Moore v. Local Union No. 89, Intern. Broth. of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America
| Decision Date | 13 February 1962 |
| Citation | 356 S.W.2d 241 |
| Parties | C. W. MOORE, Appellant, v. LOCAL UNION NO. 89, INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, CHAUFFEURS, WAREHOUSEMEN AND HELPERS OF AMERICA et al., Appellees. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky |
John Young Brown, Louisville, for appellant.
Ralph H. Logan, Louisville, Hardy, Logan & Tross, Newell N. Fowler, Memphis, Tenn., for appellees.
This injunction suit brought as a class action by a member of a labor union questions the right of the union and the plaintiff's employer, Dealers Transport Company, to carry out the terms of a decision relating to job seniority rights. The decision in question was reached through the grievance procedure set forth in contract between the union and the employer. The chancellor upheld the decision and denied relief.
Dealers Transport Company, of Memphis, Tennessee, and E & L Transport Company, of Detroit, Michigan, were competitors in the transportation of new automobiles and trucks from the Louisville assembly plant of the Ford Motor Company. With the development of multi-level or 'piggy-back' railroad shipments they began to lose business, and Ford advised both companies that eventually there would be room for only one of them. Following discussions over a period of 1 1/2 to 2 years it was agreed between Dealers and E & L that E & L would withdraw, leaving the Louisville field to Dealers. This arrangement does not involve the sale or transfer of any equipment, facilities, or other property, but an application has been made to the Interstate Commerce Commission for the transfer to Dealers of E & L's authority to make 'secondary' rens out of Louisville. For this transfer Dealers is to pay a nominal consideration covering the expense of the transaction. There was and is no agreement between the companies calling for a transfer of any employees from one to the other.
Because of the increased competition from both rail and water shippers, Dealers and E & L decided also that it would be advisable for each of them to retrench by drawing its operations closer to home. So, at the same time the application was made for a transfer of E & L's secondary authority out of Louisville to Dealers, two other applications were submitted to the I.C.C., as follows:
(1) To authorize the sale and transfer to E & L of Dealers' initial authority out of Lorraine, Ohio, along with physical assets such as tractors, shop equipment, and terminal facilities there located.
(2) To authorize the sale and transfer to Dealers of E & L's secondary authority to serve New Orleans and Shreveport, Louisiana, and Jackson, Mississippi.
It was emphasized in the testimony that each of these proposed transfers is separate, none being contingent on either of the others. All are pending before the I.C.C.
Most if not all of the labor forces at both Dealers and E & L are members of Local Union No. 89, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, which in turn is 'affiliated' with two autonomous but apparently interlocking organizations, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America and the National Truckaway and Driveaway Conference. For convenience we shall refer to these three organizations as the Local Union, the International, and the National Conference.
The Teamsters Union, as it is commonly called, has represented the employees of E & L and its predecessors in business for over 20 years and has represented the Dealers employees since 1955 or 1956. The National Conference, in behalf of its member local unions, is the exclusive representative of the employees for purposes of collective bargaining, and its standard contract for the period March 1, 1961, to February 29, 1964, printed in booklet form, has been separately executed by Dealers and by E & L. In each instance the agreement is signed by the Local, the National Conference, and the employer, but not by the International as such.
The standard contract secures job seniority rights to the employees. These rights are established, broadly speaking, on a terminal or local rather than a companywide basis. For example, Article 4, Sec. 1, says: 'Terminal seniority shall prevail at all times except as provided for in Article 4, Section 6, Subsection (b)2.' The latter subsection provides that if a branch or terminal is closed or partially closed and its work transferred to another branch or terminal an employee transferring from one to the other shall go to the bottom of the seniority board for purposes of job selection but shall exercise his company seniority for lay-off purposes and all other contract benefits. When a new branch or terminal is opened a new seniority board is established, and an employee who transfers to it from another location loses his seniority rights at the old terminal at the end of 2 years. (In the case of Dealers, which established its Louisville terminal in 1955, there was a special exception under which the first 50 employees transferring from Memphis were permitted, for some reason not disclosed in the record, to carry with them their original seniority dates.)
The standard contract (Article 7, Section 2) further provides a grievance procedure under which 'disputes' shall first be taken up between the employer and the local union involved. On their failure to agree the dispute is taken before a 'Local Joint Committee' composed of both union and management representatives. If this committee cannot resolve the controversy it may be appealed to a body called the Automobile Transporters Joint Conference Committee (hereinafter called the Detroit committee), which consists of both labor and industrywide management representatives. When this panel is unable to agree the matter must be submitted to further arbitration.
Though E & L is still operating in Louisville, in August of 1961, when this controversy developed, a shift of business from E & L to Dealers obviously was taking place. As E & L began to drop its men employment at Dealers increased. Some of the E & L men were taken on by Dealers, but as the layoffs at E & L accelerated it was inevitable that there would be no room at Dealers for any more. Then it was that two of the former employees of E & L filed with the Local Union a grievance claiming that they and other displaced employees of E & L were entitled to employment by Dealers through a merger of the respective seniority lists of the two companies.
Without taking the question up with Dealers (thereby omitting the first step in the grievance procedure), the Local Union submitted it to the Local Joint Committee, where, at the recommendation of one of its members, Paul Priddy, president of the Local Union, it was 'deadlocked,' meaning that the Local Joint Committee decided to pass the problem to the Detroit committee for solution. The Dealers employees were disturbed at this turn of events, but their apprehensions were allayed by assurances from Mr. Priddy's assistant that they were protected by their terminal seniority rights and were not in any trouble. Three of these men attended the Detroit hearing, where they expected their interests to be represented and upheld by Mr. Priddy. But, like the innocent little oysters who took the famous walk with the walrus, they were mistaken, for, according to the testimony of Dealers' personnel manager, when Mr. Priddy had suggested to the Local Joint Committee that the grievance be 'deadlocked' and sent to Detroit he remarked 'that he knew Mr. Hoffa's thinking on matters of this nature and that these men were going to be sandwiched in.' (Mr Hoffa was president of the International, chairman of the National Conference, and chairman of the Detroit committee.)
When the grievance was called on the docket of cases being heard before the Detroit committee, Mr. Priddy, who also was one of the members of that tribunal, vacated the bench, as was customary for the committee members to do when their own cases were involved. At this time he informed the three Dealers employees, to their surprise and consternation, that he was going to take a stand in favor of merging the Dealers and E & L seniority boards. Representing the Local Union, he thereupon proceeded to state the grievance to the Detroit committee and successfully recommend its solution on that basis. The decision of the Detroit committee, announced of few days after the hearing, was to the effect that the seniority registers of Dealers and E & L at Louisville were to be merged within 30 days.
E & L's Louisville terminal evidently...
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