International Broth. of Elec. Workers, Local Union No. 199 v. United Telephone Co. of Florida

• Decision Date: 20 August 1984
• Docket Number: No. 83-3068,83-3068
• Citation: 738 F.2d 1564
• Parties: 117 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2094, 101 Lab.Cas. P 11,163 INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS, LOCAL UNION NO. 199, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UNITED TELEPHONE COMPANY OF FLORIDA, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

Page 1564

738 F.2d 1564

117 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2094, 101 Lab.Cas. P 11,163

INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS, LOCAL UNION

NO. 199, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UNITED TELEPHONE COMPANY OF FLORIDA, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 83-3068.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

Aug. 20, 1984.

Thomas J. Pilacek, Orlando, Fla., for plaintiff-appellant.

George K. McPherson, Jr., David A. Rammelkamp, Atlanta, Ga., for defendant-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Before RONEY and JOHNSON, Circuit Judges, and MORGAN, Senior Circuit Judge.

JOHNSON, Circuit Judge:

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local Union No. 199 ("the Union") challenges an arbitrator's construction of a collective bargaining agreement entered into by the Union and the United Telephone Company of Florida ("United" or "the Company"). Section 3.01-D of the agreement involves the distribution of overtime and provides:

All overtime worked on emergency standby, emergency call-out and all other work periods other than those provided in Section 3.01 A and B of this Article shall be rotated, as far as possible, among the employees who have completed the probationary period, qualified to perform the required work if immediately available in the work classification within a group reporting to a foreman (Overtime Group).

The purpose of the section is to distribute covered overtime equally among employees within a work group. Section 3.01-D(2) proves that

[w]hen overtime is required an attempt will be made to contact the man having the least amount of overtime credits on the roster. In order to contact the employee on a call-out the Company will place a telephone call to the number most recently supplied in writing to the supervisor and allow reasonable time for an answer.

Section 1.05 defines the term "call out," used in section 3.01-D(2), as "notification to report for work immediately, outside of regularly scheduled working hours." The arbitrator decided the question whether section 3.01-D requires the Company to rotate all overtime or only overtime that is unscheduled, or "call out" overtime.

Beginning on August 7, 1979, the Company assigned a cable splicer, Russel Lord, to work with the Florida Department of Transportation to locate and mark buried telephone cables near a railroad crossing during the installation of railroad crossing signs. The Department of Transportation decided that on August 8 and 9 it would begin work at the crossing at 6:30 a.m., an hour and one-half earlier than Lord's normal 8:00 a.m. starting time. Lord earned three hours of pre-shift overtime during those two days. Larry Ireland, a cable splicer who worked the same shift as Lord, filed a grievance claiming that the Company violated section 3.01-D by offering the overtime to Lord rather than to him. The grievance was eventually presented to arbitrator Donald P. Crane. On January 13, 1982, Crane issued his award in favor of United.

Crane based the award on a distinction he drew between two types of overtime:

Logically speaking, plant employees are regularly called out to restore or maintain service. Thus, they are subject to call-out or stand-by which involves an immediate response. Overtime under these circumstances is unscheduled in nature. Planned (or scheduled) overtime is anticipated or known in advance and does not require an individual to report immediately.

Crane determined that section 3.01-D applies only to "unscheduled" overtime, and that the contract does not require the Company to rotate "scheduled" overtime such as the pre-shift overtime it had assigned to Lord.

Shortly after Arbitrator Crane handed down his award, Gregory Ezell, United's personnel manager, wrote Gerald DeWolf, the business manager for the local Union, and identified twenty-one pending grievances, ¹ "each of which have the issue of whether or not Section 3.01-D applies to scheduled overtime." Ezell stated that the Company's position was that the Crane award had settled this issue, and that in light of section 16.03 of the agreement, which provides that the decision of the arbitrator shall be "final and binding," the Company would "notify any arbitrator now selected to hear any of these grievances that the arbitration is cancelled."

On March 25, 1982, the Union filed this action pursuant to section 301(a) of the National Labor Relations Act ("the Act"), 29 U.S.C.A. Sec. 185(a). Count I of the complaint sought reversal of the arbitrator's decision on the merits and a holding that section 3.01-D applies to all overtime, scheduled and unscheduled. Count II sought an order requiring the Company to submit to arbitration on the twenty-one other grievances. United filed a counterclaim seeking enforcement of the arbitration award and requesting that the court hold that "the issue of whether section 3.01-D ... applies to scheduled overtime work is foreclosed from further arbitral consideration, thereby depriving any arbitrator of jurisdiction to consider such issue." The counterclaim requested that, in future arbitrations in which the Union attempts to raise the issue, the Company be permitted to "produce a copy of said Declaratory Judgment which deprives said arbitrator of any jurisdiction to consider or rule upon said issue." United also submitted the affidavit of its personnel manager, which listed each of the twenty-one pending grievances, described the issues involved, and asserted that all turned on the question whether scheduled overtime was subject to the rotation requirement of section 3.01-D.

The district court granted United's motion for summary judgment. The court dismissed both counts of the plaintiff's complaint and entered a declaratory judgment holding that the arbitrator's interpretation of the contract constituted binding precedent for future arbitrators, who, the judgment declares, are deprived of jurisdiction to consider the issue of section 3.01-D's application. The Union appeals from this final judgment, claiming that the arbitrator's award exceeded his authority under the contract and that the district court's declaratory judgment exceeded its power under the Act.

A. Arbitrator Crane's Interpretation of the Contract

Arbitrator Crane approached the problem of interpreting section 3.01-D in several ways. First, he concluded that, although the section "appears to require Management to rotate all overtime," it contains latent ambiguity. Crane reasoned that "this provision becomes unclear because of the phrase 'and all other work periods other than those provided in Section 3.01-A and B of this Article ....' Sections 3.01-A and B merely establish the hours of normal tours and do not deal with overtime.... [T]he phrase creates ambiguity." Crane also found significant that section 3.01-D requires rotation of work among employees "qualified to perform the required work if immediately available"; he noted that this limitation would be unnecessary if scheduled overtime, for which employees would not have to be "immediately available," was required to be rotated. The arbitrator read section 3.01-D in conjunction with 3.01-D(2), which establishes the rotation procedure. Section 3.01-D(2) mentions "call out," which is unscheduled overtime. Crane also placed importance on an award issued by Arbitrator Rimer several years earlier, which, although dealing with a different factual situation, found that "Section 3.01-D excludes these scheduled assignments from the rotation requirements." Crane stated that "Arbitrator Rimer's interpretation is a binding part of the Agreement and I am obliged to accept it especially since it has withstood the test of judicial review." ² Arbitrator Crane emphasized that subsequent to Rimer's award, the parties had renegotiated the contract, and the Union had been unable to rewrite section 3.01-D. Crane further supported his interpretation by noting that United's "long-standing past practice" was not to rotate scheduled overtime. Finally, Crane concluded that "[t]he Company's practice of not rotating scheduled overtime also appears to be in the interest of efficiency and sound operation." He pointed out that to have Ireland work the first hour and one-half of the job, then turn it over to Lord, and commute, on company time, to his normal work station would be highly inefficient. Crane concluded that "[g]iven the language of the Agreement, Arbitrator Rimer's interpretation of the language and long-standing and consistent past practice in applying the language, I conclude that the Company's actions did not violate the Agreement."

The scope of judicial review of labor arbitration decisions is "exceedingly narrow." Loveless v. Eastern Air Lines, Inc., 681 F.2d 1272, 1275 (11th Cir.1982). Severely limiting judicial review of arbitral awards advances the strong federal policy favoring private resolution of disputes over the interpretation of collective bargaining agreements. The Supreme Court highlighted this policy and several of its corollaries in a series of cases known as the "Steelworkers Trilogy." United Steelworkers of America v. American Mfg. Co., 363 U.S. 564, 80 S.Ct. 1343, 4 L.Ed.2d 1403 (1960); United Steelworkers of America v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 574, 80 S.Ct. 1347, 4 L.Ed.2d 1409 (1960); United Steelworkers of America v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 80 S.Ct. 1358, 4 L.Ed.2d 1424 (1960). These cases emphasize the principle that private arbitration of labor disputes plays a vital role in achieving the Act's primary goal of promoting industrial peace. Warrior & Gulf, 363 U.S. at 578, 80 S.Ct. at 1350. "To the extent that the courts intrude into this scheme, they detract both from the central role of the arbitrator and the palliative effect of the arbitration process." Loveless, 681 F.2d at 1275; see also Enterprise Wheel, 363 U.S. at 598-99, 80 S.Ct. at 1361-62. Narrow judicial review is also a product of arbitration's contractual...