Jeffreys v. Communications Workers of America, 03-1378.
| Decision Date | 31 December 2003 |
| Docket Number | No. 03-1378.,03-1378. |
| Citation | 354 F.3d 270 |
| Parties | Gary W. JEFFREYS; Larry S. Craig; Richard L. Lee; Jerry L. Hall, Jr.; James R. Peckinpaugh; Karla D. Umberger; Eric J. Lewis; James E. Vida; Jerry D. Watkins; William T. Starks; Kenneth W. Jannett; Vilena Hutchinson, formerly known as Vilena Broerman; Jayne M. Johnson; Vincent J. Caccavo; Margie B. Cook; David R. Sanchez, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. COMMUNICATIONS WORKERS OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO, Defendant-Appellee, and US Airways, Incorporated, Suggestion of Bankruptcy filed 8/16/02, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
ARGUED: William Beverly Poff, Woods, Rogerr & Hazlegrove, P.L.C., Roanoke, Virginia, for Appellants. Daniel M. Katz, Katz & Ranzman, P.C., Washington, D.C., for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Francis H. Casola, Frank K. Friedman, Woods, Rogers & Hazlegrove, P.L.C., Roanoke, Virginia, for Appellants. Louise P. Zanar, Katz & Ranzman, P.C., Washington, D.C., for Appellee.
Before WILKINSON and TRAXLER, Circuit Judges, and Robert E. PAYNE, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, sitting by designation.
Affirmed by published opinion. Judge WILKINSON wrote the opinion, in which Judge TRAXLER and Judge Payne joined.
In the wake of September 11, U.S. Airways, Inc. ("USAir") was forced by financial distress to close many of its smaller stations and furlough thousands of employees. The union representing the affected employees, the Communication Workers of America, objected to the airline's planned furlough system, and it persuaded USAir to institute the furloughs according to a different method. Plaintiff Gary W. Jeffreys was one of fifteen USAir employees laid off or reassigned under the airline's modified furlough system. Jeffreys and the other employees claimed that the Communication Workers of America did not fairly represent them when it urged the airline to change its displacement practices. Because the district court properly found that the union's conduct was neither arbitrary nor discriminatory nor in bad faith, we affirm its judgment that the union did not breach its duty of fair representation to workers like Jeffreys.
The district court granted summary judgment to the CWA, and we therefore view the facts in the light most favorable to Jeffreys. See, e.g., McLean v. Patten Communities, Inc., 332 F.3d 714, 719 (4th Cir.2003). In August 1999, as a result of an employee election, the CWA became the certified bargaining representative for the passenger service employees of USAir. Shortly thereafter, the CWA and USAir negotiated a collective bargaining agreement to govern the passenger service employees. Article 12, Section C.2.b is the only provision of the collective bargaining agreement at issue in the present case. It provides that, should USAir reduce its workforce, targeted full-time employees will "be permitted, if there are insufficient full-time positions within the classification, to displace, in seniority order, the most junior full-time employees in the classification on the system."
The meaning of Article 12, Section C first came into question in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when USAir decided to furlough approximately 2,700 passenger service employees. As a part of USAir's reorganization, the airline closed operations at ten small-station locations like Huntsville, Alabama; Columbia, South Carolina; and Roanoke, Virginia. Plaintiffs are all former long-time passenger service employees of USAir who worked at these locations and who were terminated or reassigned as a result of USAir's furloughs. As passenger service employees, Jeffreys and the other plaintiffs were all members of the CWA at the time of USAir's reorganization.
When USAir announced its job cutbacks, it proceeded according to the system that it had used prior to the 1999 collective bargaining agreement. The airline began by offering the displaced employees an opportunity to bid for jobs held by more junior employees at other airports. USAir determined how many displaced employees wished to bid for jobs at other locations, and then it prepared a "juniority" list of employees subject to being "bumped." For example, in the present case, if all 2,700 displaced employees desired jobs elsewhere with USAir (and they were all relatively senior workers), then USAir's 2,700 newest employees would have been subject to being bumped.
In addition to creating the juniority list, USAir sent furlough and displacement packages to potentially affected employees that allowed them to bid on any of USAir's other locations. The displacement bid forms were distributed not only to senior workers at closed stations like Huntsville and Roanoke, but also to junior employees in other cities like Charlotte and Philadelphia who were on the juniority list and thus subject to being bumped. In this way, just as a Huntsville employee with several years' seniority might bump a Charlotte employee on the juniority list, so too could the Charlotte employee bump an even more junior agent on the list. USAir's system permitted unlimited "ricochet" or secondary bumping within those employees on the juniority list.
USAir processed the bids using this system of sequential bumping on Saturday, October 6, 2001. One of the CWA's local union presidents observed without objection the company's processing of the displacement bids, and USAir announced the results on the following Monday, October 8. Because the plaintiffs had considerable seniority (ranging from 16 to 31 years), they had bid on locations of their choice at which they knew more junior employees were working. Based on their seniority, Jeffreys and the other plaintiffs received their first choices of job assignments. However, on Tuesday, October 9, the day after USAir had announced the bid results James Root, President of CWA Local 3641 in Charlotte, North Carolina, submitted a formal Grievance challenging the method by which USAir had reassigned its employees.
According to the Grievance, the 1999 collective bargaining agreement was not meant to codify the airline's prior displacement practices; rather, it was intended to establish a new system of displacement. Specifically, Article 12, Section C did not permit senior employees to displace any more junior employee. Rather, the provision permitted senior employees to displace only "the most junior full-time employees" elsewhere in the airline. In short, the Grievance claimed, there was to be no "ricochet" bumping: the most senior employee to be furloughed had to bid on the location where the most junior employee was working in order to be successful. This process, continued in order of seniority, would result in one-for-one, rather than sequential, displacements.
The Grievance generated much consternation. Plaintiffs objected that the Grievance's interpretation ignored Article 12, Section C's use of the plural "employees." A system of one-for-one displacements, as the Grievance envisioned, would allow a senior employee to displace only the singlemost junior employee, and not more junior "employees," as the text of Article 12, Section C states. In addition, according to Jeffreys and the other plaintiffs, Root's Grievance was merely a self-serving attempt to protect Charlotte-based USAir workers. Charlotte is one of USAir's hubs and largest locations, and once the bid results were announced on October 8, it became clear that senior employees from the ten closed stations had displaced roughly fifty-five junior employees in Charlotte. For instance, Jeffreys, who had thirty-one years' seniority, was awarded his bid to work in Charlotte.
The Grievance occasioned quick action from the union's leadership. Rick Braswell, Assistant to the President of the CWA and chief CWA spokesperson during negotiations over the collective bargaining agreement, held a conference call on October 10 with Presidents of the CWA Local Unions and key CWA staff members. The group concluded that USAir's bid results conflicted with the CWA's understanding of the collective bargaining agreement, and thus that the Grievance was meritorious. USAir soon agreed to settle the Grievance, but the airline refused to slow down its reorganization by delaying the implementation of furloughs or sending out new bid packages. Instead, the employees' original displacement bid forms were to be reprocessed under the method articulated in the Grievance. The CWA Local Union Presidents and the CWA staff discussed the proposed settlement in two more conference calls on Thursday, October 11, and the CWA and USAir executed the settlement agreement later that day.
The new system changed USAir's initial job awards. Under the initial awards, all fifteen of the plaintiffs received their preferred assignments, with eleven of them displacing employees in Charlotte. However, once the bids were reprocessed under the new system, the plaintiffs were either furloughed or reassigned to less desirable stations. Eleven of the plaintiffs were furloughed, because they had bid only choice locations like Charlotte. Charlotte's workers, although they had less seniority than the plaintiffs, still had more seniority than USAir employees in less popular locations. In other words, the Charlotte workers were not the "most junior" USAir employees, and so they were no longer eligible to be bumped by the plaintiffs. The four plaintiffs who had bid on less preferred locations received assignments in Philadelphia. Thus the net effect of the Grievance was to reduce the total number of displacements system-wide, but to do so by replacing very junior employees with very senior employees while leaving in place those employees with mid-range seniority.
The plaintiffs sought damages and injunctive relief, alleging that the CWA had breached its duty of fair representation in urging USAir to alter its initial job awards. After...
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