United Steelworkers v. Pullman-Standard Car Mfg. Co., 11894.

• Citation: 241 F.2d 547
• Decision Date: 31 January 1957
• Docket Number: No. 11894.,11894.
• Parties: UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA and Joseph Dulya, Appellants, v. PULLMAN-STANDARD CAR MANUFACTURING CO., a Corporation.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (3rd Circuit)

241 F.2d 547 (1957)

UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA and Joseph Dulya, Appellants, v. PULLMAN-STANDARD CAR MANUFACTURING CO., a Corporation.

No. 11894.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Argued September 25, 1956.

Decided January 31, 1957.

Rehearing Denied February 26, 1957.

David E. Feller, Washington, D. C. (S. Harold Grossman, Tarentum, Pa., Arthur J. Goldberg, General Counsel, United Steelworkers of America, Washington, D. C., on the brief), for appellant.

Joseph E. Madva, Pittsburgh, Pa. (Kenneth G. Jackson, Thorp, Reed & Armstrong, Pittsburgh, Pa., on the brief), for appellee.

Before BIGGS, Chief Judge, and GOODRICH and HASTIE, Circuit Judges.

HASTIE, Circuit Judge.

Attempting to assert a claim within the jurisdiction conferred on the courts of the United States by Section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, 61 Stat. 156, 29 U.S.C.A. § 185, appellants United Steelworkers of America, a labor union, and John Dulya, a disabled and retired workman who is a member of the union, filed a complaint in the court below against Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Co., Dulya's employer. The complaint alleges that by incorrectly construing certain pension provisions of a collective bargaining agreement, Pullman has paid Dulya a smaller pension than his due and proposes to do the same in all other cases of employees similarly situated. More particularly, it is complained that the employer has erroneously construed the pension agreement as authorizing it to reduce the pension therein provided for a disabled workman by the amount of any statutory workmen's compensation award which may have been made to him for the loss of the use of a bodily member. The complaint asks for a declaratory judgment interpreting the controverted pension provision of the collective bargaining agreement and, in addition, the payment of some $800.00 of accrued pension money to Dulya.

It also is alleged that the pension arrangement originated in and was entirely defined by the collective bargaining agreement between the union and the employer, and that part of the consideration for the employer's agreement to the pension plan was the union's undertaking not to demand or strike for additional pension or disability benefits for a five year period. Finally, the complaint states that the plaintiff Dulya and his fellow union members have constituted the union their exclusive agent in connection with disputes and negotiations as to the proper interpretation of the pension agreement.

These allegations considered, the district court granted a defense motion to dismiss the complaint for want of jurisdiction, saying, "the court is unable to perceive any significant distinction between this case and Association of Westinghouse Salaried Employees v. Westinghouse Electric Corporation, 1955, 348 U.S. 437 75 S.Ct. 488, 99 L.Ed. 510, holding that Section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act does not confer jurisdiction of actions of this type." The plaintiffs have appealed.

Preliminarily, we think it too clear to require demonstration that the addition of Dulya as a party asserting his personal claim for some $800.00 in overdue pension payments does not help the union in its attempt to show that the union's claim is within Section 301. Therefore, we consider and discuss only the union's claim against the employer for declaratory relief invalidating the employer's construction of the collective bargaining agreement as sanctioning, in Dulya's case and generally, the reduction of the agreed pension payments to disabled workmen by whatever amounts the pensioners may have received as workmen's compensation awards for the loss of the use of any bodily member. The problem is, as the district court has said, whether such a claim is cognizable under Section 301 as construed in the Westinghouse case.

Association of Westinghouse Salaried Employees v. Westinghouse Electric Corp., 1955, 348 U.S. 437, 75 S.Ct. 489, 504, 99 L.Ed. 510 was a controversy between an employer and a union as to whether employees who did not work on a given day were entitled, by force of provisions of a collective bargaining agreement negotiated for them by the union, to pay for that day. The complaint asked for declaratory relief and the actual payment of the wages withheld. The Supreme Court ruled that the stated cause of action was not comprehended by Section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act and, therefore, that the complaint should be dismissed for want of jurisdiction. However, no rationale of this result won the approval of a majority of the eight Justices who decided the case. Announcing the decision, Mr. Justice Frankfurter analyzed the problem in an opinion in which Mr. Justice Burton and Mr. Justice Minton joined. In a separate opinion Mr. Justice Reed announced that he traveled a different path to reach the same result. In a third very brief opinion the Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Clark supported and joined in the decision, without associating themselves with the reasoning of Mr. Justice Frankfurter or Mr. Justice Reed. Finally, Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Douglas dissented, saying that even as to wage claims "what the union obtains in the collective agreement it should be entitled to enforce or defend in the forums which have been provided" by Section 301.

The contrariety of the three views expressed by the Justices who constituted the majority of the Court in the Westinghouse case makes it difficult for an inferior court to apply that decision to controversies about matters other than wage claims. The Westinghouse decision necessarily teaches that a controversy about wage claims, even when predicated upon a disputed construction of a collective bargaining agreement, is beyond the power which Section 301 confers upon the federal courts. But, in dealing with any other type of claim asserted by a union under a collective bargaining agreement, the inferior courts are compelled to examine the separate views of the Justices in the Westinghouse case in an effort to discover whether five or more Justices analyzed the Westinghouse problem in such a way as would in logic lead them to the same result in the case at hand. If no such indication of concurrence, albeit by different approaches, can be found, an inferior court may and must work out its own conception of the rational basis which most adequately supports the Westinghouse result, and apply that rationale to the facts at hand.

This brings us to an examination of the several Westinghouse opinions. First of all, it is apparent that the two Justices who dissented in Westinghouse would view the present complaint as within the jurisdiction of the district court under Section 301. There remain the five Justices of the present court who joined in the Westinghouse decision but expressed their views in the three above mentioned separate and differing opinions.¹ Only if all three opinions denied jurisdiction on grounds broad enough to comprehend the present case are we compelled here to reach the Westinghouse result.

We are satisfied that the reasoning of Mr. Justice Frankfurter, in which Mr. Justice Burton joined, and the reasoning of Mr. Justice Reed would lead these three Justices to the same result in our case as in Westinghouse. We rely upon Mr. Justice Frankfurter's assertion that in enacting Section 301 Congress did not intend "to open the doors of the federal courts to a potential flood of grievances based upon an employer's failure to comply with terms of a collective agreement relating to compensation, terms peculiar in the individual benefit which is their subject matter and which, when violated, give a cause of action to the individual employee." 348 U.S. at page 460, 75 S. Ct. at page 500. Pension provisions of a collective bargaining agreement, no less than the Westinghouse vacation pay provisions, seem to be "terms peculiar in their individual benefit * * * and which, when violated, give a cause of action to the individual employee." We also note that Mr. Justice Reed said: "The reason, I think, that this union cannot recover from the employer in this suit under § 301 is that the claim for wages for the employees arises from separate hiring contracts between the employer and each employee." 348 U.S. at page 464, 75 S.Ct. at page 502. In the same sense, whatever pension rights workmen may have in the present case seem to "arise from separate hiring contracts between employer and each employee."² For it will be remembered that Westinghouse was a case in which the claim...