Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO v. Western Elec. Co., Inc.

• Decision Date: 14 September 1988
• Docket Number: AFL-CI,No. 88-1437,P,88-1437
• Parties: 129 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2933, 110 Lab.Cas. P 10,842 COMMUNICATIONS WORKERS OF AMERICA,laintiff, Appellant, v. WESTERN ELECTRIC COMPANY, INC., Defendant, Appellee. . Heard:
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 1137

860 F.2d 1137

129 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2933, 110 Lab.Cas. P 10,842

COMMUNICATIONS WORKERS OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. WESTERN ELECTRIC COMPANY, INC., Defendant, Appellee.

No. 88-1437.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard: Sept. 14, 1988.

Decided Nov. 10, 1988.

James B. Coppess, Washington, D.C., with whom Nathan S. Paven, Quincy, Mass., was on brief for plaintiff, appellant.

David J. Kerman with whom Richard P. Ward and Ropes & Gray, Boston, Mass., were on brief for defendant, appellee.

Before TORRUELLA and SELYA, Circuit Judges, and ATKINS, ^* Senior District Judge.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

In this proceeding, plaintiff-appellant Communications Workers of America (CWA), a labor union, attempts to convince us that the federal district court erred in dismissing its suit against defendant-appellee Western Electric Company ¹ as time-barred. We are not persuaded.

I

In October 1979, Western revised the job description for the "tester technician" position at its plant in North Andover, Massachusetts. The company decided that these technicians--who inspect, test, and troubleshoot electronic switching systems--were properly classified in Grade 38. Dismayed by this taxonomy (which they considered ungenerous), employees in rank asked that the job be restudied and regraded. On November 5, 1980, after further evaluation, Western reaffirmed Grade 38 as appropriate. Mightily miffed, the employees sought the union's aid and succor. On April 14, 1981, CWA requested that Western reconsider and further review ensued. On May 20, the company responded that the rating was suitable. The union then asked for a chance to discuss the grade with appellee's human resources manager. By letter dated September 22, 1981 that plenipotentiary advised CWA that Western had made yet another reappraisal of the job description, but that the classification would stand.

In the face of this adamantine display of corporate constancy, CWA began to load the warheads. That November, a union representative requested an extension of the period allotted for seeking arbitration. At month's end, Western responded that it considered the matter non-arbitrable under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement. CWA submitted a second extension request on January 15, 1982; it received the same (negative) rejoinder. On January 20, the union demanded arbitration. In a letter dated March 29, 1982 Western rejected the demand, asserting for the third time that the dispute was not arbitrable. On April 9, the union made yet another demand for arbitration. It was similarly rejected.

CWA filed suit on October 20, 1982 to compel arbitration under section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA), 29 U.S.C. Sec. 185. The district court rejected the initiative on temporal grounds. It allowed Western's motion for summary judgment, reasoning that, by virtue of the Supreme Court's holding in DelCostello v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 462 U.S. 151, 103 S.Ct. 2281, 76 L.Ed.2d 476 (1983), a six-month statute of limitations borrowed from Sec. 10(b) of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), 29 U.S.C. Sec. 160(b), governed the action. Because--as CWA concedes--more than six months elapsed between the employer's categorical rejection of arbitration and the union's suit to enforce the anodyne, plaintiff's complaint was in the court's view time-barred.

II

Section 301 of the LMRA extends federal jurisdiction to "[s]uits for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization...." 29 U.S.C. Sec. 185(a). It does not, however, establish a limitation period within which such actions may be instituted. Consequently, where section 301 is implicated, courts must " 'borrow' the most suitable statute or other rule of timeliness from some other source." DelCostello, 462 U.S. at 158, 103 S.Ct. at 2287. When borrowing, courts generally look first to the neighbor's cupboard; in the ordinary case, federal courts apply the most closely analogous state-law statute of limitations. Illustrative of this principle is Auto Workers v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp., 383 U.S. 696, 86 S.Ct. 1107, 16 L.Ed.2d 192 (1966). There, the Supreme Court decided that a section 301 suit to recover accumulated vacation pay so "closely resemble[d] an action for breach of contract cognizable at common law," id. at 705 n. 7, 86 S.Ct. at 1113 n. 7, that the six-year statute of limitations created by Indiana law for suits upon unwritten contracts properly applied. Id. at 706-07, 86 S.Ct. at 1113-14. For another example of the principle, we need look no further than Cabarga Cruz v. Fundacion Educativa Ana G. Mendez, 822 F.2d 188 (1st Cir.1987). There, we applied Puerto Rico's contract statute of limitations to a wrongful discharge suit that was "in essence, purely a breach of contract action against the employer...." Id. at 191.

But the glance in the direction of the state-law cupboard should not be an automatic or reflexive one. In DelCostello, the Court stressed that state law will not inevitably provide the most suitable limitation period:

[W]hen a rule from elsewhere in federal law clearly provides a closer analogy than available state statutes, and when the federal policies at stake and the practicalities of litigation make that rule a significantly more appropriate vehicle for interstitial lawmaking, we have not hesitated to turn away from state law.

DelCostello, 462 U.S. at 172, 103 S.Ct. at 2294. DelCostello heralded a subtle shift in the Court's thinking, indicating a willingness to borrow more freely from the federal-law cupboard when two preconditions are met: (1) some federal rule of limitations "provides a closer analogy" than state alternatives, and (2) "the federal policies at stake and the practicalities of litigation" render the federal rule more suitable. This more flexible approach can be seen in a variety of post-DelCostello settings. See, e.g., Agency Holding Corp. v. Malley-Duff & Associates, 483 U.S. 143, 107 S.Ct. 2759, 2762-63, 97 L.Ed.2d 121 (1987) (borrowing Clayton Act statute of limitations for civil RICO actions brought under 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1964); Occidental Chemical Corp. v. International Chemical Workers Union, 853 F.2d 1310, 1316 (6th Cir.1988) (concluding that three-month period in United States Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. Sec. 12, was most appropriate statute of limitations in suit to vacate arbitration award); In re Data Access Systems Securities Litigation, 843 F.2d 1537, 1543-45 (3d Cir.1988) (en banc) (borrowing federal statute of limitations from elsewhere in Securities Act of 1934 in connection with Sec. 10b-5 suits; reversing earlier circuit precedent). The key has become appropriateness: although we look first to state provisions, we should not hesitate to switch our gaze to the shelves of the federal-law cupboard if some federal rule seems, on balance, "significantly more appropriate." DelCostello, 462 U.S. at 172, 103 S.Ct. at 2294.

DelCostello involved what we have termed a hybrid Sec. 301/fair representation suit, e.g., Arriaga-Zayas v. International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, 835 F.2d 11, 12 (1st Cir.1987) (describing elements of "classic hybrid Sec. 301/unfair representation amalgam"), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 108 S.Ct. 2016, 100 L.Ed.2d 604 (1988), that is, one in which an employee alleges both that his employer violated the collective bargaining agreement and that his union breached its duty of representing him fairly in the ensuing enforcement proceedings. Rather than looking to state law, the DelCostello Court held that the six-month statute of limitations built into section 10(b) of the NLRA, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 160(b), should control hybrid claims. The Court found the federal rule more apt because such a claim was "not a straightforward breach-of-contract suit under Sec. 301, as was Hoosier," but instead amounted to "a direct challenge to 'the private settlement of disputes under [the collective-bargaining agreement].' " Id. 462 U.S. at 165, 103 S.Ct. at 2291 (brackets in original) (quoting United Parcel Service, Inc. v. Mitchell, 451 U.S. 56, 66, 101 S.Ct. 1559, 1566, 67 L.Ed.2d 732 (1981) (Stewart, J., concurring) and Hoosier Cardinal, 383 U.S. at 702, 86 S.Ct. at 1111). The suggested state-law analogs "suffer[ed] from flaws ... of practical application in view of the policies of federal labor law and the practicalities of hybrid Sec. 301/fair representation litigation." Id. The DelCostello Court contrasted the deleterious effect incident to application of a lengthy state statute of limitations (which "would preclude the relatively rapid final resolution of labor disputes favored by federal law," id., 462 U.S. at 168, 103 S.Ct. at 2292) with the more desirable six-month federal statute regularly applied under 29 U.S.C. Sec. 160(b) to complaints based upon unfair labor practices (a provision which was "designed to accommodate a balance of interests very similar to that at stake [in the hybrid situation]," id. at 169, 103 S.Ct. at 2293).

To be sure, the Court's discussion in DelCostello focused upon hybrid actions. Yet realistically, the sweep of the Court's language left little room to doubt that similar analyses should be undertaken for other varieties of cases arising in the section 301 milieu:

[E]ven if this action were considered as arising solely under Sec. 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 185, the objections to use of state law and the availability of a well-suited limitations period in Sec. 10(b) would call for application of the latter rule.

DelCostello, 462 U.S. at 159 n. 12, 103 S.Ct. at 2287 n. 12; cf. Hoosier Cardinal, 383 U.S. at 705 n. 7, 86 S.Ct. at 2287 n. 7 (court declines to speculate as to rules on timeliness which may govern in "Sec. 301 suits different from the present one").

III

We must thus decide, given the nature of the action and the policies undergirding the federal labor laws, what is the "most suitable statute or other rule of...