Trailmobile Co v. Whirls

• Decision Date: 14 April 1947
• Docket Number: No. 85,85
• Citation: 331 U.S. 40,67 S.Ct. 982,91 L.Ed. 1328
• Parties: TRAILMOBILE CO. et al. v. WHIRLS
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

331 U.S. 40

67 S.Ct. 982

91 L.Ed. 1328

TRAILMOBILE CO. et al.

v WHIRLS.

No. 85.

Argued Dec. 19, 1946.

Decided April 14, 1947.

As Modified April 28, 1947.

Mr. Philip J. Schneider, of Cincinnati, Ohio, for petitioner trailmobile co.

Messrs. Sol Goodman, of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Ernest Goodman, of Detroit, Mich., for petitioner International Union, etc., U.A.W.-C.I.O.

Mr. Frederick Bernays Wiener, of Providence, R.I., for respondent.

Mr. Justice RUTLEDGE delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case, like Fishgold v. Sullivan Drydock & Repair Corporation, 328 U.S. 275, 66 S.Ct. 1105, presents a problem in the seniority standing of a reemployed veteran. It arises under § 8 of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940.¹ The Fishgold case held that under the Act a veteran is entitled to be restored to his former position plus seniority which would have accumulated but for his induction into the armed forces.² Here the question concerns the duration of the veteran's restored statutory seniority standing. The petitioners maintain that it ends with the first year of his reemployment. Respondent's position is that it last as long as the employment continues.³ A suggestion has also been made that occurrences taking place since the decision in the Circuit Court of Appeals may have rendered the cause moot.

The case is an aftermath of a general controversy over seniority rights which arose among the employees of two corporations following their consolidation on January 1, 1944. Because of the relation of the general controversy to this litigation a detailed statement of the facts becomes necessary. Prior to their consolidation the Highland Body Manufacturing Company had been a wholly owned subsidiary of the petitioner, the Trailmobile Company. The two corporations manufactured the same commodities in separate plants in Cincinnati, Ohio.⁴ During 1943 under the plan of consolidation the supplies and equipment and personnel of Highland were transferred gradually to the plant of Trailmobile. It took over the assets and business of Highland and assumed all its obligations. The employees of Highland were transferred to the payroll of Trailmobile as of January 1, 1944, when the consolidation became fully effective.⁵

The employees of both companies had been affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. 51 N.L.R.B. 1106, 1108. At the time of the consolidation the Highland group, including respondent, claimed seniority with Trailmobile § of the dates of their employment by Highland. The former Trailmobile employees opposed this, maintaining that the Highland personnel should be considered as new employees of Trailmobile, with seniority dating only from January 1, 1944. This dispute was submitted to national representatives of the A.F. of L. They decided in favor of the Highland group.

The former Trailmobile employees were dissatisfied with this decision. They outnumbered the Highland claimants about ten to one. Accordingly, reorganizing as a unit of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, they requested recognition as the exclusive bargaining agent of Trailmobile's employees, including the Highland transferees. An election was held under the auspices of the National Labor Relations Board, in which the new C.I.O. local was chosen as bargaining representative for a unit composed of both groups.⁶

Trailmobile accordingly negotiated with the C.I.O. and in July, 1944, a collective bargaining agreement was concluded, effective as of June 21, 1944. It provided that the seniority rights of former Highland employees should be fixed as of January 1, 1944, r gardless of the dates of their original employment by Highland.

Respondent Whirls had been in Highland's employ from 1935 to 1942, when he entered military service. He was honorably discharged and returned to his work with Highland in May, 1943.⁷ He was thus among the employees transferred from Highland to Trailmobile as of January 1, 1944, whose seniority was reduced so as to start as of that date by the July, 1944, collective agreement with the C.I.O.

The Highland group contested the agreement's validity in the Ohio courts in a class suit brought July 17, 1944, by Hess, one of their number, on behalf of himself and 178 others similarly situated. These included 104 persons actually at work, veterans and nonveterans, amoung whom was Whirls, and 74 employees then in the armed forces. The petition alleged that Trailmobile then had about 500 employees in military service, of whom apparently some 426 were outside the Highland group.

The theory of the class suit was that, although the plaintiffs were not then members of the C.I.O., the collective bargaining agent was the representative of all employees in the unit and hence could not legally deprive a minority of the employees which it represented of their accrued seniority and other rights by any collective agreement with the company.⁸ The petition alleged that the collective agreement arbitrarily and unlawfully deprived the plaintiffs of their 'vested individual rights' and asked mandatory injunctive relief restoring each to seniority status as of the date of his employment by Highland. The company and the collective agent stood upon the terms of the collective agreement and the agent's authority as certified representative to make it as justifying the action taken under it.

The Ohio courts held against the plaintiffs in the action, sustaining the position of the company and the union.⁹ They held in effect that the seniority rights in issue arose exclusively from contract, making no reference whatever to § 8 of the Selective Training and Service Act or any question relating to it;¹⁰ that the company and the collective representative were lawfully empowered to enter into the contract fixing those rights as of January 1, 1944; that the trial court was not authorized, in its own language, 'to contract for the plaintiff(s) or make a new contract,' since that power 'exists only in the collective bargaining agent under the provisions of the National Labor Relation's Act (29 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq.), so long as that agent acts within the law.'¹¹

Accordingly the suit was dismissed. The record here does not disclose the date of the trial court's judgment. But its decision was affirmed by the Ohio Court of Appeals before October 2, 1945, when the union's answer was f led in the present cause; and the case had been finally determined against the plaintiff's claims by the Supreme Court of Ohio prior to October 15, 1945. ¹²

The record is not entirely clear concerning the exact character and sequence of events between July 15, 1944 when Whirls and other former Highland employees were notified that their seniority status would be changed, and September 18, 1945, when the present suit was filed in the District Court. Apparently, after the notice was given, Selective Service officials intervened in behalf of Whirls and other veterans,¹³ although his allegation that his seniority was restored as a result of that intervention was denied both by the company and by the union. There is ambiguity also concerning whether the closed-shop provision appeared in the 1944 agreement or only in the 1945 one between the company and the C.I.O. The facts of record, however, are more consistent with the view that it was not introduced until the latter year.

At any rate, in June or July, 1945, Whirls joined the C.I.O., union, thus complying with the closed-shop provisions ofthe collective agreement. And until about September 3 of that year he continued to be employed in the painting department, where he had the highest seniority and was drawing pay of $1.05 per hour. On or about that date, however, the company transferred him to the stock department, threatening to reduce his pay to $0.83 per hour and also to reduce his seniority rating in accordance with the collective agreement.

Whether or not the threatened reductions actually took effect is not clear from the record, for not long afterward Whirls was transferred again, to a position paying $1.18 per hour in another department. But before this was done, represented by the United States Attorney,¹⁴ he brought this suit in the District Court under the Selective Training and Service Act. He sought to enjoin the threatened decrease in pay and change in seniority status. He also asked for restoration to his former position in the painting department and to his seniority as fixed by his original employment with Highland. The employer answered and the local C.I.O. union intervened in support of the employer's position. However, since Whirls had been transferred again before the case came on for hearing, the parties agreed at the hearing to limit the issues to those affecting the question of seniority. This was presented in two forms, (1) on the merits, the facts being substantially stipulated; (2) on the question whether the state court proceeding in the class suit had determined the seniority rights of Whirls, making the issue now raised res judicata for this suit. See Angel v. Bullington, 330 U.S. 183, 67 S.Ct. 657.

Taking respondent's view in both respects, the District Court rendered judgment in his favor. The Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed the District Court's judgment. 154 F.2d 866. Besides holding res judicata inapplicable, both courts took the view, contrary to that later reached here in the Fishgold case, that the reemployed veteran was entitled to 'superseniority' for one year following his reemployment,¹⁵ and went on to hold that his statutory preferred status with respect to seniority and other incidents of his emplo ment did not end with the expiration of that year. Because of the bear- ing of the Fishgold decision upon the problem and the importance of the question presented, we granted certiorari. 328 U.S. 831, 66 S.Ct. 1364.

I.

At the outset it is important, in view of certain questions which have been injected beyond the issues presented for decision, to...