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Nature of Suit Code: 790
Nature of Suit: Other Labor Litigation
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued October 24, 2008 Decided December 23, 2008

No. 07-5316

AMERICAN POSTAL WORKERS UNION, AFL-CIO,

APPELLANT

v.

UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE,

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 04cv01404)

Melinda K. Holmes argued the cause for appellant. With

her on the briefs was Anton G. Hajjar.

Brian P. Hudak, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued the cause

for appellee. With him on the brief were Jeffrey A. Taylor, U.S.

Attorney, and R. Craig Lawrence, Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Before: ROGERS, GARLAND and KAVANAUGH, Circuit

Judges.

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Opinion for the Court by Circuit Judge ROGERS.

ROGERS, Circuit Judge: This appeal concerns the

interpretation of an arbitration award. The arbitration arose

under a settlement agreement addressing the parties’ disputes

about whether their collective bargaining agreement (“CBA”)

required the assignment of the positions and the duties of

particular job classifications to the bargaining unit represented

by the American Postal Workers Union (“the Union”). In

response to the Union’s lawsuit to compel enforcement of an

arbitrator’s award regarding one such classification, the district

court granted summary judgment for the U.S. Postal Service,

ruling that the award addressed only the scope of the bargaining

unit — which workers the Union represents — and not work

assignments — which work the represented workers are entitled

to do. Upon de novo review, we conclude that the award

addressed both issues.

I.

 In 1999, the Union and the U.S. Postal Service entered into

a settlement agreement to resolve a number of disputes arising

under their CBA about unit scope and work assignments.

Formal grievances as well as a petition to the National Labor

Relations Board (“the Board”) for unit clarification had been

filed. Under the settlement, the parties agreed to arbitrate six

grievances, each involving a different position in the executive

and administrative service, before a single arbitrator. This

appeal involves the Union’s August 1998 grievance regarding

the Address Management System (“AMS”) Specialist position.

On April 29, 2003, the arbitrator issued the following

award:

Having carefully considered all evidence submitted

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by the parties concerning this matter, the arbitrator

concludes that the “Address Management System

Specialist” position is a part of the [Union]

bargaining unit and that it is a violation of Article 1.2

of the [CBA] to exclude the position and the disputed

work from the bargaining unit. The arbitrator shall

retain jurisdiction in this matter for ninety days from

the date of the report in order to resolve any problems

resulting from the remedy in the award. It is so

ordered and awarded.

The Postal Service, after receiving no response to its

request that the arbitrator withdraw the award, filed a petition

with the Board to clarify that the AMS Specialist classification

was excluded from the bargaining unit. The Regional Director,

although initially dismissing the petition in light of the parties’

agreement to arbitrate disputes about unit scope, granted the

petition on February 23, 2007 upon remand from the Board. On

remand the Union had disclaimed interest in representing postal

employees in the AMS Specialist classification, while

emphasizing that its disclaimer was not to “affect that part of the

award which found that the Postal Service violated the [CBA]

by failing to assign non-supervisory and non-managerial AMS

duties to the [Union] bargaining unit.” Letter from Cliff Guffey,

Executive Vice President, American Postal Workers Union,

ALF-CIO, to John Dockins, U.S. Postal Service, Jan. 29, 2007.

Meanwhile, on August 18, 2004 the Union had sued the

Postal Service to compel future arbitrations pursuant to the

settlement agreement. Following issuance of the 2003 Award,

the Union had filed a separate lawsuit to compel the Postal

Service to comply with the award. The district court

consolidated the lawsuits and denied the Postal Service’s

motions to dismiss or alternatively to stay. The district court

also denied without prejudice the Union’s motion for summary

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judgment regarding future arbitration proceedings. In August

2006, the parties cross-moved for summary judgment. The

Union, while conceding that the 2003 Award was unenforceable

to the extent that it provided the AMS Specialist position was

included in the bargaining unit, argued that the award included

an independent, enforceable finding that the work performed by

AMS Specialists belonged to the unit. The Postal Service

argued that the award addressed only the placement of the AMS

Specialist position, and in the alternative, that the Union’s

interpretation would render the award unenforceable under

Section 7 of National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”), 29 U.S.C.

§ 157. 

On August 7, 2007, the district court granted summary

judgment to the Postal Service, ruling that the 2003 Award

addressed only the question of the placement of the position.

Am. Postal Workers Union v. United States Postal Serv., 499 F.

Supp. 2d 24, 27 (D.D.C. 2007). Concluding from the analysis

accompanying the award that the arbitrator thought that position

placement was “the relevant issue to be decided” and that work

assignment was “a question to be addressed in the alternative, if

at all,” the district court reasoned that because the arbitrator had

found that the position should be included in the bargaining unit

the arbitrator must not have decided whether any or all of the

work should be assigned to the bargaining unit workers. Id.

The Union appeals, and our review is de novo. See Defenders

of Wildlife v. Gutierrez, 532 F.3d 913, 918 (D.C. Cir. 2008). 

II.

The 2003 Award is the arbitrator’s interpretation of the

CBA. As such, judicial review of the award is “extremely

limited,” and the award may not be overturned on the basis of

even a serious error if the arbitrator was “even arguably

construing or applying the contract and acting within the scope

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of his authority.” Teamsters Local Union No. 61 v. United

Parcel Serv., Inc., 272 F.3d 600, 604 (D.C. Cir. 2001) (internal

quotation marks omitted) (emphasis in original). However, the

primary issue here is not whether the arbitrator properly

construed the CBA or exceeded his authority, but what the 2003

Award means. To answer that question, a court first looks to the

four corners of the award, for arbitration awards “may be made

without explanation of [the arbitrators’] reasons and without a

complete record of their proceedings.” Wilko v. Swan, 346 U.S.

427, 436 (1953); see Sargent v. Paine Webber Jackson & Curtis,

Inc., 882 F.2d 529, 532 (D.C. Cir. 1989). 

An arbitration award, as a conceptual matter, is to be

“treated as though it were a written stipulation by the parties

setting forth their own definitive construction of the contract.”

Cole v. Burns Int’l Sec. Servs., 105 F.3d 1465, 1475 (D.C. Cir.

1997) (quoting Theodore J. St. Antoine, Judicial Review of

Labor Arbitration Awards: A Second Look at Enterprise Wheel

and its Progeny, 75 MICH L. REV. 1137, 1140 (1977) (footnote

omitted)); see Am. Postal Workers Union v. United States Postal

Serv., 789 F.2d 1, 6-7 (D.C. Cir. 1986). Thus, the interpretation

of an arbitration award is, like the interpretation of a contract,

primarily a question of law, see O'Hara v. District No. 1-PCD,

56 F.3d 1514, 1522 (D.C. Cir. 1995), and like a contract,

analysis of what an arbitration award means must begin with its

text, see id. at 1523; cf. also Am. Fed’n of Gov’t Employees,

Local 2924 v. Fed. Labor Relations Auth., 470 F.3d 375, 381

(D.C. Cir. 2006). Because we conclude that the 2003 Award is

unambiguous on its face, we need not decide under what

circumstances a court may appropriately look to the arbitral

record to resolve an ambiguity and thereby render the award

enforceable, see, e.g., Ethyl Corp v. United States Steelworkers

of Am., 768 F.2d 180, 188 (7th Cir. 1985); see also Riley Stoker

Corp. v. Fidelity & Guar. Ins. Underwriters, 26 F.3d 581, 586

(5th Cir. 1994), rather than remand for the arbitrator to clarify

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the award, see U.S. Energy Corp. v. Nukem, Inc., 400 F.3d 822,

830-31 (10th Cir. 2005); Tri-State Bus. Machs., Inc., v. Lanier

Worldwide, Inc., 221 F.3d 1015, 1019 (7th Cir. 2000).

The operative sentence of the 2003 Award is: “Having

carefully considered all evidence submitted by the parties

concerning this matter, the arbitrator concludes that the ‘Address

Management System Specialist’ position is a part of the [Union]

bargaining unit and that it is a violation of Article 1.2 of the

[CBA] to exclude the position and the disputed work from the

bargaining unit.” (emphasis added). Article 1.2 lists those job

classifications that are excluded from coverage under the CBA,

such as managerial and supervisory personnel, professional

employees, and mail handlers. The operative sentence contains

three findings by the arbitrator: (1) The AMS Specialist position

is a part of the bargaining unit; (2) excluding the position from

the bargaining unit violated the CBA; and (3) excluding the

work from the bargaining unit violated the CBA. The plain

meaning of the third finding unambiguously determined that

exclusion of the disputed work from the bargaining unit violated

the CBA. Nothing in the structure of the sentence suggests that

the third finding depends on or follows from the first or second

findings. Indeed, the only potential ambiguity in the language

of the award concerns the redundancy of the first and second

findings. But those findings are not at issue here as the Union

concedes they are unenforceable in light of the Board’s

determination that the AMS Specialist position is excluded from

the bargaining unit.

Contrary to the suggestion of the Postal Service, the

arbitrator’s analysis is entirely consistent with the plain meaning

of the 2003 Award. In section VI.B of the analysis, “Construing

the Intent of the Parties,” the arbitrator reviewed the text of the

CBA and concluded, in light of Article 1.2’s listing of excluded

job classifications and the interpretive canon of expressio unius,

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that “it is reasonable to conclude that the parties intended the

work and the position to be in the bargaining unit.” Analysis at

22 (emphasis added). His analysis proceeded to address the

more difficult question of whether including the AMS Specialist

position in the bargaining unit was consistent with applicable

labor relations law. Concluding that it was, the arbitrator

nonetheless emphasized that the “parties’ collective bargaining

agreement ultimately is dispositive,” id. at 33, twice repeating

that Article 1.2 of the CBA precluded the Postal Service from

assigning the disputed work outside the bargaining unit. This

discussion amply supports the third finding of the award that the

CBA would be violated if the disputed work were excluded from

the bargaining unit. To the extent the Postal Service looks to socalled Union “admissions” in pleadings, those “admissions”

cannot alter the plain meaning of the award.

The district court reached a different conclusion, relying

principally on the statement of issues at the beginning of the

arbitrator’s analysis. 499 F. Supp. 2d at 27. The arbitrator

described the questions before him as (1) whether the AMS

Specialist position should be included within the bargaining

unit, and (2) “[a]lternatively does this position contain duties

belonging in the [Union] bargaining unit?” Analysis at 3. The

statement of the issues cannot bear the weight that the district

court placed upon it. Just as parol evidence may not be used to

vary the plain meaning of a contract, see Am. Fed’n of Gov’t

Employees, Local 2924 v. Fed. Labor Relations Auth., 470 F.3d

375, 383 (D.C. Cir. 2006), the arbitrator’s analysis generally

cannot vary the plain meaning of the award, see Ethyl Corp.,

768 F.2d at 188; cf. also Enterprise Wheel, 363 U.S. at 598. The

award and the accompanying analysis in fact address both

position placement and work assignment. The arbitrator

explained that he did not think it possible to separate the parties’

intent as to the placement of the AMS Specialist position from

their intent as to assignment of the work performed by AMS

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Specialists. Analysis at 34-36. This is hardly surprising since

the parties agree that assigning the duties performed by AMS

Specialists to the bargaining unit means that only members of

the bargaining unit will be able to perform the non-supervisory,

non-managerial AMS Specialist duties. See Appellee’s Br. at

24-25; Appellant’s Reply Br. at 10. But even though

consideration of position placement and work assignment may,

in practice, overlap, see Local 666 v. NLRB, 904 F.2d 47, 50-51

(D.C. Cir. 1990), in this case the two were listed as conceptually

distinct issues and they remained that way in the award itself.

The Postal Service contends, as a result, that enforcing the

2003 Award would violate the rights of currently employed

AMS Specialists under Section 7 of the NLRA because these

employees would be forced to choose between losing their jobs

and being represented by the Union in the absence of majority

consent thereto. It maintains that because the AMS Specialist

position has been historically excluded from any bargaining

unit, neither the position nor its work may be accreted into an

existing bargaining unit. The Union observes that the 2003

Award allows it to reclaim bargaining unit work and that it has

already disclaimed interest in representing the AMS Specialist

employees and thus those occupying that position would

continue to be non-union employees. Appellant’s Reply Br. at

9-10. Although a court owes deference to the arbitrator’s

interpretation of the CBA, an arbitration award that is in

“explicit conflict” with “other laws and legal precedents,”

United Paperworkers Int’l Union v. Misco, Inc., 484 U.S. 29, 43

(1987) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Kaiser Steel

Corp. v. Mullins, 455 U.S. 72, 83-84 (1982), is unenforceable.

It is not immediately apparent whether the transfer of AMS

Specialist duties to the bargaining unit would be an unlawful

accretion under Board precedent. See Kaiser Found. Hosp., 343

N.L.R.B. 57 (2004); Lockheed Martin Tactical Aircraft Sys., 331

N.L.R.B. 1407 (2000). The district court did not reach the

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question of enforceability. Accordingly, we reverse and remand

the case for the district court to decide in the first instance

whether the third finding in the operative sentence of the 2003

Award is enforceable. See, e.g., Steele v. Schafer, 535 F.3d 689,

695 (D.C. Cir. 2008).

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