads through negotiations covering all employees of the merged company in each craft. These companion appeals present the question of whether following the merger, tripartite negotiations by the Firemen, the Engineers and Seaboard were required. We hold that the Engineers and Seaboard could bilaterally negotiate an agreement relating to the consolidation of seniority rosters for engineer employees and affirm.
Prior to the merger, both the Firemen and the Engineers had collective bargaining agreements Schedule Agreements with ACL regulating wages, rules and working conditions for their respective crafts. Portions of the Engineers' Schedule Agreement were tripartite in nature, with the Firemen having participated in negotiations and agreed to the terms.1 Changes in these provisions required thirty days' notice to each of the other parties with further handling in conformity with the procedures of the Railway Labor Act, 45 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq. Incorporated into the Engineers' Schedule Agreement with ACL was a mediation agreement between the unions and the ACL from which no party could withdraw without the consent of the other two.2
Both unions had complementing collective bargaining agreements with SAL, although these agreements were not tripartite. On the SAL the Engineers had separate yard and road seniority rosters, with the Firemen having a like distinction in their rosters.
The merger of ACL and SAL into Seaboard wended its way through the Interstate Commerce Commission and the courts over a period of seven years.3 In approving the merger in 1963, the ICC prescribed, as required by 49 U.S.C.A. § 5(2) (f),4 minimal employee protective conditions similar to those imposed in other mergers. The Firemen, Engineers, ACL and SAL, however, entered into separate employee protective agreements, authorized by section 5(2) (f), which provided greater employee protections than those imposed by the ICC. On November 3, 1966, the Firemen, represented along with seventeen other unions by the Railway Labor Executives' Association, entered into an Agreement for Protection of Employees in Event of Merger of SAL and ACL Firemen's Protective Agreement, which had been negotiated with representatives of both SAL and ACL. One week later, the Engineers separately entered into a nearly identical protective agreement Engineers' Protective Agreement with the two railroads.
Both protective agreements constituted separate contracts with the labor organization and railroads signatory to them. In addition to requiring negotiations and consolidation of seniority rosters and districts, the protective agreements required Seaboard to "take over and assume all contracts, schedules and agreements" between the constituent railroads and the labor organizations.
The negotiations relating to fireman and engineer employees did not fare well, due to the close relationship of the two crafts. There is a high degree of intercraft mobility between firemen and engineers, with some individuals working as a fireman one day, an engineer the next, and a fireman again on the following day. Typically an individual holds seniority both as a fireman and as an engineer. The close relationship has stimulated frequent disputes over the years regarding the rules governing movement between the crafts such as rules governing the demotion of engineers, the return of demoted engineers to their work, the promotion of firemen to engineer, maximum mileage regulations and the like. Eventually these disputes have been resolved, as on the ACL through tripartite agreements or on the SAL through separate complementing agreements. The merger required their resolution again, since there were points of conflict in agreements both within one craft and between the two crafts on the two railroads. One subject of conflict was the consolidation of seniority districts and rosters, since on the SAL there was separate yard and road seniority for both firemen and engineers while on the ACL there was no such distinction.
Initially, Seaboard, the Firemen and the Engineers commenced three-way discussions in an attempt to arrive at mutually acceptable agreements for each craft. These proved unsuccessful, whereupon the Engineers and Seaboard commenced bilateral negotiations and eventually reached agreement. The Engineers and Seaboard agreed upon a new Schedule Agreement, redefining the rules, rates of pay and working conditions of engineers, and an Implementing Agreement, providing for the consolidation of seniority districts and seniority rosters. The Implementing Agreement provided for the consolidation of thirty-one seniority districts into six, with one seniority roster for each district.
The Engineers-Seaboard Schedule Agreement and Implementing Agreement were to go into effect January 16, 1968, but because of threatened litigation by the Firemen, implementation was delayed until January 23, 1968.5 After the week of delay had passed, Seaboard still refused to implement its agreement with the Engineers, so on January 29, 1968, the Engineers brought suit in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida to compel Seaboard to place the agreement into effect. On the following day, January 30th, the District Court entered a preliminary injunction requiring Seaboard to implement the agreement.
On the same day that the preliminary injunction was entered, January 30th, the Firemen, who were unaware of the Engineers' suit in the Middle District of Florida, brought suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida seeking to enjoin the implementation of the Engineers-Seaboard agreement. Upon learning of the Engineers' suit, on February 1, 1968, the Firemen moved to intervene in the Engineers' suit against Seaboard in the Middle District. A hearing on the motion was held the next day, and on February 5, 1968, the District Court denied the motion for intervention, holding that the motion presented a jurisdictional dispute between the Firemen and the Engineers which the National Mediation Board, not a district court, has exclusive jurisdiction to resolve.
Thereafter in the Southern District, the Engineers and Seaboard moved to dismiss the Firemen's complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted, lack of jurisdiction over the subject matter, and res judicata because of the Middle District's order denying intervention. A hearing on the motion to dismiss was held on February 8th, and on February 12th the District Court, without stating its reasons, granted the motion to dismiss with leave to amend. One month later the Firemen filed notice of appeal from the order dismissing their complaint; then on March 19, 1968, they filed an Election to Stand on Original Complaint and Alternative Motion for Further Hearing or Entry of Final Judgment. The District Court obliged their last request by entering an order dismissing their complaint with prejudice, from which the Firemen on April 9th filed a second notice of appeal.
Preliminarily we dispose of the motion of the appellees to dismiss the appeal from the Southern District's case, No. 26,044. The appellees urge that the appeal should be dismissed as taken from a non-appealable order under the rule established in Bush v. United Benefit Fire Ins. Co., 5 Cir. 1963, 311 F.2d 893. The appellees construe Bush as holding that the District Court lacked jurisdiction to enter its second order of final judgment, from which notice of appeal also was filed, because of the pendency of appeal from the first non-appealable order. This construction is drawn by the appellees from the citation...
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