Dallas Typographical Union No. 173 v. AH Belo Corp.

• Decision Date: 13 February 1967
• Docket Number: No. 23319.,23319.
• Citation: 372 F.2d 577
• Parties: DALLAS TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION, NO. 173, Appellant, v. A. H. BELO CORPORATION, Appellee. A. H. BELO CORPORATION, Appellant, v. DALLAS TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION, NO. 173, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

372 F.2d 577 (1967)

DALLAS TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION, NO. 173, Appellant, v. A. H. BELO CORPORATION, Appellee.

A. H. BELO CORPORATION, Appellant, v. DALLAS TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION, NO. 173, Appellee.

No. 23319.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

February 13, 1967.

L. N. D. Wells, Jr., Mullinax, Wells, Mauzy, Levy & Richards, Dallas, Tex., for appellant.

Larry M. Lesh, of Locke, Purnell, Boren, Laney & Neely, Dallas, Tex., for appellee.

Before BROWN, COLEMAN, and AINSWORTH, Circuit Judges.

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge:

Proving again that the infusion of judicial enthusiasm for arbitration in labor relations does not always keep the Judiciary out of the act, both parties sought the aid of the Court and neither is happy with the outcome. The Employer¹ displeased with the arbitration awards ordering reinstatement with back pay of two employees sought injunctive relief against enforcement. The Union² pleased with the awards cross-claimed for enforcement. On motions for summary judgment, the District Court, performing a Solomonic role, The Oil Screw Noah's Arc v. Bently & Felton Corp., 5 Cir., 1961, 292 F.2d 437, 1961 AMC 1641, declined to deny enforcement as such, denied enforcement of the back pay award, dismissed the Employer's complaint, but declared that if the two discharged employees extended an appropriate written apology to the Employer, he would order reinstatement as to the future. The Union, now unhappy, appeals seeking full enforcement plus, for good measure, attorney's fees. The Employer, likewise unhappy, but perhaps not quite so much so, urges us to reverse this action of the District Court and deny enforcement including reinstatement. On the merits, we conclude the Union is right and we reverse with directions.

This case also proves the prescience of the Supreme Court in its trilogy opinions³ when it spoke of the "common law of the shop," 363 U.S. at 580, 80 S.Ct. 1347, reminiscent of earlier expressions in the railway field⁴ that even the language of the disputants makes little sense, is a strange and sometimes weird jargon to the uninitiated, including sophisticated uninitiates, which Judges presumably are supposed to be. Thus it is, at least from the Union's viewpoint, that the controversy grows out of action by the two dischargees, Royer and Watkins, the Chapel Chairman and Assistant Chapel Chairman acting not in the role of spiritual religious advisers to their fellows, but as union spokesmen in the routine handling of employer-union problems arising in the shop.⁵ What the controversy was all about was whether retired employee Laurent should be included in a printed listing of "priority" as an "extra" employee for assignment to a "regular" "situation" for the week following Saturday, May 8, 1965.⁶ Mr. Laurent, a retired individual on a pension, returned seeking employment. The Employer considered that he was not entitled to priority. When the Employer on May 8, 1965, added four "situations" to the work schedule for the coming week, the Union insisted, the Employer denied, that Laurent should be listed for one of the additional situations. The work schedule, as one might suppose for a typographical plant, was prepared from type set on a linotype machine. In the harangue that involved assistant foreman Newnam, later foreman Abbott, Assistant Chapel Chairman Watkins who called on a higher power, Chapel Chairman Royer, the immediate controversy was whether Laurent's name was to be set in the schedule. Royer said it was to be and Watkins carried out that instruction. When foreman Abbott three times instructed Watkins to remove Laurent's name, tempers and ire arose, Royer and Abbott apparently argued forceably and to keep Watkins from carrying out the fourth instruction Royer took the type representing the work schedule and "pied" the form into the "hell box."⁷

The upshot was the foreman Abbott discharged Watkins for failure to comply with his instructions, and on Royer's protest, he too was discharged. The written notice of discharge required by the collective bargaining agreement charged Royer with "interfering with the operations of the office, pieing a company form * * *" which "are * * * violations of the office rules," and as to Watkins, "for refusing to comply with the direct order of the foreman, which constitutes insubordination * * *."

This set the stage for arbitration under a grievance procedure which was both sweeping and specific. It committed to the Joint Standing Committee and in the event of disagreement to the Arbitration Board with a fifth member as an impartial umpire "all questions that may arise regarding this contract or scale of wages, discharge cases, the interpretation to be placed on any clause or clauses of this agreement or scale, or any alleged violation thereof, which cannot be settled otherwise."⁸ It prescribed that the "decision of this board * * * shall be final and binding upon both parties, * * *" and "shall be limited to a determination of the specific question or questions referred to it for adjudication."⁹ It dealt specifically with discharge cases investing the arbitration machinery with the power to "sustain the discharge, or reinstate the employee with or without pay, depending on the circumstances involved."¹⁰ Furthermore, except in discharge cases, the contract provided for maintenance of the status quo pending resolution of the dispute.¹¹

The arbiter¹² in holding the discharges unjustified rejected the Employer's claim of a violation of office rules¹³ on two grounds which are, however, so intertwined as to be one. The first is that, as required by the contract incorporating nonconflicting rules¹⁴ of the International Union as inviolate,¹⁵ enforcement of the office rules would be unfair. Secord, the unfairness comes primarily from the fact that at the moment of the dispute which was climaxed by the summary discharges, Royer and Watkins were not acting as employees doing company work vis-a-vis the Employer. Rather, they were on an "equal footing" as advocates of the Union, the Union's position and Laurent.

Although we have difficulty in divining just what it is the Employer means in its four-pronged attack¹⁶ on the awards, our task is simplified by its candor stated below and reiterated here that "* * * the question is not whether there are facts to support this award, that is not the question before this Court. We do not seek to challenge any fact findings * * *." At the same time we must take guard that with this beguiling candor, we do not succumb to the temptation to decide the merits of this controversy not because of a difference with fact findings, but because we differ with what sound legal principles would compel from such fact findings. For we must recognize — indeed, discipline ourselves to make certain that we are conscious of it always — that if the controversy is one for grievance machinery and for resolution by an arbitrator whose decision is expressly to be final and binding, there is every likelihood that that chosen umpire may well make errors both of fact and law — that is errors in the eyes of Judges now having a narrowly circumscribed function.

Thus it is here. Without a doubt the discharge is the proper subject for arbitration and the relief accorded was within the express power of the arbiters (see notes 8 and 10). Cf. Refinery Employees Union, etc. v. Continental Oil Company, 5 Cir., 1959, 268 F.2d 447, 454. And there was at least an arguable basis for the use of the contractual sources upon which the arbitrator drew. The foreman and assistant foreman were obviously conscious that a serious difference existed between management and Royer and Watkins in the interpretation and application of the contractual provisions and shop practice regarding Laurent's "priority" and right to the added "situations." And there is more than adequate basis for the conclusion that to the knowledge of management's spokesman, Royer and Watkins were acting as Union advocates. And with violation of office rules being asserted as the Employer's justification for the discharges, this properly brought into play the express provisions of the contract as well as the International Union Rules incorporated as standards.¹⁷ The right accorded under the contract to challenge the "fairness" of a company rule¹⁸ was certainly broad enough to cover not only an intrinsic inescapable invalidity of a given rule, but an "unfair" application in a given situation of an otherwise acceptably fair rule. It was these materials in the light of the shop management-labor relations that led the arbiters to conclude that the refusal to carry out the demands of the foreman was neither insubordination nor a refusal to obey an order in the Employer's work. Rather, so the arbiters concluded, it was a case of an unwillingness on the part of Union representatives acting as such to acquiesce in management's interpretation of contract provisions which, in the conscientious judgment of the Union advocates, was contrary to the interests of the Union, its members, and in derogation of their contract rights.

Nor is this altered, as Employer contends, because the contract § 4(a) "Makes it imperative * * * on both parties whenever any differences of opinion as to the rights of the parties under the contract shall arise, or whenever any dispute as to the interpretation of the contract or any of its provisions takes place" to "at once * * * appeal" to the Grievance Committee. The fact that the disputants undertook to try to persuade each other and in those efforts tempers may have flared does not forfeit arbitration rights under § 4. Indeed, that contract provides for the Joint Committee and fifth umpire arbitration for controversies "which cannot be settled otherwise" and this, the arbiters could conclude, was what the Union advocates were trying to do.

In this setting unless we are to abandon faithful adherence to the strong admonitions of the trilogy opinions (note 3, supra)¹⁹...