Wheeler v. BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE FIREMEN & ENG.

• Decision Date: 23 March 1971
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 70-513.
• Citation: 324 F. Supp. 818
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of South Carolina
• Parties: K. L. WHEELER, Sr., A. T. Bruce, Robert Berry, H. L. Benoy, Jr., D. S. Bennett, T. W. Mitchell, et al., members of a class, Plaintiffs, v. BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE FIREMEN AND ENGINEMEN, an unincorporated association and labor union, national in scope, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, an unincorporated association and labor union, national in scope, the United Transportation Union, an unincorporated association and labor union, national in scope, and the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad Company, a corporation, Defendants.

324 F. Supp. 818

K. L. WHEELER, Sr., A. T. Bruce, Robert Berry, H. L. Benoy, Jr., D. S. Bennett, T. W. Mitchell, et al., members of a class, Plaintiffs, v. BROTHERHOOD OF LOCOMOTIVE FIREMEN AND ENGINEMEN, an unincorporated association and labor union, national in scope, Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, an unincorporated association and labor union, national in scope, the United Transportation Union, an unincorporated association and labor union, national in scope, and the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad Company, a corporation, Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 70-513.

United States District Court, D. South Carolina, Florence Division.

Heard March 17, 1971.

Decided March 23, 1971.

Richard G. Dusenbury, of Dusenbury & Dusenbury, Florence, S. C., for plaintiffs.

Saunders M. Bridges, of Bridges & Whisenhunt, Florence, S. C., for Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen and United Transportation Union.

Harold A. Ross, of Ross, Kraushaar & Bennett, Cleveland, Ohio, and John M. Scott, of Wright, Scott, Blackwell & Powers, Florence, S. C., for Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers.

Hugh L. Willcox, of Willcox, Hardee, Houck, Palmer & O'Farrell, Florence, S. C., for Seaboard Coast Line Railroad Company.

HEMPHILL, District Judge.

Motion for summary judgment by defendant Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers¹ invites decision by this court. Other defendants presented no such motion, but were represented by counsel (without argument) when the motion was heard. A previous motion, by all defendants, to dismiss for want of jurisdiction was previously denied by order of this court. This action finds origination in discontent with defendants' alleged activities which were engaged in to implement the merger of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (ACL) and the Seaboard Airline Railroad (SAL) into one railroad, now known as the Seaboard Coast Line (SCL) Railroad, through authorization of the Interstate Commerce Commission, 320 I.C.C. 122 (1963), which was subsequently approved by the Supreme Court of the United States, Florida East Coast R. Co. v. United States, 386 U.S. 544, 87 S.Ct. 1299, 18 L.Ed.2d 285 (1967).

On July 8, 1970, the six named plaintiffs, allegedly representing a class of all employees of the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad ("Seaboard") working in the craft of locomotive firemen and/or in the craft of locomotive engineers,² filed the instant complaint alleging jurisdiction in this court by virtue of the provisions of the Railway Labor Act (45 U. S.C. § 151 et seq). Plaintiffs were yard firemen and/or yard engineers on the former Seaboard Air Line Railroad ("SAL"), serving in the former Old North Carolina Division of the SAL and are now in consolidated Seniority District No. 1 under terms of personnel consolidation rules.

This is another case in the present merge-and-consolidate oriented economy of employee dissatisfaction with seniority rights following a merger. The basic gravamen of plaintiffs' complaint as to BLE is the propriety of the consolidation of the engineers' seniority roster in Seniority District No. 1 (Virginia), which includes the former seniority district of plaintiffs, SAL Old North Carolina Division. An additional integral, but seemingly distinct, claim of these plaintiffs averred in paragraph 11 of the complaint attacks the alleged failure of BLE and BLF&E to coordinate "with the two merging companies in resolving the problem of merging the seniority rosters", for which purported failure they pray that the court enjoin the defendant unions "from operating as totally separate entities * * * in the fields of seniority, wages and working conditions on seniority rosters."

To place the issues in their proper context, it should be noted that The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers has been and is the collective bargaining representative for the craft of locomotive engineers, and no other craft, on the Seaboard and its predecessor companies. In that capacity, BLE has entered into contracts governing the rates of pay, rules and working conditions, including seniority, of the members of that craft. Similarly, The Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen has been and is the collective bargaining representative for the craft of locomotive firemen, but no other craft, employed on Seaboard and its predecessor railroads. It also has separate collective agreements governing the rates of pay, rules and working conditions for the craft of firemen.

While an appeal to prevent the Seaboard merger was pending before the Supreme Court, all labor organizations representing the employees on the two merging roads entered into employee protective agreements as provided for in the last sentence of Section 5(2) (f) of the Interstate Commerce Act (49 U.S.C. § 5(2) (f)). On November 3, 1966, BLF&E, along with 17 other unions forming the Railway Labor Executives' Association, executed one agreement entitled Agreement for Protection of Employees in the Event of Merger of the SAL and ACL. One week later, November 10th, BLE separately entered into a nearly identical agreement with the two railroads. Among other things, these agreements provided for guaranteed earnings and guaranteed employment for the existing employees of the predecessor companies. Thus, during their continued employment with Seaboard, none of the employees would receive less wages (upgraded for subsequent wage increases) in any month than they had received prior to the merger, nor would they be without a job in any craft in which they held seniority. In consideration of these promises, and in accordance with the conditions imposed by the I.C.C., the agreement provided for subsequent consolidation of seniority districts and seniority rosters which were to be implemented by further agreement.

Prior to the merger of the SAL and ACL, road and yard seniority on the ACL were combined on one seniority list for the craft of locomotive engineers and on one seniority roster for the craft of firemen. However, the former SAL maintained separate seniority rosters for road firemen and separate seniority rosters for road engineers and yard engineers. Thus, on the former SAL, an employee would hire out as a road fireman or a yard fireman and, in turn, would be promoted upon proper qualification and examination to engineer in the same class of service, road or yard. With certain exceptions, such as a hired engineer, individuals on both railroads were promoted to engineer in sequence of their dates of hire as a fireman. In order to consolidate the seniority rosters of the former SAL and former ACL, it was first necessary to par or equate those rosters. Throughout the system, the one constant factor to make them equivalents were the individuals' employment dates.

In order to accomplish this, BLE first provided by agreement with the carrier to consolidate the separate road and yard engineers' rosters on SAL, based upon the individual's date of hire as a fireman except when said date would place an engineer out of his respective standing as an engineer, i.e., would permit him to "run around" an engineer directly above him on the former SAL roster involved in that consolidation.

After the engineers' rosters had been equated on this basis, the BLE agreement established the further merger of the ACL and SAL rosters into one roster for each of the six newly consolidated seniority districts on the basis of a percentage block or work equity allocation, which was computed from four factors indicating the amount of work of that former district to the total of the work brought into the consolidated district by all former districts.

As previously noted, plaintiffs are working in consolidated Seniority District No. 1 (Virginia) and the equity quotient for their former district, SAL Old North Carolina, in that consolidation was 38.008%. This means that the engineers from that former district would have about three and one-half positions of every block of nine names on the consolidated rosters of 582 men.³

Initially due to threats of litigation by BLF&E and later by certain ex parte restraining orders issued by state courts in Georgia and South Carolina, Seaboard refused to place the BLE agreements and rosters into effect on January 16, 1968, as had been contemplated. Therefore, BLE instituted suit in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida in the case of Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers v. Seaboard Coast Line R. Co., Case No. 68-41-Civ-J, to require Seaboard to place into effect forthwith the agreement and the merged seniority rosters required thereunder, including Seniority District No. 1 (Virginia), the subject of this action. On January 30, 1968, that court, which had approved the I.C.C. merger order and employee protective conditions, issued a mandatory injunction. On appeal from that order by the BLF&E, after consolidation with a suit instituted by it in the Southern District of Florida, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. Broth. of Loc. Firemen & Eng. v. Seaboard Coast Line R. Co., 413 F.2d 19 (5th Cir. 1969), cert. den. 396 U.S. 963, 90 S.Ct. 432, 24 L.Ed.2d 426 (1969). That court rejected BLF&E's contention that the agreement between BLE and Seaboard was invalid because BLF&E, as the representative of the craft of firemen and the persons employed therein, was not a party to its negotiation and did not consent to it.

Pursuant to the above order of January 30, 1968, Seaboard placed the involved merged rosters for the craft of engineers into effect on February 6, 1968. On February 8, 1968, a class action in behalf of Seaboard's employees in the crafts of engineers and firemen was brought against Seaboard to restrain it from placing the Engineers' rosters into effect in Seniority District No. 1 (Virginia) and in the other consolidated seniority districts. Cole v. Seaboard Coast Line R. Co., Civil Action No. 5614 (E.D.Va.). In part, the complaint averred in paragraph 5:

This is a proceeding for a preliminary

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