Higdon v. UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AM., AFL-CIO-CLC
| Decision Date | 12 April 1982 |
| Docket Number | No. CV180-166.,CV180-166. |
| Citation | 537 F. Supp. 653 |
| Parties | Donald R. HIGDON, Sr., Plaintiff, v. UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO-CLC; United Steelworkers of America, Local Union No. 13600; and Bowman Transportation, Inc., Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of Georgia |
Harris, McCracken & Jackson, William R. McCracken, Augusta, Ga., for plaintiff.
J. R. Goldthwaite, Jr., Atlanta, Ga., Robert H. Stropp, Jr., Birmingham, Ala., for 1st and 2nd defendants.
James W. Wimberly, Jr. and James P. Cobb, Atlanta, Ga., for 3rd defendant.
This action under section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act LMRA, 29 U.S.C. § 185, for alleged employer violation of a collective bargaining agreement and union breach of its duty of fair representation is presently before the Court on defendants' motions for summary judgment. As gleaned from the record — pleadings, depositions and interrogatories — the following facts, viewed in the light most favorable to plaintiff, emerge as uncontested.
Defendant Bowman Transportation, Inc. Bowman is a privately owned corporation engaged in the business of delivering freight as a class one common carrier of general commodities. The corporation has eighty-five terminals located throughout twenty-six states with its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. On August 2, 1979, Bowman entered into a three-year collective bargaining agreement with defendant United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIC-CLC United Steelworkers or International. United Steelworkers was the recognized collective bargaining representative of the bargaining unit which consisted of Bowman's truck drivers and other employees. The agreement established a three-step grievance procedure which culminates in binding arbitration for the presentation of unresolved grievances and provides that no bargaining unit employee could be discharged without reasonable cause and makes any discharge grievances subject to the prescribed grievance and arbitration procedure.
For some fourteen years prior to November 2, 1979, plaintiff was employed as a local truck driver at Bowman's Augusta, Georgia, terminal. Plaintiff's primary duties consisted of the pick up and delivery of freight within the Augusta area; this included the loading and unloading of trucks as well as the driving of trucks on short distance routes. As a Bowman employee, plaintiff was a member of the bargaining unit represented by United Steelworkers. As such, he came within the coverage of the aforesaid collective bargaining agreement. The local union for employees at Bowman's Augusta terminal was defendant United Steelworkers of America, Local Union No. 13600 Local.
On the morning of Friday, November 2, 1979, while in the course of his employment, plaintiff made a delivery of eight or nine cases of shoes to Hanover Shoes, a retail shoe store located in an Augusta shopping mall, and a customer of Bowman. According to plaintiff's deposition testimony, the store manager refused to pay for "inside delivery" of the shoes and told plaintiff to return at a later time when the manager would have help to take delivery at the loading dock of the shopping mall. Thereupon, plaintiff left, made a delivery elsewhere and attempted, without success, to call his terminal manager concerning the Hanover Shoes incident.
Around noon the same day, plaintiff returned to Hanover Shoes to again make delivery of the shoes. What then transpired is the subject of considerable dispute. On deposition, plaintiff described the second delivery as follows:
When I went back, I couldn't get in touch with the terminal manager, and I went back and went back to the door and asked him the store manager if he wanted the freight, and he said, "Yes, bring it on in," and I brought it in. He told me to write it on that bill, a few cuss words, blowed cigarette smoke in my face, threw my freight bill down, threw my money down, and I told him that I wasn't there to argue with him, that I had a job to do, and that all I wanted was to get the money, the freight bill signed, and get out.
Plaintiff's Deposition, at 13. Following this delivery, plaintiff telephoned the assistant terminal manager, Mr. Gerald Cox, related the above-described incident as he viewed it, and was told that the store manager had already called complaining of plaintiff's behavior and that, as a result, the terminal manager wanted plaintiff to return to the terminal.
Upon his return to the terminal, plaintiff reported to the office of the terminal manager, Mr. Robert Widener, Jr., and was told by the manager that a complaint had been lodged against him by Hanover Shoes. Following a brief discussion of the incident, Mr. Widener directed plaintiff to go to the driver's room and to write a statement, word for word, about what had happened at Hanover Shoes. Plaintiff went to the driver's room, but instead of writing a statement, he balled up the paper the terminal manager had given him and threw it in the trash can, "clocked out" and then left the terminal for home. Before leaving, he told Mr. Cox that he was "too upset" to write the statement and that he would do it later at home after he had "calmed down some." Plaintiff contends he was upset and confused at the time partly because of a chronic back problem which was causing him pain.
After plaintiff left the terminal, Mr. Widener telephoned Bowman's Atlanta headquarters and discussed plaintiff's behavior with Bowman's Director of Safety/Personnel, Mr. Jewell R. Wood. Mr. Wood advised that failure to follow a supervisor's instructions (that is, plaintiff's failure to write a statement as directed) was ground for termination. It appears that "failure to follow instructions" is a prescribed ground for dismissal in "General Rule No. 1" in the set of general rules signed for by every Bowman employee; yet, termination, while the normal "remedy," is not automatic since the terminal manager has some discretion to impose lesser sanctions.
After consulting with Bowman's Safety/Personnel Director, Mr. Widener made the decision to terminate plaintiff and sent a certified letter to plaintiff the same day informing him of the decision. The stated basis for the dismissal was failure to follow a supervisor's instructions. Plaintiff, however, was unable to receive the letter over the weekend; instead, he reported to work the following Monday and was orally informed by the terminal manager of his termination.
The following day, plaintiff met in Atlanta, Georgia, with Mr. William F. Griffin, then president of the local union, and related his version of the events which led to his termination. On behalf of plaintiff, Mr. Griffin filed a "step one grievance" which was subsequently denied by Bowman after its representative met with Mr. Griffin to discuss the matter. Thereafter, the grievance was advanced to "step two" in the prescribed grievance procedure. The "step two" procedure consists of presenting the grievance to a committee, with representatives from both the union and management, which then attempts to settle the grievance.
Prior to the meeting of the "step two" grievance committee, plaintiff discussed the status of his grievance with Mr. Griffin on numerous occasions. As the result of these discussions, plaintiff had the impression that he would shortly regain his employment with Bowman. Indeed, Mr. Griffin testified on deposition that several days before the grievance committee meeting he was informed by Mr. Wood that Bowman would reinstate plaintiff following the "step two" procedure. Deposition of William F. Griffin, at 12.
The grievance committee met in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 10, 1979, for approximately four hours, to consider some twenty grievances, including plaintiff's. The committee was comprised of Bowman's vice president of operations, its director of safety/personnel, the local union president and the staff representative for the international, as well as certain other individuals representing Bowman and the unions. When plaintiff's case came for consideration, both sides presented their positions. Deposition of Jack Strunk, at 8-9. Deposition of Ray Huffman, at 11-12. The union specifically argued that plaintiff's seniority should be a mitigating factor in the discharge decision. At the conclusion of this discussion, Bowman decided to deny the grievance, basing its decision on plaintiff's failure to follow a supervisor's instructions, as well as plaintiff's past performance record including his prior "run-ins" with the terminal manager, all of which, according to Bowman, characterized plaintiff as a "marginal employee." Deposition of Ray Huffman, at 15.
Shortly after the December 10, 1979 meeting, Mr. Griffin told plaintiff that the company had changed its mind about reinstating him and that his discharge would stand. Plaintiff was also told that his case was being turned over to the staff representative for United Steelworkers, Mr. Jack Strunk, for a decision on whether to proceed to arbitration. As a matter of union policy, such decisions, which rest solely with the union, are the responsibility of the staff representative. In the interim, Mr. Griffin continued efforts by the union to persuade Bowman to reinstate plaintiff; however, these efforts proved unsuccessful.
Subsequently, following consultation with Mr. Griffin, Mr. Strunk made the decision not to seek arbitration because the case was not "meritorious of going to arbitration." The case was viewed as lacking sufficient merit to warrant arbitration because of plaintiff's undisputed failure to fill out the incident report at the time and manner instructed, and because of the union's prior losing experience with a discharge case brought for arbitration wherein an employee was terminated for refusing to sign a receipt for a warning letter. The local union president concurred with this decision. Throughout the grievance procedure, however, the unions, both local and...
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Higdon v. United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO-CLC
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