Republic Steel Corp. v. Maddox
| Decision Date | 13 December 1960 |
| Docket Number | 6 Div. 736 |
| Citation | 158 So.2d 487,42 Ala.App. 195 |
| Court | Alabama Court of Appeals |
| Parties | REPUBLIC STEEL CORPORATION v. Charlie MADDOX. |
Burr, McKamy, Moore & Thomas, Samuel H. Burr and Jas. R. Forman, Jr., Birmingham, for appellant.
Brobston, Jones & Brobston, Bessemer, for appellee.
This appeal is taken by appellant from a judgment rendered by the circuit court of Jefferson County in favor of the appellee, plaintiff below.
Plaintiff filed suit to recover severance pay alleged to be due under a collective bargaining agreement entered into by defendant and the labor union of which plaintiff was a member. The agreement provided:
'When, in the sole judgment of the company, it decides to close permanently a department of a mine or plant, or substantial portion thereof and terminate the employment of individuals, an employee whose employment is terminated either directly as a result thereof because he was not entitled to other employment with the Company under the provisions of Section 9 of this agreement--Seniority and subsection C of this Section 14, shall be entitled to a severance allowance in accordance with and subject to the provisions hereinafter set forth in this Section 14.'
The case was tried by the court without a jury on stipulated facts. For the purposes of this suit, the effect of the stipulation and the defendant's interpretation thereof in brief was that the termination of plaintiff's employment resulted from a permanent closing of one of defendant's facilities within the meaning of the contract. It was further stipulated that neither the plaintiff, on his own behalf, nor his union for him, had at any time attempted to process the matters and things complained of in his complaint through the grievance--arbitration procedures set out in the contract.
It is further stipulated that 'the defendant was engaged in the production of goods for movement in interstate commerce and was and is an industry affecting commerce within the meaning of the Labor Management Relations Act and other laws passed by the Congress of the United States for the regulation of interstate commerce * * * and that the plaintiff as an iron ore miner employed by the defendant * * * was engaged in the production of goods for movement in interstate commerce.'
The several assignments of error relate to various rulings of the trial court to the effect that plaintiff was not required to exhaust the administrative remedies or grievance procedures provided for in the collective bargaining agreement before bringing suit for severance pay.
The question of plaintiff's right to resort to the courts without first complying with the grievance procedures outlined in the contract has been decided adversely to appellant's contention by our Supreme Court in the recent case of Woodward Iron Co. v. Stringfellow, 271 Ala. 596, 126 So.2d 96. See also Tennessee Coal, Iron & R. Co. v. Sizemore, 258 Ala. 344, 62 So.2d 459.
The appellant contends here that the United States Supreme Court, in Textile Workers Union of America v. Lincoln Mills of Alabama, 353 U.S. 448, 77 S.Ct. 912, 1 L.Ed.2d 972, has rejected the rule enunciated in the Sizemore case, supra, with respect to collective bargaining contracts between a labor union and an employer engaged in interstate commerce and subject to the Labor Management Relations Act. We find no merit in this contention.
In the Lincoln Mills case the court held that the federal district court had the right to decree specific performance of an agreement to arbitrate a grievance dispute as between the union and the company, under the Labor Management Act of 1947.
One of the questions before the United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, in Woodward Iron Co. v. Ware, 261 F.2d 138, 141, was whether former employees, as union members, had standing in court to sue their former employer under a collective bargaining agreement between the union and the employer. The court held that such right was personal to the employees 'and exists irrespective of the union's suable status and interest in prosecuting employee claims under collective agreements.' The court said:
'Lincoln Mills is no impediment to the plaintiffs' suit. As the concurring opinion points out: 'The District Court (in Lincoln Mills) had jurisdiction over the action since it involved an obligation running to a union--a union controversy--and not uniquely personal rights of the employee sought to be enforced by the union.' Textile Workers Union of America v. Lincoln Mills of Alabama, 1957, 353 U.S. 448, 77 S.Ct. 912, 919, 1 L.Ed.2d 972. 'To hold that the union may sue, it is not necessary to hold that employee may not sue in any forum, and vice versa. * * * when the employee and the union are in disagreement, the question is not which may sue, but rather the extent to which the one may conclude the other.' Association of Westinghouse Salaried Employees v. Westinghouse Electric Corp., 1955, 348 U.S. 437, 75 S.Ct. 489, 500, 99 L.Ed. 510.'
In the Ware case, supra, the court quoted with express approval from the Sizemore case, and held:
We hold that the trial court's action in rendering judgment for plaintiff was proper, under the facts stipulated.
Since, as contended by appellant, 'the fundamental question common to all the assignments of error in this case is the necessity or not of the plaintiff to resort to the procedures set out in the contract sued on for the adjustment of grievances before seeking relief in the law courts,' we see no necessity for a discussion of the assignments by which appellant sought by various procedural methods to present this proposition.
The judgment is affirmed.
Affirmed.
Were this only to decide what the law is or what the law ought to be, I think it is readily apparent that Judge Price is right.
After reading Association of Westinghouse Salaried Employees v. Westinghouse Electric Corp., 348 U.S. 437, 75 S.Ct. 489, 99 L.Ed. 510; Textile Workers Union of America, v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U.S. 448, 77 S.Ct. 912, 1 L.Ed.2d 972; United Steelworkers of America v. American Mfg. Co., 363 U.S. 564, 80 S.Ct. 1343, 4 L.Ed.2d 1403; United Steelworkers of America v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 574, 80 S.Ct. 1347, 4 L.Ed.2d 1409, and United Steelworkers of America v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 80 S.Ct. 1358, 4 L.Ed.2d 1424, I cannot be confident of the end decision in this admittedly test case.
An intermediate appellate court such as ours often finds itself suspended not only by the alternatives of what the law is as against what the law ought to be but also by a tertium quid: What will be the law? We are members of a court controlled mainly by the decisions and superintendence of the Supreme Court of Alabama. Code 1940, T. 13, § 95.
However, I am not persuaded, nor am I aware of any case holding, that § 95, supra, has any operation where we are confronted by a case falling under and necessarily controlled by the supremacy clause of the Constitution of the United States. Art. 6, cl. 2.
Thus, from the pre-emptive effect of the Lincoln Mills case upon substantive law, where we lay hold of a collective bargaining agreement under the Wagner or Taft-Hartley Acts, we are loosed from state court decisions. But we are not there given any source of law even as ascertainable as that general Mansfieldian commercial law referred to by Mr. Justice Story in Swift v. Tyson, 16 Pet. 1, 19, 10 L.Ed. 865. For we find Mr. Justice Douglas saying of the remedy-derived-right under § 301(a) of the Taft-Hartley Act (29 U.S.C.A. § 185):
(Italics added.) Lincoln Mills, supra, 353 U.S. at page 457, 77 S.Ct. at page 918.
This point of view was of a 5-3 court, but we find no later recanting.
Even in Woodward Iron Co. v. Ware, 5 Cir., 261 F.2d 138, 141, I fail to find the the 'uniquely personal rights of the employee' under a collective bargaining agreement (Westinghouse case, supra) to have been ajudicated under Alabama law as an ordinary diversity of citizenship action would have been. Indeed the...
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