Duluth Missabe & Iron Range v. Broth. of Loc. Eng.
| Decision Date | 31 August 2000 |
| Docket Number | No. Civ. 99-467 RHK/RLE.,Civ. 99-467 RHK/RLE. |
| Citation | 113 F.Supp.2d 1356 |
| Parties | DULUTH MISSABE & IRON RANGE RAILWAY COMPANY, INC., Plaintiff, v. BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE ENGINEERS, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Minnesota |
On August 7, 2000 Magistrate Judge Raymond L. Erickson filed his Report and Recommendation (R & R) in this matter and recommended that Plaintiff's Motion to Vacate and Set Aside Award No. 2 of Public Law Board 5764 be granted. Objections have been filed by Defendant and by Plaintiff. Plaintiff's Objections are limited in scope-urging this Court to uphold the proposed disposition of the case-but seeking a review of Judge Erickson's rejection of an alternative ground for vacating the award advocated by Plaintiff.
This Court has conducted the required de novo review of the objected to portions of the R & R; that review has included the briefs submitted to Judge Erickson as well as the Objections themselves submitted to the undersigned. Judge Erickson's R & R is thorough, well reasoned and fully supported by applicable legal principles and will be adopted by this Court.1
Upon all of the files, records and proceedings herein, including a de novo review of the objected to portions of the R & R, IT IS ORDERED:
1. Defendant's Objections to the Report and Recommendation (Doc. No. 37) are OVERRULED;
2. Plaintiffs Objections to the Magistrate Judge's Report and Recommendation (Doc. No. 38) are OVERRULED;
3. The Report and Recommendation (Doc. No. 36) is ADOPTED;
4. Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 11) is DENIED;
5. Plaintiff's Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. No. 19) is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART;
6. Plaintiff's Motion to Vacate and Set Aside Award No. 2 of Public Law Board 5764 (Doc. No. 19) is GRANTED; and
7. Award No. 2 of Public Law Board 5764 is VACATED AND SET ASIDE.
LET JUDGEMENT BE ENTERED ACCORDINGLY.
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
This matter came before the undersigned United States Magistrate Judge pursuant to a special assignment, made in accordance with the provisions of Title 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)(B), upon what are, in effect, cross-Motions for Summary Judgment. The Plaintiff Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway Company ("DM & IR"), seeks to vacate an Arbitration Award, that the Defendant Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers ("BLE") asks us to confirm.
A Hearing on the Motions was conducted on March 14, 2000, at which time the DM & IR appeared by Patricia A. Burke, and Jeffery S. Berlin, Esqs., and the "BLE" appeared by Richard A. Williams, Jr., and Harold A. Ross, Esqs.
For reasons which follow, we recommend that the DM & IR's Motion for Summary Judgment be granted, and that the BLE's Motion be denied, thereby, vacating the Arbitration Award in dispute.
The DM & IR and the BLE have had a long history of negotiating local labor agreements between themselves, as opposed to participating in national collective bargaining agreements between carriers, such as the DM & IR, and individual labor unions, such as the BLE. This course of conduct changed in 1986, when the DM & IR and the BLE participated in national labor negotiations under the auspices of the Railway Labor Act ("RLA"), Title 45 U.S.C. § 151 et seq.
Prior to its participation in the national collective bargaining agreement, the DM & IR had an undisputed history of compensating its employees, who were members of the BLE, on the basis of both time worked and mileage covered. Apparently, because the DM & IR is "short haul" railway, its formulation of the interplay, between the hours worked by a given engineer and the miles that engineer traveled in a given day, so as to determine the amount of overtime to be awarded, was unique in comparison to larger carriers. Under the parties' long past practice, an engineer would be paid for a "basic day," during which he or she traveled a contractually determined number of miles in a day. According to the parties' past practice, a "basic day" consisted of 130 miles. A basic day, however, could potentially be completed in less than eight hours.
On the other hand, depending on the number of stops, which were made by the engineer during the day, as well as the length of terminal and other delays, it could take longer than eight hours to travel 130 miles. As a result, an engineer who traveled more than 130 miles received "overmiles" pay for those additional miles. To avoid the potential, that an engineer would receive both overtime, and overmiles pay — a situation which the DM & IR characterizes as "duplicate premium pay" — "the number of hours the engineer had to be on duty before receiving time-based overtime pay increased in direct proportion [to overmiles traveled] ***." DM & IR's Memorandum in Support, at 3.
Consistent with the past practices of the parties, engineers were paid an amount which was determined by dividing the engineer's total miles run by 16.5, which is the number obtained by dividing the basic day of 130 miles by 8 hours. Id. Thus, if an engineer traveled 165 miles in a day, he would not receive overtime pay until he had worked 10 hours (165 ÷ 16.5 = 10). Declaration of Lawrence M. Riley ¶¶ 8-9. This, however, would not end the calculation.
Again, because the DM & IR is a shorthaul railroad, its engineers typically make shorter runs than do engineers on other railroads. As a result, if based solely upon the total miles run in a day, the DM & IR's engineers would make less than their counterparts on long-haul railroads. This is true, apparently, because of the greater amount of time spent at terminals, on short haul routes, and the correspondingly smaller amount of time expended in track runs. Accordingly, since 1923, the DM & IR's agreements with the BLE provided that engineers' pay would be calculated on the basis of miles traveled, which included not only miles actually run, but also "constructive" miles that were awarded to the engineer. DM & IR's Memorandum in Support, at 4. "Constructive miles run" results from a computation which takes into account the amount of time that an engineer on the DM & IR would have to spend at various terminals along his or her route. Riley Decl. ¶ 10. Thus, the DM & IR paid its engineers on the basis of the following formula: actual miles run plus earned constructive miles, divided by 16.25 which, the DM & IR advises, was the divisor that was applied in 2000.
Both parties are in agreement that this formula, which was incorporated in their Local Agreements as "Rule 7," was in effect prior to 1986, and that it was routinely applied by the parties, even in the years following the inception of the National Agreement, between 1986 and 1994, when for the first time, the BLE challenged the reimbursement of overtime hours, and miles paid, as being in conflict with the provisions of the 1986 National Agreement.
In 1986, the DM & IR joined other railroad carriers in participating in national labor negotiations with the BLE. The negotiations, by every appearance, were both long, and arduous. After the membership of the BLE refused to ratify a "tentative agreement," the parties to the negotiations executed an Agreement, on April 15, 1986, to submit the differences, in their proposed contract terms, to binding arbitration under the RLA. Verified Complaint, Attachment A. Their Arbitration Agreement established both the constituency, and the jurisdiction, of Arbitration Board No. 458. Id., Sections Third through Sixth, and Eighth. As "Section Nineteenth" to that Arbitration Agreement, the parties agreed as follows:
This Agreement (together with Exhibits A, B, C, D, and E affixed hereto) embodies the entire agreement and understanding between the parties and supercedes [sic] all prior agreements and understandings relevant to the subject matter hereof. No amendments, waivers, or modifications to this Agreement are to be effective unless executed by the parties' duly accredited representatives in a writing referring to this Agreement.
Id., Section Nineteenth.
Arbitration Board No. 458 ruled that the parties' "tentative agreement" was a proper means of resolving most of their disputes, and then went on to dispose of a handful of other differences. By our reading, the provisions of the "tentative agreement," which related to overtime pay as pertinent here, were not the subject of any individualized treatment by Arbitration Board No. 458.
The 1986 Agreement, which was imposed upon the parties by Arbitration Board No. 458, applies a differently worded formula, than that employed in the pre-1986 agreements between DM & IR and the BLE, in order to arrive at overtime and overmile pay. Article IV, Section 2(c), of the 1986 Agreement, provides as follows:
The number of hours that must lapse before overtime begins on a trip in through freight or through passenger service is calculated by dividing the miles of the trip or the number of miles encompassed in a basic day in that class of service, whichever is greater, by the appropriate overtime divisor. Thus after June 30, 1988, overtime will begin on a trip of 125 miles in through freight service after 125/ 13.5 = 9.26 hours or 9 hours and 16 minutes. In through freight service, overtime will not be paid prior to the completion of 8 hours of service.
Award of Arbitration Board No. 458, Article IV, Section (2)(c), Appendix B (National Agreement), Declaration of Joseph A. Cassidy, Jr., Exhibit 1.
Commencing in 1994 — some eight years after the 1986 Agreement — the BLE began to grieve the DM & IR's disallowance of the overtime pay computations of various BLE members. According to the BLE, the provisions of the 1986 Agreement superseded those of Rule 7, and allowed a computation of overtime, which was predicated on "miles run," as opposed to "miles paid," and which was, therefore, more favorable to the BLE than was Rule 7.
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...likely result of Judge Lebedoff's ruling had not the representations been made. See, Duluth Missabe & Iron Range Railway v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, 113 F.Supp.2d 1356, 1365 (D.Minn. 2000). Indeed, any such approach would be fraught with second-guessing. Here, we do no more than......