Mohr v. Metro East Mfg. Co.

• Decision Date: 24 June 1983
• Docket Number: No. 82-2156,82-2156
• Citation: 711 F.2d 69
• Parties: 113 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 3208, 97 Lab.Cas. P 10,237 Kenneth MOHR, on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. METRO EAST MFG. CO., and International Molders and Allied Workers Union, Local 220, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 69

711 F.2d 69

113 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 3208, 97 Lab.Cas. P 10,237

Kenneth MOHR, on behalf of himself and all others similarly

situated, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. METRO EAST MFG. CO., and International Molders and Allied

Workers Union, Local 220, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 82-2156.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued Feb. 18, 1983.

Decided June 24, 1983.

George R. Ripplinger, Jr., Ripplinger, Dixon & Hoffman, Belleville, Ill., for plaintiffs-appellants.

John O. Harris, Harris, Dowell, Risher, McCarthy & Kaemmerer, Fontaine, Chesterfield, Mo., Brad L. Badgley, Belleville, Ill., for defendants-appellees.

Before CUMMINGS, Chief Judge, and PELL and POSNER, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

This appeal requires us to consider the application of the parol evidence rule to collective bargaining agreements. The defendant company, Metro East, upon its formation in 1967 joined an employers' association for industry-wide collective bargaining. The association negotiated the same year a collective bargaining agreement with the International Molders and Allied Workers Union, recognizing "the Union as the exclusive bargaining agent for all employees in the plant[s] of members of the Association." Metro East became bound by this agreement as a member of the association, and it also negotiated a supplemental agreement with a local (the other defendant in the case) of the Molders and Allied Workers Union. Both agreements were renewed at three-year intervals with no material change until 1980, when the supplemental agreement was modified to state explicitly that the unit represented by the union did not include "school boys"--part-time teen-age workers who are paid the minimum wage to do janitorial and other cleaning-up types of job.

The plaintiff, who had worked as a "school boy" for the company before 1980, brought this suit under section 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 185(a), alleging that he had been entitled under the collective bargaining agreement to union wages during his time with the company, and naming the union as an additional defendant because it refused to press his grievance against the company. If his claim against the company is no good, we need not consider his claim against the union or his challenge to the district court's refusal to certify his case as a class action on behalf of "school boys."

It is undisputed that the company has never paid union wages to the school boys and that this had been agreed upon between the company and the local union from the start; and it was on this basis that the district court dismissed the complaint on the defendants' motion for summary judgment. But until 1980, their agreement on this point had never been reduced to writing, and the plaintiff argues that evidence of the oral agreement was inadmissible under the parole evidence rule.

The law of contracts that is applied in suits under section 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act to enforce collective bargaining agreements is federal common law, rather than the law of the state where the agreement is signed or performed, or of any other state. Textile Workers Union v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U.S. 448, 77 S.Ct. 912, 1 L.Ed.2d 972 (1957). It is common in other areas of federal common law for the court to adopt as the federal common law rule the law of the state whose law would govern under normal conflict of laws principles, see, e.g., Powers v. United States Postal Serv., 671 F.2d 1041, 1043 (7th Cir.1982); FDIC v. Braemoor Associates, 686 F.2d 550, 554 (7th Cir.1982), in this case Illinois. The argument for following this approach in section 301 cases as well is that since there is no comprehensive federal common law of collective bargaining contracts, the presumption would make it easier for unions and employers to draft such contracts against a known, definite, and complete background of contract law. However, the Supreme Court has opted for uniform rules for questions of contract formation, as distinct from remedy, under section 301. See Local 174, Teamsters Union v. Lucas Flour Co., 369 U.S. 95, 104, 82 S.Ct. 571, 577, 7 L.Ed.2d 593 (1962); International Union, United Auto Workers v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp., 383 U.S. 696, 702- 03, 86 S.Ct. 1107, 1111-1112, 16 L.Ed.2d 192 (1966). Although the parol evidence rule has a procedural name, it is in fact a rule of contract formation and we are therefore obliged to apply a uniform national parol evidence rule rather than the parol evidence rule of a particular state.

The...