Machinists Local # 964 v. Bf Goodrich Group

Citation387 F.3d 1046
Decision Date01 November 2004
Docket NumberNo. 03-55085.,03-55085.
PartiesINTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MACHINISTS AND AEROSPACE WORKERS, LOCAL LODGE 964, Defendant-cross-claimant-Appellee, v. BF GOODRICH AEROSPACE AEROSTRUCTURES GROUP, Plaintiff-cross-defendant-Appellant.
CourtU.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Thomas J. Kennedy, Phoenix, AZ, for the plaintiff-appellant.

David A. Rosenfeld, M. Suzanne Murphy, and John Plotz, Oakland, CA, and James Rutkowski, Los Angeles, CA, for the defendant-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California; Virginia A. Phillips, District Judge, Presiding. D.C. No. CV-02-00331-VAP.

Before KOZINSKI, O'SCANNLAIN, and SILVERMAN, Circuit Judges.

O'SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge.

We must decide whether provisions of a collective bargaining agreement requiring a corporate employer to pay salary and benefits to a full-time union representative violate the federal Labor Management Relations Act.

I

BF Goodrich Aerospace Aerostructures Group ("Goodrich") and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Local Lodge 964 ("the union") are longstanding parties to a collective bargaining agreement ("the agreement").1 Pursuant to the agreement, union members elect a "Chief Shop Steward" who continues to draw his salary and benefits while working primarily on "the investigation and prosecution of union grievances."2

In May 2000, James Cifu ("Cifu") was elected Chief Shop Steward after serving nearly 20 years as a maintenance mechanic at Goodrich's Riverside, California plant. Throughout his tenure at Riverside, Cifu was an exceptionally dedicated worker who always had requested and worked as many overtime hours as possible. Indeed, during the years preceding his election, Cifu testified that he had averaged the equivalent of 365 working days per year.

Following his election and in accord with the agreement, Cifu retained his formal classification as a maintenance mechanic, and he continued to draw full salary and benefits from Goodrich. Unlike any of his predecessors, however, he also continued to volunteer for overtime maintenance mechanic work assignments—assignments that exceeded the scope of his duties as a full-time Chief Shop Steward. Even though overtime assignments were always available when Cifu volunteered, and despite the fact that Goodrich often had to hire subcontractors to perform needed mechanical work because too few of the company's regular maintenance mechanics volunteered for weekend overtime, Goodrich routinely denied Cifu's requests.

Cifu eventually filed a grievance alleging that Goodrich's refusal to assign him overtime hours on the same basis as other classified maintenance mechanics violated the agreement. An arbitration hearing was held August 30, 2001, and on January 18, 2002, arbitrator Mei Bickner ruled that Goodrich's conduct had violated the agreement. She promptly ordered Goodrich to "make the Grievant whole." On April 17, 2002, Goodrich filed suit in the Central District of California seeking to vacate the arbitration award on grounds that it violated provisions of the Labor Management Relations Act ("LMRA")3 and the National Labor Relations Act ("NLRA").4

On May 14, 2002, Goodrich amended its complaint to request a declaratory judgment voiding those provisions of the agreement requiring the company to pay salary and benefits to the Chief Shop Steward, arguing that such payments were prohibited by LMRA. On June 5, 2002, the union simultaneously answered Goodrich's amended complaint and filed a cross-petition seeking confirmation of the arbitral award. The parties eventually agreed to a joint stipulation of facts regarding the Chief Shop Steward's responsibilities, and in mid-November filed competing motions for summary judgment.

On December 20, 2002, the district court entered an order denying Goodrich's motion for summary judgment and granting the union's motion for summary judgment, the effect of which was to affirm the arbitral award and to "uphold[ ] all provisions of the [agreement]" relating to Goodrich's payments to the Chief Shop Steward. Shortly after Goodrich filed a timely notice of appeal, the parties fully resolved the underlying dispute regarding the Chief Shop Steward's entitlement to overtime work. The sole claim pressed by Goodrich on appeal is that the agreement's requirement that the company fully compensate a full-time union steward violates LMRA, and the only relief the company seeks is a declaratory judgment invalidating and severing the allegedly offending provisions from the remaining agreement.

II

Before reaching the merits of Goodrich's appeal, we must address whether this litigation continues to present a live case or controversy. Parties to a federal action must "continue to have a personal stake in the outcome of the lawsuit" at every stage of the proceedings. United States v. Verdin, 243 F.3d 1174, 1177 (9th Cir.2001), (quoting Spencer v. Kemna, 523 U.S. 1,7, 118 S.Ct. 978, 140 L.Ed.2d 43 (1998), (quoting Lewis v. Cont'l Bank Corp., 494 U.S. 472, 477, 110 S.Ct. 1249, 108 L.Ed.2d 400 (1990))) (internal quotation marks omitted). "This means that, throughout the litigation, the plaintiff must have suffered, or be threatened with, an actual injury traceable to the defendant and likely to be redressed by a favorable judicial decision." Spencer v. Kemna, 523 U.S. at 7, 118 S.Ct. 978 (1998) (quoting Lewis, 494 U.S. at 477, 110 S.Ct. 1249). The parties' agreement that this case remains justiciable does not vitiate our responsibility to consider sua sponte our jurisdiction over this appeal. See Dittman v. California, 191 F.3d 1020, 1025 (9th Cir.1999).

The jurisdictional pressure point in this case stems from the fact that, shortly after Goodrich filed this appeal, the parties' agreement expired. One might plausibly argue that because the particular contractual clauses Goodrich wishes to have the court declare illegal are no longer operative, a declaratory judgment invalidating them would have no practical effect.

We are not so sure. Courts long "have been aggressive in determining that a [collective bargaining] dispute remains live because the disputed issue continues to shape the parties' periodic bargaining or day-to-day interaction." Kennecott Utah Copper Corp. v. Becker, 186 F.3d 1261, 1266 (10th Cir.1999) (citing Jacksonville Bulk Terminals, Inc. v. Int'l Longshoremen's Ass'n, 457 U.S. 702, 704 n. 1, 102 S.Ct. 2672, 73 L.Ed.2d 327 (1982); Super Tire Eng'g Co. v. McCorkle, 416 U.S. 115, 121-25, 94 S.Ct. 1694, 40 L.Ed.2d 1 (1974); Int'l Bhd. of Teamsters v. Southwest Airlines Co., 875 F.2d 1129, 1132-33 (5th Cir. 1989) (en banc)).

Thus, in holding that litigation concerning provisions of an expired collective bargaining agreement was not moot, the Tenth Circuit found particularly significant the fact that "clauses in the current [agreement] recapitulate verbatim the clauses in the [predecessor agreement] interpreted by the award," so that any resolution of issues arising out of the parties' prior agreement would likely impact their ongoing relationship. Kennecott Utah Copper, 186 F.3d at 1266. Sitting en banc, the Fifth Circuit has noted that, in renewing provisions of an agreement that had expired during the course of litigation, the parties had preserved a live controversy by "negotiat[ing] a new agreement without resolving th[eir] dispute." Southwest Airlines, 875 F.2d at 1133. And the Third Circuit has held that even where challenged provisions of a collective bargaining agreement are enacted with modifications, disputes arising out of the prior agreement are "moot only if the action or inaction of which [the plaintiff] complains is entirely unlikely to recur, or if the [union's] obligations under the [new] contract are so different from those under the [old] agreement that the parties could derive no judgment preclusion benefit from an adjudication based on past conduct." Bituminous Coal Operators' Ass'n, Inc. v. United Mine Workers, 585 F.2d 586, 599 (3rd Cir.1978).

Our sister circuits' approach is persuasive. Where parties to a legal action renew without material modification a disputed element of a collective bargaining agreement that has expired during pending litigation, such that the conduct called for by the challenged provision continues during the course of their legal action, or such that the provision or provisions in question otherwise continue to impact the parties' ongoing relationship, an action seeking a declaratory judgment concerning the legality of such provisions is appropriately subject to continued federal jurisdiction. Not only does this rule ensure that, throughout the course of litigation, the plaintiff will continue to face an ongoing injury traceable to the challenged conduct and redressable by judicial action, it promotes orderly development of the law by ensuring full judicial review of such disputes. Indeed, given that most collective bargaining agreements last just two to three years,5 few cases seeking a declaratory judgment regarding the legality of bargaining provisions could proceed beyond district court review if the parties' mutual acquiescence in renewal of the pertinent provisions failed to preserve the live character of their controversy.

Here, the parties renewed the relevant provisions of their collective bargaining agreement during the course of this litigation, and they did so without resolving the dispute presently before us. The only arguably significant change they made to the pertinent provisions of the agreement was to codify explicitly what the arbitrator had held to be implicit in the parties' prior agreement: that the Chief Shop Steward is entitled to work overtime assignments within his formal job classification (in Cifu's case, as a maintenance mechanic) on roughly the same basis as other employees who are so classified. That alteration has little to do with the...

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