Local Union 112, Intern. Broth. of Elec. Workers, AFL-CIO v. Bray

• Decision Date: 06 April 1989
• Docket Number: AFL-CI,No. 55257-6,P,55257-6
• Citation: 770 P.2d 634,112 Wn.2d 253
• Parties: , 112 Lab.Cas. P 56,097, 114 Lab.Cas. P 11,818 LOCAL UNION 112, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS,etitioner, v. Victor BRAY, Robert Bort, Joseph Purczynski and Jimmie M. Scott, Respondents.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court

Page 253

112 Wn.2d 253

770 P.2d 634, 112 Lab.Cas. P 56,097,

114 Lab.Cas. P 11,818

LOCAL UNION 112, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS, AFL-CIO, Petitioner, v. Victor BRAY, Robert Bort, Joseph Purczynski and Jimmie M Scott, Respondents.

No. 55257-6.

Supreme Court of Washington En Banc.

April 6, 1989.

Critchlow & Williams, David E. Williams, Robert D. Merriman, Richland, for petitioner.

Hovis, Cockrill, Weaver & Bjur, Pat Cockrill, Yakima, for respondents Bray & Bort.

John S. Biggs, Kennewick, for respondents Purczynski & Scott.

ANDERSEN, Justice.

This is a union discipline case.

Local Union 112, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), AFL-CIO, (hereinafter the Local), fined several of its members for violating its rules, primarily its rule against working on nonunion jobs. The fines assessed against the four union members who are parties to this appeal are as follows:

Victor Bray, $8,416, reduced to $4,208 on certain conditions;

Robert Bort, $8,416, reduced to $4,208 on certain conditions;

Joseph Purczynski, $12,624, reduced to $6,312 on certain conditions; and

Jimmie M. Scott, $4,000, with $2,000 suspended on certain conditions.

The IBEW constitution ¹ includes a list of 19 offenses for which a member may be penalized, ² then concludes:

Any member convicted of any one or more of the above-named offenses may be assessed or suspended, or both, or expelled.

The constitution contains no provision for the enforcement of assessments or fines in a court of law. Rather, all assessments are charged "against the member as regular dues and must be paid within the time required to protect the member's continuous good standing and benefits." ³ The constitution also provides that any member having past due indebtedness to the union for assessments "shall stand suspended" and generally cannot be reinstated until they have been paid. ⁴ The bylaws of the Local contain nothing pertinent to the issue before us.

On March 19, 1985, the Local filed a suit in the Superior Court for Yakima County seeking to recover from its four aforesaid members the sum of the reduced assessments noted, plus 12 percent interest from June 2, 1984, except in the case of member Scott against whom interest was sought from November 5, 1983.

Answers and counterclaims were filed by union members Purczynski and Scott, and apparently also by members Bray and Bort. ⁵

The Superior Court referred the case to an arbitrator who, after hearings, held for the union members and dismissed the complaint against them. The parties agreed that the counterclaims would be referred back to the Superior Court. The Local then requested a trial de novo in the Superior Court. Motions for summary judgment were thereafter filed by the four union members and were ultimately granted by the Superior Court. The members' counterclaims were not ruled on by the trial court but were ordered preserved for trial. The Superior Court also ruled that "[f]or purposes of RAP 2.2(d) the Court finds that there is no just reason for delay and this order shall constitute a final judgment of dismissal" of the Local's claims against the four union member defendants. Attorneys' fees and costs were awarded to the members. ⁶

The Local appealed and the Court of Appeals affirmed by an unpublished opinion. ⁷ That court granted attorneys' fees on appeal to union members Bray and Bort, ⁸ but not to union members Purczynski and Scott. ⁹

We granted the Local's petition for discretionary review. ¹⁰ One issue is presented.

ISSUE

May fines assessed by a union local against certain of its members be judicially enforced by obtaining a civil judgment against the union members in state court?

DECISION

CONCLUSION. Yes, but only if specific authorization therefor is granted by the union's constitution or governing rules adopted pursuant thereto. There was no such authorization in this case.

It is the law of this state that "[t]he constitution of a labor organization and the rules adopted pursuant thereto form a contract between the association, on the one hand, and its members, on the other." ¹¹ This is also the prevailing view in other courts, both state and federal. ¹² In this regard, " '[t]he courts' role is but to enforce the contract.' " ¹³

After analyzing pertinent federal labor statutes, and applying the foregoing contract theory, the United States Supreme Court concluded that "[a] union rule, duly adopted and not the arbitrary fiat of a union officer, forbidding the crossing of a picket line during a strike was therefore enforceable against voluntary union members by expulsion or a reasonable fine." ¹⁴ The Supreme Court also concluded that "[u]nless the rule or its enforcement impinges on some policy of the federal labor law, the regulation of the relationship between union and employee is a contractual matter governed by local law." (Italics ours.) ¹⁵

The law is now "well-settled that a labor union may impose monetary fines upon its members to enforce compliance with its valid rules or to penalize noncompliance, where such penalties are provided for by the constitution or governing rules of the organization, and the offending member is accorded 'due process' in the union proceedings." ¹⁶ Most of the cases dealing with this subject are state cases. ¹⁷ Our review of the many cases cited in an extensive annotation on the subject, ¹⁸ which includes cases from this state, ¹⁹ demonstrates that the foregoing principle is almost uniformly applied with the results in each case varying only as required by the contract law of the state in whose courts the case was filed, or by the language of the union constitution which is before the court and the facts of the particular case.

The leading case in our state is United Glass Workers' Local 188 v. Seitz, 65 Wash.2d 640, 399 P.2d 74, 13 A.L.R.3d 1000 (1965). Seitz fully accords with the foregoing principles, while making it clear that "the mode of discipline prescribed by the union's organic law must be followed." (Italics ours.) Seitz, at 641, 399 P.2d 74. This is a recognition of the labor law principle that "[a] union's constitution and bylaws are the measure of the authority conferred upon the organization to discipline, suspend, or expel its members." ²⁰ In affirming a summary judgment dismissing a union's suit on a fine assessed by it against one of its own members, the late Justice Hugh Rosellini, writing for the court in Seitz, declared the law as follows:

The constitution of the plaintiff union provides for the suspension or expulsion of a member who fails to pay a fine assessed against him. The plaintiff has pointed to no provision in the constitution and no facts outside it which would tend to rebut the presumption that the remedy provided in the constitution was meant to be exclusive. This is the mode of discipline available to the plaintiff, under its constitution, and it was evidently considered adequate when that constitution was adopted. In any event, it is the only mode to which the defendant member agreed to submit when he joined the union.

Seitz, at 642, 399 P.2d 74.

Seitz is directly in point. Here, as in Seitz, the union's constitution provides for the suspension or expulsion of a member who fails to pay a fine assessed by the Local against that member. Here, also as in Seitz, the Local did not seek suspension or expulsion of its members but instead brought suit in state court to convert the Local's fines into civil money judgments against its members. Here, again as in Seitz, the union constitution and bylaws contain "no provision for recovery of a fine in a court of law." ²¹ It follows that since the Local's complaint against its members in this case sought to do precisely what Seitz held a union had no authority to do without specific authorization in the constitution or bylaws, a summary judgment dismissing the Local's complaint was properly granted to the union members. ²²

We decline to overrule the holding of Seitz that a union cannot convert a fine imposed on one of its members in a union disciplinary proceeding into a civil judgment against the member in a state court unless the union constitution, or governing rules adopted pursuant thereto, specifically authorizes it to do so. It is only fair to union members that if a union-assessed fine can be converted into a civil money judgment against them, which, of course, would be enforceable by garnishment of the members' wages or attachment of the members' property, that the members be made aware of it by the union constitution or bylaws. Our holding is also fair to unions, because they can enforce union-imposed fines against their members in state court if they simply amend their constitutions and/or bylaws to so authorize. Some unions have done this though others have not; ²³ that is entirely up to the membership of the particular union. When Justice Rosellini wrote Seitz for this court over 20 years ago, he made it clear to one and all what had to be done in this regard and why.

The Local also argues that Seitz has been superseded by our recent opinion in Joinette v. Local 20, Hotel & Motel Restaurant Employees & Bartenders Union, 106 Wash.2d 355, 722 P.2d 83 (1986). We disagree.

As Joinette pointed out, that case concerned a suit brought in the superior court in accordance with the concurrent jurisdiction provisions ²⁴ of section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, (LMRA), 29 U.S.C. § 185 (1982). In Joinette, we simply acknowledged the obvious, that much labor law is governed by federal statute, and that when deciding an issue covered by federal statute (where we have the jurisdiction to do so) "substantive principles of federal labor law must be paramount in the area covered by the statute." ²⁵ The case before us is simply a suit on an indebtedness ²⁶ and does not purport to be a section 301 case. ²⁷

Furthermore, in this case, unlike Joinette, we are not confronted with a situation where "incompatible...