GENERAL DY. CORP. v. LOCAL 5, IND. U. OF MARINE, ETC.

• Citation: 469 F.2d 848
• Decision Date: 15 November 1972
• Docket Number: No. 72-1112,72-1113.,72-1112
• Parties: GENERAL DYNAMICS CORPORATION, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. LOCAL 5, INDUSTRIAL UNION OF MARINE AND SHIPBUILDING WORKERS OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO, Defendant-Appellee. GENERAL DYNAMICS CORPORATION, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. LOCAL 5, INDUSTRIAL UNION OF MARINE AND SHIPBUILDING WORKERS OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO, and Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, AFL-CIO, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (1st Circuit)

469 F.2d 848 (1972)

GENERAL DYNAMICS CORPORATION, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. LOCAL 5, INDUSTRIAL UNION OF MARINE AND SHIPBUILDING WORKERS OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO, Defendant-Appellee.

GENERAL DYNAMICS CORPORATION, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. LOCAL 5, INDUSTRIAL UNION OF MARINE AND SHIPBUILDING WORKERS OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO, and Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America, AFL-CIO, Defendants-Appellees.

Nos. 72-1112, 72-1113.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard September 8, 1972.

Decided November 15, 1972.

Lewis H. Weinstein, Boston, Mass., with whom David B. Ellis, Foley, Hoag & Eliot, Boston, Mass., and Carter W. Eltzroth, Gen. Counsel, General Dynamics Corp., Quincy, Mass., were on brief, for appellant.

Warren H. Pyle, Boston, Mass., with whom Angoff, Goldman, Manning, Pyle & Wanger, Boston, Mass., was on brief, for appellees.

Before COFFIN, Chief Judge, McENTEE, Circuit Judge, and HAMLEY^*, Senior Circuit Judge.

COFFIN, Chief Judge.

These two appeals arise out of a dispute between the parties in the summer of 1969 over the interpretation of the seniority provisions in their collective bargaining agreement the Agreement, signed in the spring of that year and effective until 1974. The dispute resulted in a work stoppage by members of the defendant Union and an arbitration award, pursuant to provisions of the Agreement, ordering the employees to return to work. Alleging non-compliance with the award, the plaintiff Corporation brought one suit for an order to enforce the award and another for damages resulting from the work stoppage. The district court, without opinion, granted the defendant's motion to dismiss in the first action and the motions for summary judgment in the second. The plaintiff appealed from both orders.

On July 25, 1969, the Corporation ordered the layoff of eleven machine shop employees, effective August 1. On July 31, approximately twenty-five machine shop employees did not return to work at the end of the lunch period, apparently in protest over the layoffs which the Union felt were not in accordance with the Agreement's seniority provisions. A meeting between the parties on August 1 resulted in the postponement of the layoffs and efforts to resolve the dispute. After the Union refused on August 19 to arbitrate the seniority issue, as the Corporation contends it had previously agreed to do, new notices of layoffs were sent out on August 22, to take effect the following Friday, the 29th. On August 25, a grievance was filed on behalf of three machine shop employees and a walkout began which by the next day included practically the entire work force. After telegrams to both the national and local unions requesting them to take all reasonable steps to end the walkout produced no results, the Corporation initiated the expedited arbitration proceedings provided for by the Agreement. On August 27, Arbitrator Fallon rendered his award, holding the work stoppage on July 31, August 25, and August 26 in violation of the Agreement and ordering the employees to cease and desist from that conduct, as provided in the Agreement. The work stoppage, however, continued, notwithstanding the arbitrator's award. The Corporation then brought these suits in the district court. A hearing on the plaintiff's request for a temporary restraining order to enforce the award took place on August 29, but during a recess the parties agreed to arbitrate the machine shop seniority dispute. On September 2, Arbitrator Santer issued his award agreeing with the Corporation's interpretation, after the announcement of which the employees began to return to work, full attendance being achieved within two days. Since then there has been apparently no work stoppage with regard to the machine shop seniority dispute, although there was allegedly one one-hour work stoppage in 1971 with regard to another matter.

We consider first our power to grant the relief requested in the first suit. In Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerk's Union, Local 770, 398 U.S. 235, 90 S.Ct. 1583, 26 L.Ed.2d 199 (1970), the Supreme Court held that federal courts have the power to enjoin strikes over disputes subject to binding arbitration under a collective bargaining agreement. It reasoned that this narrow power was necessary to further the strong Congressional policy favoring peaceful arbitration of industrial disputes, and was not inconsistent with the Norris-LaGuardia Act which was designed to avoid the interjection of the federal judiciary into labor disputes on the behalf of management by means of sweeping, often ex parte, decrees. As courts, both before and after Boys Markets have recognized, New Orleans Steamship Ass'n v. General Longshore Workers, I.L.A. Local 1418, 389 F.2d 369 (5th Cir. 1968); Pacific Maritime Ass'n v. International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, 454 F.2d 262 (9th Cir. 1971), an arbitrator's action, in accordance with the collective bargaining agreement, in issuing a cease and desist order against a work stoppage presents an even stronger case for federal power to issue injunctive relief. For here, the court is not being asked to force a party to go to arbitration, which he agreed to undertake, Textile Worker's Union of America v. Lincoln Mills of Alabama, 353 U.S. 448, 77 S.Ct. 923, 1 L.Ed.2d 972 (1957), to restrain a party from violating its contractual promise to arbitrate, Boys Markets, supra, or to compel compliance with an arbitrator's award confined to interpreting a provision of the collective bargaining agreement. Philadelphia Marine Trade, Ass'n v. International Longshoremen's Ass'n, Local 1291, 365 F.2d 295 (3d Cir. 1966), rev'd on other grounds, 389 U.S. 64, 88 S.Ct. 201, 19 L.Ed.2d 236 (1967). We are merely being asked to give judicial enforcement, specifically provided for by the Agreement, to an arbitrator's injunction, specifically provided for by the Agreement, issued after voluntary compliance with the expedited arbitration procedure established by the Agreement. Nothing could be closer to the core of the federal labor arbitration policy and further from the core of the Norris-LaGuardia policy.

Concluding that we have power to enforce an arbitrator's order, explicitly authorized by the contract, we turn to the order before us. The arbitrator's award reads as follows:

"It is my finding that employees of General Dynamics, Quincy Division, engaged in a work stoppage on July 31st., August 25th., and August 26th., 1969 in violation of Article XI, Section 1 of the collective Bargaining Agreement.

Employees who have participated in this prohibited work stoppage are directed to refrain from such conduct forthwith and return to work immediately and cease and desist from any such further contract violations."

There is much controversy over the meaning of the final Delphic phrase. We see only two viable interpretations —either the arbitrator meant to bar any further work stoppage, like the one he found occurred on the three named dates, relating to the machine shop dispute, or he meant to bar any further work stoppage in violation of that section of the Agreement. We adopt the former view for two reasons. First, we note the very precise provisions of the collective agreement regarding cease and desist orders:

"In such case, the arbitator shall make findings of fact concerning the alleged violation, and if a violation shall be found to have occurred, he shall prescribe appropriate relief, which shall include an order requiring any party . . . or group of employees to desist from any violations of Section 1 hereof. . . . In the event the arbitrator enters an order to desist from any violations of Section 1 above, it is agreed that he shall make as part of his order a provision in his award to the effect that if he finds there is thereafter a continuing or future violation of this Article during the term of this Agreement it shall automatically be deemed to be subject to the desist order entered by the arbitrator in such proceeding."

Here the arbitrator did not include in his award the provision for applicability of the order, after subsequent findings, to continuing or future violations. Moreover, we cannot read the arbitrator's words as implying such applicability; he used the words "cease and desist" only in the final phrase and the Agreement clearly indicates that future violations are to be made subject to that "desist order". We can understand plaintiff's disappointment in the award, but we are powerless to add words to an arbitrator's award.

Our limited reading of the award is bolstered not only by the specificity of the Agreement but also by the potential Norris-LaGuardia difficulties with an injunctive order susceptible of application to an indefinite number of yet uncommenced strike actions over an extended period in the future. See Old Ben Coal Corp. v. Local 1487, United Mine Workers of America, 457 F.2d 162, 165 (7th Cir. 1972), New York Telephone Co. v. Communications Workers of America, 445 F.2d 39, 50 (2d Cir. 1971). Certainly in an area where our power is grounded in the policy of enforcing the will of the parties we would not even entertain such a sweeping order unless it was perfectly clear that the parties so intended. Even then we would be most cautious in issuing an order which would in effect involve relinquishment of an equity court's obligation to weigh the circumstances and exercise its discretion in each instance. Boys Markets, supra, 398 U.S. at 253-254, 90 S.Ct. 1583; Parade Publications, Inc. v. Philadelphia Mailers Union No. 14, 459 F.2d 369 (3d Cir. 1972).

Since we intend to enforce the award, as interpreted to apply only to illegal work stoppages over the machine shop seniority dispute that arose in July 1969, we must consider both whether the issue is now moot and whether we can enforce this order directed at "employees" against their union.¹ The...