Local 13, Int. Longshoremen's & WU v. Pacific Mar. Ass'n

• Decision Date: 14 May 1971
• Docket Number: No. 22670.,22670.
• Citation: 441 F.2d 1061
• Parties: LOCAL 13, INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN'S AND WAREHOUSEMEN'S UNION, Appellants, v. PACIFIC MARITIME ASSOCIATION and International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

441 F.2d 1061 (1971)

LOCAL 13, INTERNATIONAL LONGSHOREMEN'S AND WAREHOUSEMEN'S UNION, Appellants, v. PACIFIC MARITIME ASSOCIATION and International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, Appellees.

No. 22670.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

April 21, 1971.

Rehearing Denied May 14, 1971.

Kenneth W. Gale (argued), San Pedro, Cal., for appellants.

Richard Ernst (argued), Dennis Daniels, San Francisco, Cal., Richard Patsey (argued), Norman Leonard of Gladstein, Andersen, Leonard & Sibbett, San Francisco, Cal., for appellees.

Before BROWNING and CARTER, Circuit Judges, and ^*PENCE, District Judge.

BROWNING, Circuit Judge:

This is an action by a local union under section 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 185, to set aside an arbitration award rendered under a collective bargaining agreement between the parent union and an employers' association. The district court entered summary judgment against the local. 278 F.Supp. 755 (C.D.Cal.1967). We reverse.

The Pacific Maritime Association is an organization of steamship, stevedoring, and terminal companies doing business on the pacific Coast. The International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union is the exclusive bargaining representative of longshoremen in the area. Local 13 is the International's constituent local in the harbor areas of Los Angeles and Long Beach, California. This controversy centers around a member of Local 13, Pete Velasquez.

The Association and the International are parties to a collective bargaining agreement covering substantially all longshore work on the Pacific Coast.¹ Available work is distributed among longshoremen "registered" in accordance with the agreement. Velasquez became a fully registered longshoreman in 1953. He served as an official of Local 13 on "leave of absence" from his longshore employment from 1962 until October 1964, when he returned to active work as a longshoreman. In early December 1964, the employers' association initiated a grievance proceeding against Velasquez, complaining that he had repeatedly caused illegal work stoppages, both as an official of Local 13 and as a working longshoreman, and requesting his "deregistration" pursuant to section 17.81 of the contract.²

The employers' complaint was processed through the contract grievance procedure, culminating in an arbitration award in June 1965 that "deregistered" Velasquez, depriving him of the opportunity to obtain employment as a longshoreman on the Pacific Coast. Local 13 then commenced this action against the employers' association and the International union to set the award aside.³

The arbitrator's award was based primarily upon work stoppages that occurred while Velasquez was acting as an officer of Local 13. As will appear, Local 13's basic contention both in the grievance proceedings and in this litigation is that section 17.81 was not intended to apply to union officers and cannot be applied to them lawfully.

I

Local 13 attacks the arbitrator's award on two theories. The first is that Local 13 is suing in its own right as a party to the grievance proceedings; in that capacity it challenges the award on the grounds specified in section 10 of the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. § 10.⁴

The second theory is that Local 13 is suing as the representative of its member, Velasquez; in that capacity it attacks the award on the ground that the International union did not accord Velasquez his right to fair representation in the grievance proceedings as required by Ford Motor Co. v. Huffman, 345 U.S. 330, 73 S.Ct. 681, 97 L.Ed. 1048 (1953); Humphrey v. Moore, 375 U.S. 335, 84 S. Ct. 363, 11 L.Ed.2d 370 (1964); and Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171, 87 S.Ct. 903, 17 L.Ed.2d 842 (1967).

Although many of the considerations pressed by Local 13 may be relevant to either theory, the legal standards measuring whether a cause of action exists under the two theories are quite different. It is important to note at the outset, therefore, that the local may not challenge the award under the Federal Arbitration Act.

Assuming that the Arbitration Act is part of "the substantive * * * federal law, which the courts must fashion from the policy of our national labor laws" to govern suits under section 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act,⁵ Textile Workers Union, etc. v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U.S. 448, 456, 77 S.Ct. 912, 918, 1 L.Ed.2d 972 (1957), Local 13 may proceed under section 10 of the Arbitration Act only if it was a "party to the arbitration." 9 U.S.C. § 10. See Acuff v. United Papermakers & Paperworkers, 404 F.2d 169, 171 n. 2 (5th Cir. 1968). Local 13 was not such a party.

The opening recitation of the collective bargaining agreement is that the contract is one "by and between Pacific Maritime Association (hereinafter called `the Association'), on behalf of its members * * * and the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (hereinafter designated as `the Union'), on behalf of itself and each and all of its longshore locals." The contract also declares that "the parties hereto are" the employers' association and the International union. Section 17, which details the grievance procedures, refers to the "parties," the "Union," and the "Employer" (or "Association"). Nowhere in section 17 are the locals mentioned.

The intention to vest control over grievance procedures in the International union on the one hand and the employers' association on the other seems as clear as language could make it short of explicit statement. Thus interpreted, the contract allocates power over grievance procedures in accordance with current notions of the arrangement most conducive to industrial peace. Local Union 12405, Dist. 50, U.M.W. v. Martin Marietta Corp., 328 F.2d 945, 947-949 (7th Cir. 1964); cf. Black-Clawson Co., etc. v. International Ass'n of Machinists, 313 F.2d 179, 183-184, 186 (2d Cir. 1962).

As Local 13 points out, its officers handled the presentation of the opposition to the employers' grievance during the first three steps of the grievance procedure, and the opinion of the arbitrator filed at the third stage named Local 13 as respondent.⁶ However, there is nothing in the language of the contract to suggest a difference between the first three stages and the last two — in all five steps the parent union, not the locals or the individual employees, is designated as the party on the union side. Accordingly, Local 13 must be regarded as having acted as the International's agent in the first stages of the proceeding. Moreover, the five-step procedure was a single, continuous, integrated process — the decision reached at the first three stages was supplanted by the disposition of the same grievance at the fourth stage, and this in turn by the arbitration award that concluded the fifth stage.⁷ Local 13 was not a party to the final two steps, either formally or in fact.

We conclude, therefore, that Local 13 was not a "party" to the arbitration and may not challenge the award on the grounds available on direct review under the Federal Arbitration Act, assuming the latter statute applies to a section 301(a) suit or furnishes a "`guiding analogy.'" Engineers Ass'n v. Sperry Gyroscope Co., 251 F.2d 133, 136 (2d Cir. 1957).

We turn to Local 13's attack upon the award in its capacity as the representative of Pete Velasquez.

II

The substance of Velasquez's claim is that he was wrongly "deregistered" under section 17.81 of the collective bargaining contract. An individual employee may bring suit for breach of such a contract in a federal district court under section 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act (Smith v. Evening News Ass'n, 371 U.S. 195, 200, 83 S.Ct. 267, 9 L.Ed.2d 246 (1962)), and such a suit may be brought on the employee's behalf by his union. International Union, United Aerospace and Agr. Implement Workers, etc. v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp., 383 U.S. 696, 699-700, 86 S.Ct. 1107, 16 L.Ed.2d 192 (1966).

An employee's right to litigate the merits of a claim that a bargaining agreement has been breached to his injury is limited by the agreement's remedial provisions. "Since the employee's claim is based upon breach of the collective bargaining agreement, he is bound by terms of that agreement which govern the manner in which contractual rights may be enforced." Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171, 184, 87 S.Ct. 903, 914, 17 L.Ed.2d 842 (1967). See Republic Steel Corp. v. Maddox, 379 U.S. 650, 652, 85 S.Ct. 614, 13 L.Ed.2d 580 (1965). Accordingly, if the contract establishes an administrative remedy and makes it exclusive, the employee is bound by these provisions, with exceptions to be noted. The threshold inquiry, therefore, is whether the contract involved here provided an exclusive administrative remedy with respect to deregistration for illegal work stoppages that would bar suit by the deregistered employee.

As noted earlier, the contract vested control of the grievance procedure in the International union rather than in the locals or in individual employees. Employer complaints of violation of the prohibition against illegal work stoppages were subject to these procedures. See particularly, sections 17.15, 17.52. The contract provided that these procedures were "the exclusive remedy"; and "no other remedies shall be utilized by any person with respect to any dispute involving this Agreement until the grievance procedure has been exhausted." Section 17.15. Moreover, fifth-stage arbitration awards, like that involved here, were declared to be "final and conclusive." Section 17.27. The only reasonable conclusion from these provisions is that the administrative procedures detailed in the contract were intended to provide the exclusive remedy for claims of breach of the provisions regarding illegal work stoppages.

The local argues, however, that it was beyond the arbitrator's power to deregister Velasquez under section 17.81 because the work stoppages for which Velasquez was deregistered occurred while he...