Griffin v. INTERNATIONAL U., UNITED AUTOMOBILE, A. & AIW

• Decision Date: 24 October 1972
• Docket Number: No. 72-1126.,72-1126.
• Parties: Allen L. GRIFFIN, Appellee, v. INTERNATIONAL UNION, UNITED AUTOMOBILE, AEROSPACE AND AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENT WORKERS OF AMERICA, UAW, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

469 F.2d 181 (1972)

Allen L. GRIFFIN, Appellee, v. INTERNATIONAL UNION, UNITED AUTOMOBILE, AEROSPACE AND AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENT WORKERS OF AMERICA, UAW, Appellant.

No. 72-1126.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued September 11, 1972.

Decided October 24, 1972.

Bernard G. Link, Baltimore, Md. (Stephen I. Schlossberg, John A. Fillion, and Jordan Rossen, Detroit, Mich., on brief), for appellants.

Hugh G. Casey, Jr., Charlotte, N. C. (George S. Daly, Jr., and Casey & Daly, P. A., Charlotte, N. C., on brief), for appellee.

Before SOBELOFF, Senior Circuit Judge, and WINTER and BUTZNER, Circuit Judges.

SOBELOFF, Senior Circuit Judge:

Allen Griffin, the appellee, brought a civil action for damages against the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America. He claimed that the UAW had breached its duty of fair representation in handling the grievance based on his discharge by the Ford Motor Company. The case was tried before Judge McMillan and a jury and resulted in a verdict in favor of Griffin in the amount of $12,000. From this judgment, the UAW appeals.

In its brief the appellant raised several issues which were not pursued at oral argument. After a careful examination of the record, the briefs of the parties and the pertinent authorities, we conclude that these contentions are without merit. The only issue deserving discussion is whether there was sufficient evidence to support the jury's finding that the Union breached its duty of fair representation.

I

The phrase "duty of fair representation" is a legal term of art, incapable of precise definition. St. Clair v. Local 515, Int'l Bhd. of Teamsters, etc., 422 F.2d 128, 130 (6 Cir. 1969). There is no code that explicitly prescribes the standards that govern unions in representing their members in processing grievances. Whether a union breached its duty of fair representation depends upon the facts of each case. Thompson v. Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 316 F.2d 191 (4 Cir. 1963); Trotter v. Amalgamated Ass'n of Street Railway Employees, 309 F.2d 584 (6 Cir. 1962), cert. den., 372 U.S. 943 (1963). But pronouncements made from time to time by the Supreme Court, articulating the somewhat hazy contours of the union's obligations, do furnish a measure of guidance.

The doctrine of the "duty of fair representation" was first given currency by the Supreme Court in Steele v. Louisville & N. R. Co., 323 U.S. 192, 65 S.Ct. 226, 89 L.Ed. 173 (1944). Although first propounded in the context of racial discrimination under the Railway Labor Act, the Court extended this duty to cases under Section 301 of the National Labor Relations Act. Ford Motor Co. v. Huffman, 345 U.S. 330, 73 S.Ct. 681, 97 L.Ed. 1048 (1953). In representing its members, declared the Court, a union is permitted "a wide range of reasonableness," but this latitude is "subject always to complete good faith and honesty of purpose in the exercise of its discretion." Id. at 337-338, 73 S.Ct. at 686.

The outline of the duty of fair representation cognizable under Section 301 was further clarified in Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171, 87 S.Ct. 903, 17 L.Ed.2d 842 (1967). That case declared that a union is accorded considerable discretion in the handling and settling of grievances. The individual employee has no absolute right to insist that his grievance be pressed through any particular stage of the contractual grievance procedure. A union may screen grievances and press only those that it concludes will justify the expense and time involved in terms of benefiting the membership at large. Encina v. Tony Lama Boot Co., 448 F.2d 1264 (5 Cir. 1971). In the Vaca decision itself, the Court held that a union did not necessarily breach its duty of fair representation when it refused to take a member's grievance to arbitration.

Nonetheless, the Supreme Court did not invest the union with a carte blanche. It sought to fashion an appropriate standard by which to measure union conduct. "The doctrine of fair representation includes a statutory obligation to serve the interests of all members without hostility or discrimination toward any, to exercise its discretion with complete good faith and honesty, and to avoid arbitrary conduct." Vaca v. Sipes, supra, 386 U.S. at 177, 87 S.Ct. at 910. A union must conform its behavior to each of these three separate standards. First, it must treat all factions and segments of its membership without hostility or discrimination. Next, the broad discretion of the union in asserting the rights of its individual members must be exercised in complete good faith and honesty. Finally, the union must avoid arbitrary conduct. Each of these requirements represents a distinct and separate obligation, the breach of which may constitute the basis for civil action.

The repeated references in Vaca to "arbitrary" union conduct reflected a calculated broadening of the fair representation standard. Retana v. Apartment, Motel, Hotel & El. Op. U., Local 14, 453 F.2d 1018, 1023 n. 8 (9 Cir. 1972); Feller, "Vaca v. Sipes, One Year Later" in N.Y.U. Twenty-First Annual Conference on Labor 141, 167 (1969). While negligence in handling grievances has not been identified as breaching the union's duty of fair representation, Bazarte v. United Transportation Union, 429 F.2d 868, 872 (3 Cir. 1970), the courts have adopted the position that a union may not arbitrarily ignore a meritorious grievance or handle it in a perfunctory manner. Vaca v. Sipes, supra 386 U.S. at 191, 194, 87 S.Ct. 903; Retana v. Apartment, Motel, Hotel & El. Op. U., Local 14, supra, 453 F.2d at 1024 n. 10; De Arroyo v. Sindicato de Trabajadores Packinghouse, 425 F.2d 281, 284 (1 Cir. 1970); St. Clair v. Local 515, Int'l Bhd. of Teamsters, etc., 422 F.2d 128, at 130. Without any hostile motive of discrimination and in complete good faith, a union may nevertheless pursue a course of action or inaction that is so unreasonable and arbitrary as to constitute a violation of the duty of fair representation. A union may refuse to process a grievance or handle the grievance in a particular manner for a multitude of reasons, but it may not do so without reason, merely at the whim of someone exercising union authority. A union must especially avoid capricious and arbitrary behavior in the handling of a grievance based on a discharge—the industrial equivalent of capital punishment.

For a successful suit against a union for breach of its duty of fair representation, the employee "must also have proved arbitrary or bad-faith conduct on the part of the union in processing his grievance." Vaca v. Sipes, supra, 386 U.S. at 193, 87 S.Ct. at 918 (emphasis added). We believe that looking at the evidence in the light most favorable to Griffin—as we are bound to do at this stage—there is sufficient evidence to support a conclusion of arbitrary or bad-faith conduct.

II

For seven years Allen Griffin worked for the Ford Motor Company at its parts depot in Charlotte, North Carolina. His problems apparently began in July, 1965, when he was disciplined by the Warehouse Operations Manager, D. J. Cashion, management's second ranking member at the forty men depot, for allegedly reading a newspaper that lined the handtruck used by Griffin in his work. Cashion's disciplinary action was successfully appealed by the Union. Subsequently, the relationship between the two men further deteriorated until they became embroiled in a fight¹ at a local hockey game, with Cashion...