Voccio v. General Signal Corp.

• Decision Date: 08 March 1990
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 88-0450 P.
• Parties: Anthony P. VOCCIO, Edward J. Cataldo, Robert M. Sweeney, Donald E. Hallam, David J. De Robbio, Michele Rossi, Ann D'Ettore, Robert M. Lamoureaux, Plaintiffs, and George Pistorio, Intervenor-Plaintiff, v. GENERAL SIGNAL CORPORATION; United Steelworkers of America, Local 5299; United Steelworkers of America, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Rhode Island

732 F. Supp. 292

Anthony P. VOCCIO, Edward J. Cataldo, Robert M. Sweeney, Donald E. Hallam, David J. De Robbio, Michele Rossi, Ann D'Ettore, Robert M. Lamoureaux, Plaintiffs and George Pistorio, Intervenor-Plaintiff, v. GENERAL SIGNAL CORPORATION; United Steelworkers of America, Local 5299; United Steelworkers of America, Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 88-0450 P.

United States District Court, D. Rhode Island.

March 8, 1990.

Dennis J. Tente, Cranston, R.I., for plaintiffs.

Clare T. Jabour, Providence, R.I., for intervenor-plaintiff.

Robert W. Lovegreen, Providence, R.I., for defendant General Signal.

Richard M. Peirce, Providence, R.I., Rudolph L. Milasich, Jr., Pittsburgh, Pa., for defendant United Steelworkers.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

PETTINE, Senior District Judge.

Plaintiffs¹ worked for BIF, a subsidiary of General Signal Corporation (the "company") and were members of Local 5299 of the United Steelworkers of American (the "union"). They claim that the company breached its contract with the union by not granting them severance pay when it closed down its plant in West Warwick, Rhode Island and that the union breached its duty of fair representation in negotiating and approving an agreement governing severance pay and the plant closure and in choosing to negotiate rather than arbitrate over severance pay. The parties have substantially completed discovery; defendants now move for summary judgment, claiming that no genuine issues of material fact exist and they are entitled to judgment as a matter of law. This Court agrees and grants their motion.

I. FACTS

The plaintiffs had left their jobs with BIF because of workplace injuries and were receiving workers' compensation as of September, 1987. On September 1, General Signal sent a letter to its employees at the BIF plant, notifying them that it planned to phase out the West Warwick facility over the next six months. The Union and Company entered into extensive bargaining over a shutdown agreement to modify the collective bargaining agreement under which the parties operated.

The collective bargaining agreement² contained a severance pay clause that stated:

In the event of the permanent closing of the Company's plant ..., an employee whose job is eliminated shall be entitled to severance allowance in accordance with and subject to the following provisions and conditions:

A) Employees shall be eligible for and shall receive severance pay in the amount of one (1) week of pay for each year of seniority service between five (5) and twenty-five (25) years.... The rate for calculating severance allowance shall be the average hourly straight time earnings of the employee during the past twelve (12) calendar months.

Collective Bargaining Agreement § 24.01(A) hereinafter "CBA" (emphasis added). Employees who had been laid off for more than six months "shall have no rights to severance pay." Id. § 24.01(D)(4). The parties were free to amend the agreement as long as the amendment was "in writing and signed by the parties." Id. § 25.01.

When the Company and Union first met to bargain over the shutdown, the Company proposed that severance pay be restricted to those employees on active duty as of September 1, 1987. The Union rejected the Company proposal because it left union members on long-term disability, workers' compensation (such as plaintiffs), and layoff ineligible for severance pay. It presented a counterproposal that would include those employees in any severance pay award. The Company did not agree to the Union proposal; the two sides negotiated over that and other issues until February, 1988.

After five months of bargaining, the Union decided to present the slightly revised Company proposal (the "Memorandum of Agreement" or "MOA") to its membership for a vote. The Memorandum granted severance pay to employees on the active payroll as of September 1, 1987, and any others who returned to work by December 1, 1987. See MOA ¶ 1. The MOA included a list of eligible employees and stated that severance pay would be "based on the employee's rate of pay in effect on September 1, 1987." Id. ¶ 2(B).

When the union members met on February 25 to discuss the Company offer, the union leadership and counsel recommended rejecting it, in part because it did not provide severance pay for those employees on workers' compensation or layoff. Most of the plaintiffs attended the meeting and spoke out against the closedown agreement. Despite their views, and the views of the union hierarchy, the members of the Local, by a vote of 61-27, accepted the Memorandum. The union signed the Memorandum the next day.

When the BIF plant closed down in March, General Signal provided severance pay to eighty employees; the plaintiffs were among those who did not receive severance pay. Employees on workers' compensation were not the only group of employees denied severance pay, however; those employees the company had laid off also did not receive such pay.

II. SUMMARY JUDGMENT STANDARD

The standard for summary judgment is well known, but it bears repeating within the context of this case. This Court grants summary judgment to General Signal and the Union because, construing all factual inferences in plaintiffs' favor, no genuine issue of material fact exists as to any of the plaintiffs' claims and the defendants are entitled to "judgment as a matter of law." See Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). Some factual disagreement does exist in this case, but no dispute as to a central issue rises to the level sufficient to avoid summary judgment:

The mere existence of some alleged factual dispute between the parties will not defeat an otherwise properly supported motion for summary judgment; the requirement is that there is no genuine issue of material fact.

Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 247-48, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 2510, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986). "Only disputes over facts that might affect the outcome of the suit under the governing law will properly preclude the entry of summary judgment." Id. at 248, 106 S.Ct. at 2510.

Plaintiffs fail in this case because they have not presented enough evidence to convince this Court that "a rational factfinder would resolve the issue in favor of either party." Medina-Munoz v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 896 F.2d 5, 8 (1st Cir.1990). As the First Circuit recently reiterated, "The evidence illustrating the factual controversy cannot be conjectural or problematic; it must have substance in the sense that it limits differing versions of the truth which a factfinder must resolve." Mack v. Great Atl. & Pac. Tea Co., 871 F.2d 179, 181 (1st Cir.1989), quoted in Medina-Munoz, at 8. Regardless of how sympathetic the plaintiffs' claims may be, this Court has little choice but to grant defendants' motion for summary judgment, given that the plaintiffs have never moved beyond the skeletal in their allegations and proof.

III. THE UNION'S DUTY OF FAIR REPRESENTATION

The plaintiffs argue that the Union did not do all it could to protect their interests during the negotiations over the BIF plant shutdown and that the Union openly discriminated against them on the basis of their handicaps because it signed an agreement that denied them severance pay. The Union's actions, in their minds, breached its duty to represent them fairly.

The duty of fair representation is a union member's protection against the tyranny of the union majority. Inherently in a union democracy the views and desires of the minority will be subordinated to those of the majority. "In establishing a regime of majority rule, Congress sought to secure to all members of the bargaining unit the benefits of their collective strength and bargaining power, in full awareness that the superior strength of some individuals or groups might be subordinated to the interest of the majority." Emporium Capwell Co. v. Western Addition Community Org., 420 U.S. 50, 62, 95 S.Ct. 977, 984-85, 43 L.Ed.2d 12 (1975) (footnote omitted). Recognizing the potential abuse that could result from majority rule, courts have long required union representatives "to make an honest effort to serve the interests of all of the union members, without hostility to any." Ford Motor Co. v. Huffman, 345 U.S. 330, 337, 73 S.Ct. 681, 686, 97 L.Ed. 1048 (1953); see also Steele v. Louisville & N.R.R., 323 U.S. 192, 201-02, 65 S.Ct. 226, 231-32, 89 L.Ed. 173 (1944) (representative has "duty to exercise fairly the power conferred upon it in behalf of all those for whom it acts, without hostile discrimination against them").

Holding a union to a duty of fair representation does not prohibit it, as the plaintiffs here seem to believe, from compromising the interests of some of its members during negotiations.

Any authority to negotiate derives its principal strength from a delegation to the negotiators of a discretion to make such concessions and accept such advantages as, in the light of all relevant considerations, they believe will best serve the interests of the parties represented.... Inevitably differences arise in the manner and degree to which the terms of any negotiated agreement affect individual employees and classes of employees. The mere existence of such differences does not make them invalid. The complete satisfaction of all who are represented is hardly to be expected. A wide range of reasonableness must be allowed a statutory bargaining representative in serving the unit it represents, subject always to complete good faith and honesty of purpose in the exercise of its discretion.

Ford Motor Co., 345 U.S. at 338, 73 S.Ct. at 686; see also Humphrey v. Moore, 375 U.S. 335, 349, 84 S.Ct. 363, 371-72, 11 L.Ed.2d 370 (1964) (union does not breach duty of fair representation "in taking a good faith position contrary to that of some individuals whom it represented nor in supporting the position of one group of employees against that of another."). Given the latitude a court grants to a union negotiator, the plaintiffs' burden in proving a breach of...