Tyson v. International Broth. of Teamsters, Local 710 Pension Fund

• Decision Date: 12 February 1987
• Docket Number: No. 86-1859,86-1859
• Citation: 811 F.2d 1145
• Parties: 8 Employee Benefits Ca 1324 Robert L. TYSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, LOCAL 710 PENSION FUND, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 1145

811 F.2d 1145

8 Employee Benefits Ca 1324

Robert L. TYSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS, LOCAL 710 PENSION

FUND, Defendant-Appellee.

No. 86-1859.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued Dec. 8, 1986.

Decided Feb. 12, 1987.

Stephen B. Horwitz, Burns, Sugarman & Orlove, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiff-appellant.

Stephen Feinberg, Asher, Gittler & Greenfield, Ltd., Chicago, Ill., for defendant-appellee.

Before CUMMINGS and POSNER, Circuit Judges, and SWYGERT, Senior Circuit Judge.

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

This ERISA suit against a union pension fund seeks benefits under a pension plan. See 29 U.S.C. Sec. 1132(a)(1)(B). The plaintiff, Robert Tyson, is a former truck driver for Charles Levy & Co. He claims to be entitled to a disability pension under the pension plan established by the collective bargaining agreement between his union (a teamsters local) and Levy. The district court granted summary judgment for the pension fund on the ground that awarding the pension would violate the Taft-Hartley Act.

On February 6, 1981, Tyson suffered a totally and permanently disabling injury in an auto accident. The pension plan entitles an employee who becomes totally and permanently disabled to a disability pension, beginning immediately, if he has worked either for 15 complete years or for 14 complete years plus a total of 35 weeks in the first and last year that he was employed. Otherwise he must wait till he reaches age 65 to realize any vested pension rights. Tyson had worked 14 complete years plus 18 weeks his first year and he therefore needed 17 weeks in his last year, 1981, to qualify for the pension. Although disabled after working only 6 weeks in 1981, he was credited for that year with an additional 8 weeks of accrued vacation and disability pay (the collective bargaining agreement requires the employer to pay the employee for 4 weeks after a disabling injury), making a total of 32 weeks in his first and last years (18 + 6 + 8)--which was 3 weeks short. In January 1982, almost a year after Tyson had stopped working for Levy, Levy paid him 4 weeks of additional wages in recognition of his long years of service for Levy and the fact that his employment had been cut short by the accident. Tyson wants to add those 4 weeks to his other 1981 credits. If he succeeds, he will be entitled to the disability pension.

The district court thought that the addition of the 4 weeks to Tyson's 1981 credits was blocked by section 302 of the Taft-Hartley Act, 29 U.S.C. Sec. 186, which makes it unlawful for an employer to pay a union or other representative of its employees--which the pension fund is conceded to be. There is an exception for union pension and welfare funds but it is subject to various limitations, of which the one pertinent here is that "the detailed basis on which such payments are to be made [by the employer to the fund] is specified in a written agreement with the employer." 29 U.S.C. Sec. 186(c)(5)(B). The district judge thought this proviso not satisfied here. En route to this conclusion he expressed skepticism about most of the fund's contractual arguments, but the focus of his decision was the fund's statutory ground, and we regard the contractual issues as still open; Tyson conceded as much at the oral argument of the appeal.

Article 29 of the collective bargaining agreement, captioned "Pension Plan," requires the employer to contribute to the union's pension fund a fixed amount per week for each employee covered by the agreement who has been on the employer's payroll for at least 30 days. It also authorizes the making of "appropriate trust agreements necessary for the administration of such fund." Levy never made a contribution for the additional 4 weeks that Tyson wants credited to 1981, but the fund admits it would have refused to accept it, on the ground that accepting it would violate the statute; and the parties appear to assume that if the fund would accept the contribution, Levy would make it. The fund's position (and hence the district court's decision) is correct if "the detailed basis" for such a contribution is not "specified in a written agreement with the employer."

It is not specified in the collective bargaining agreement itself. But section 1.25 of the trust agreement that sets forth the details of administration provides:

Each Employee will be credited with an Hour of Work for:

(a) Each hour for which an Employee is paid, or entitled to payment by an Employer for duties performed....

(b) Each hour, up to a maximum of 501 hours, for which an Employee is directly or indirectly paid or entitled to payment by the Employer for reasons (such as vacation, holiday, illness, incapacity, including disability, layoff, jury duty, military duty or leave of absence) other than the performance of duties (irrespective of whether the employment relationship has terminated)....

This section makes clear that an employee such as Tyson is entitled to pension credit for certain hours that he does not actually work, even if, as here, he is paid for those hours after he has ceased to be employed. If the 4 weeks for which he was paid in 1982 are added to the 8 weeks for which he received vacation and disability pay in 1981 and which the fund does not contest, the total (12 weeks = 480 hours) is below the 501-hour ceiling.

The pension fund argues that section 1.25 was not meant to embrace "gifts," but there are two answers to this. The first is that the provision does not in terms exclude gifts; at least the words do not compel such a reading. The expression "for reasons ... other than the performance of duties" does not appear to require nonaltruistic "reasons"; the reasons listed between the parentheses are illustrative rather than exhaustive. Furthermore, to describe the 1982 payment to Tyson as a "gift" is surely a mistake. The world of employee compensation does not divide neatly into legally required payments on the one hand and gifts on the other. A bonus, for example, is neither; nor is severance pay; nor--what indeed is a form of severance pay--is a payment made in recognition of long years of work abruptly cut off by a tragic accident. Many of the mutual understandings on which the effective functioning of labor markets depends are not reduced to legally enforceable commitments, because the parties don't want the uncertainty and expense of a lawsuit if they have a disagreement. See Epstein, In Defense of the Contract at Will, 51 U.Chi.L.Rev. 947 (1984). (As a matter of fact, employment at will remains the dominant form of employment relationship in this country.) Nevertheless those nonbinding mutual understandings are commercial rather than altruistic. It is true that when as in this case the employment relationship is defined by a collective bargaining agreement, payments to workers of compensation in excess of what the agreement specifies may, by undermining the union's status as exclusive bargaining representative of the workers, violate the National Labor Relations Act. See e.g., NLRB v. Everbrite Electric Signs, Inc., 562 F.2d 405 (7th Cir.1977) (per curiam). But there is no suggestion that Levy's payment of an additional 4 weeks' wages to Tyson after he had ceased being an employee of Levy's raises any problems under the agreement and hence under the Act. Indeed, the fact that "gifts" by an employer to his unionized...