U.S. Steel Corp. v. United Mine Workers of America

• Decision Date: 20 December 1976
• Docket Number: No. 76-1060,76-1060
• Citation: 548 F.2d 67
• Parties: 94 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2049, 79 Lab.Cas. P 11,785 UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION v. UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA et al., Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

Page 67

548 F.2d 67

94 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2049, 79 Lab.Cas. P 11,785

UNITED STATES STEEL CORPORATION v. UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA et al., Appellants.

No. 76-1060.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Argued Sept. 7, 1976.

Decided Dec. 20, 1976.

Harrison Combs, United Mine Workers of America, Washington, D. C., Melvin P. Stein, Kuhn, Engle, Blair & Stein, Pittsburgh, Pa., for appellants.

James H. McConomy, Harley N. Trice II, Reed, Smith, Shaw & McClay, Pittsburgh, Pa., for appellee.

Before ADAMS, ROSENN and GARTH, Circuit Judges.

OPINION OF THE COURT

ROSENN, Circuit Judge.

This case presents a question of increasing importance in industrial relations: whether a union can be held liable to an employer in money damages for the refusal of union members to cross a stranger picket line ¹ when the collective bargaining agreement between the union and the employer provides a detailed grievance-arbitration procedure but contains no express no-strike clause. A jury rendered a verdict in favor of the plaintiff employer, United States Steel Corporation ("U.S. Steel"), and against the defendant International Union, United Mine Workers of America ("UMW"), its District 4, and its Local Union 6321. The district judge, relying on this court's decision in Island Creek Coal Co. v. UMW, 507 F.2d 650 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 877, 96 S.Ct. 150, 46 L.Ed.2d 110 (1975), denied the defendants' motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, or, in the alternative, for a new trial. ² Because we believe that the Supreme Court's recent decision in Buffalo Forge Co. v. United Steelworkers, 397 U.S. 428, 96 S.Ct. 3141, 49 L.Ed.2d 1022 (1976), undercuts the vitality of Island Creek, we reverse. ^2A

I.

In August 1969, U.S. Steel's Robena Mine Complex in Greene County, Pennsylvania, was closed down for approximately one week because employee-members of UMW Local 6321 refused to cross picket lines established by certain West Virginia coal miners. The pickets, who were members of UMW Local 1058 and employees of the Christopher Coal Company, were protesting the discharge of five local union officers and committeemen from Christopher's Humphrey mine in northern West Virginia. ³

At the time of this incident, the collective bargaining agreement in force between UMW and U.S. Steel was the National Bituminous Coal Wage Agreement of 1968. ⁴ That contract did not expressly prohibit strikes or the honoring of picket lines. The agreement did, however, provide for detailed grievance-arbitration procedures covering "differences . . . as to the meaning and application of the provisions of this agreement, . . . differences . . . about matters not specifically mentioned in this agreement, or . . . any local trouble of any kind . . . ." ⁵ These arbitration provisions were given even greater effect by the parties' agreement that they would "maintain the integrity of (the) contract" and that all disputes which were not settled by agreement would be settled "by the machinery provided in the 'Settlement of Local and District Disputes' section of (the) agreement unless national in character . . . ." ⁶

U.S. Steel brought an action for money damages founded on section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, 29 U.S.C. § 185, against the International UMW, its District No. 4, and Local Union No. 6321. ⁷ The corporation claimed that the week-long work stoppage at the Robena complex was in fact a sympathy strike in support of the Humphrey miners, and that the failure of the defendants to invoke the grievance-arbitration procedures to resolve the problem breached the collective bargaining agreement.

At the trial in November 1973, the defendants denied that the Robena work stoppage was a sympathy strike. Rather, they asserted, the union members had refused to cross the stranger picket line because the Humphrey pickets had allegedly threatened violence should the Robena employees return to work. The defendants claimed that because the Robena work stoppage resulted from the employees' fear for their safety, resort to the grievance-arbitration procedures was not obligatory. In making this claim, the defendants relied on Gateway Coal Co. v. UMW, 466 F.2d 1157 (3d Cir. 1973), which held that absent an express provision in the collective bargaining agreement, a union has no contractual duty to submit a safety dispute to arbitration. Subsequent to the trial in the instant case, the Supreme Court reversed this court's Gateway decision, 414 U.S. 368, 94 S.Ct. 629, 38 L.Ed.2d 583 (1974).

The district judge charged the jury that the grievance-arbitration procedures provided in the collective bargaining agreement impliedly prohibited work stoppages by the defendants' members, and that a work stoppage in sympathy with the strike at the Humphrey mine would violate the contract. He further charged, however, in accordance with this court's Gateway decision, that if the defendants' members stopped work "because of good faith apprehension of physical danger due to abnormally dangerous conditions for work existing at their place of employment, such conduct . . . would not violate the contract." The district judge also instructed the jury that if the Robena work stoppage was "unauthorized," then all three defendants had an obligation to use every reasonable means under the circumstances to end that work stoppage.

The jury returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiff, U.S. Steel, and against all three defendants. The defendants then moved for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, or, in the alternative, for a new trial, contending that an obligation not to strike could not be implied because the primary dispute that caused the work stoppage, not being between members of Local 6321 and U.S. Steel, was not arbitrable. When the district judge denied the motion in 1975, he acknowledged the existence of authority to support the defendants' contention but followed this court's decision in Island Creek Coal Co. v. UMW, 507 F.2d 650 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 877, 96 S.Ct. 150, 46 L.Ed.2d 110 (1975). ⁸ Island Creek held that a dispute over whether a union had contracted away its members' right to honor a stranger picket line was arbitrable under the grievance-arbitration provisions of the National Bituminous Coal Wage Agreement of 1971, provisions which, for practical purposes, were identical to the grievance-arbitration provisions of the 1968 Agreement.

While this appeal was pending, the Supreme Court decided Buffalo Forge Co. v. United Steelworkers, 428 U.S. 397, 96 S.Ct. 3141, 49 L.Ed.2d 1022 (1976). At our request, the parties submitted supplemental briefs considering the applicability of Buffalo Forge to this case.

II.

In Buffalo Forge, production and maintenance employees honored picket lines established at their employer's plants by "office clerical-technical" ("O& T") employees during an economic strike. The production and maintenance employees were parties to a collective bargaining agreement which contained an express no-strike clause and which provided a grievance-arbitration procedure covering "differences . . . as to the meaning and application of the provisions of (the) Agreement" and "any trouble of any kind" arising at the plant. 428 U.S. at 400, 96 S.Ct. at 3143.

The employer brought suit under section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 185 (1970), claiming that the strike by production and maintenance employees was a violation of the express no-strike clause and contending, in the alternative, that the question whether the work stoppage violated the no-strike clause was itself arbitrable. The employer requested both injunctive relief and damages. The union asserted that the work stoppage did not violate the no-strike clause.

The district court in Buffalo Forge found that the production and maintenance employees were engaged in a sympathy action in support of the striking O&T employees. The district court then held that section 4 of the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 29 U.S.C. § 104 (1970), forbade the issuance of an injunction because the production and maintenance employees' strike was not over an arbitrable grievance and thus was not within the narrow exception to the Norris-LaGuardia Act established in Boys Markets, Inc. v. Retail Clerks Union, 398 U.S. 235, 90 S.Ct. 1583, 26 L.Ed.2d 199 (1970). The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the denial of a preliminary injunction.

The Supreme Court of the United States affirmed the decision of the Second Circuit. Boys Markets injunctions, the Court held, are limited to situations in which a strike has been "precipitated by" or is "over" an arbitrable dispute between the employer and the striking union. Although finding that the question whether the strike by production and maintenance employees violated their express no-strike undertaking was arguably arbitrable, even though the strike was not enjoinable, the Supreme Court recognized that this was a secondary dispute which was a result and not a cause of the strike:

Boys Markets plainly does not control this case. The District Court found, and it is not now disputed, that the strike was not over any dispute between the Union and the employer that was even remotely subject to the arbitration provisions of the contract. The strike at issue was a sympathy strike in support of sister unions negotiating with the employer; neither its causes nor the issue underlying it were subject to the settlement procedures provided by the contract between the employer and respondents. The strike had neither the purpose nor the effect of denying or evading an obligation to arbitrate or of depriving the employer of his bargain. Thus had the contract not contained a no-strike clause or had the clause expressly excluded sympathy strikes, there would have been no possible basis for implying from the existence of an arbitration clause a promise not to strike that could have been violated by the sympathy strike in this case....