Source: https://openjurist.org/393/us/357
Timestamp: 2018-02-26 01:54:32
Document Index: 583432232

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 10', '§ 160', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 158', '§ 301', '§ 301', '§ 185', '§ 201', '§ 171']

393 U.S. 357 - National Labor Relations Board v. T Strong
393 US 357 National Labor Relations Board v. T Strong
393 U.S. 357
Joseph T. STRONG, d/b/a Strong Roofing & Insulating Co.
The challenge of the employer, in brief, is that ordering the payment of infringe benefits reserved in the contract inserts the Board into the enforcement of the collective bargaining agreement, contrary to the policy and scheme of the statute.4 Admittedly, the Board has no plenary authority to administer and enforce collective bargaining contracts. Those agreements are normally enforced as agreed upon by the parties, usually through grievance and arbitration procedures, and ultimately by the courts. But the business of the Board, among other things, is to adjudicate and remedy unfair labor practices. Its authority to do so is not 'affected by any other means of adjustment or prevention that has been or may be established by agreement, law, or otherwise * * *.' § 10(a), 61 Stat. 146, 29 U.S.C. § 160(a). Hence, it has been made clear that in some circumstances the authority of the Board and the law of the contract are overlapping, concurrent regimes, neither pre-empting the other. NLRB v. C & C Plywood Corp., 385 U.S. 421, 87 S.Ct. 559, 17 L.Ed.2d 486 (1967); Carey v. Westinghouse Electric Corp., 375 U.S. 261, 268, 84 S.Ct. 401, 407, 11 L.Ed.2d 320 (1964); Smith v. Evening News Assn., 371 U.S. 195, 197—198, 83 S.Ct. 267, 268—269, 9 L.Ed.2d 246 (1962); Local 174 Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America v. Lucas Flour Co., 369 U.S. 95, 101, n. 9, 82 S.Ct. 571, 575, 7 L.Ed.2d 593 (1962). Arbitrators and courts are still the principal sources of contract interpretation,5 but the Board may proscribe conduct which is an unfair labor practice even though it is also a breach of contract remediable as such by arbitration and in the courts. Smith v. Evening News Assn., 371 U.S. 195, 197—198, 83 S.Ct. 267, 268—269, 9 L.Ed.2d 246 (1962). It may also, if necessary to adjudicate an unfair labor practice, interpret and give effect to the terms of a collective bargaining contract. NLRB v. C & C Plywood Corp., 385 U.S. 421, 87 S.Ct. 559, 17 L.Ed.2d 486 (1967).
Bearing more precisely on this case, the Board is expressly invited by the Act to determine whether an employer has refused to bargain in good faith and thereby violated § 8(a)(5) by resisting 'the execution of a written contract incorporating any agreement reached if requested by either party * * *.' § 8 (d), 61 Stat. 142, 29 U.S.C. § 158(d); H. J. Heinz Co. v. NLRB, 311 U.S. 514, 524—526, 61 S.Ct. 320, 324—325, 85 L.Ed. 309 (1941). The Boa d is not trespassing on forbidden territory when it inquires whether negotiations have produced a bargain which the employer has refused to sign and honor, particularly when the employer has refused to recognize the very existence of the contract providing for the arbitration on which he now insists. To this extent the collective contract is the Board's affair, and an effective remedy for refusal to sign is its proper business.
There is a surface logic in what the Court does today: If the Board may award back pay (which is computed from the collective bargaining agreement), it should be allowed to award fringe benefits, whose character and amount are also determined by the collective bargaining agreement. An award of back pay, however, is an express part of the legislative grant, of authority,1 while the award of fringe benefits is not. That is, of course, not a complete answer, for Congress did not make an exhaustive catalogue of devices used to thwart the Act, but largely left to the Board 'the relation of remedy to policy.' See Phelps Dodge Corp. v. NLRB, 313 U.S. 177, 194, 61 S.Ct. 845, 852, 85 L.Ed. 1271.
What distinguishes the present case is the fact that fringe benefits are not products of a computer but of an arbitral process to which Congress has given strong support.2 See Textile Workers Union of America v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U.S. 448, 77 S.Ct. 912, 1 L.Ed.2d 972.
There were proposals, as we noted in Dowd Box Co. v. Courtney, 368 U.S. 502, 510—511, 82 S.Ct. 519, 524, 7 L.Ed.2d 483, to make a breach of a collective bargaining agreement an unfair labor practive subject to the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board. But those proposals never gained the necessary support, Congress deciding that '(o)nce parties have made a collective bargaining contract the enforcement of that contract should be left to the usual processes of the law and not to the National Labor Relations Board.' H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 510, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 42, quoted in Dowd Box Co. v. Courtney, supra, at 511, 82 S.Ct. at 524. It is that policy that is reflected in § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, which was before us in Lincoln Mills, 353 U.S. at 452, 77 S.Ct. at 915. That policy was to exchange an agreement to arbitrate grievance disputes for a no-strike agreement. Id., at 455, 77 S.Ct. at 917.
Arbitration is not a process which the Board is either equipped or qualified to follow. Those who are arbiters have special qualifications in a particular industry and come to know the common law of the shop.3
The jurisdiction of any agency or branch of government has a built-in impetus for growth and expansion. Seldom does a department restrict its powers narrowly and assume a self-denying attitude. The tendency is to construe express powers broadly. The organism grows by subtle and little-noticed extensions of authority. To students of government this phenomenon is as predictable as the operation of other so-called 'laws.'4
Courts are no exception; and part of their tendency to find easy extensions of their authority was seen in their early contest with administrative agencies. See United States v. Morgan, 307 U.S. 183, 191, 59 S.Ct. 795, 799, 83 L.Ed. 1211. Recent examples exist in this very field of arbitration with which we are concerned here. We noted in United Steelworkers of America v. Warrior & Gulf Nav. Co., 363 U.S. 574, 80 S.Ct. 1347, 4 L.Ed.2d 1409, how some courts were being enticed to construe arbitration clauses as permitting or not permitting arbitration of certain kinds of disputes and then becoming entangled in the arbitral process, though it was for the arbiters, not for them. Id., at 585, 80 S.Ct. at 1354. We relegated the courts to their narrow field, leaving arbitration to the new expertise.5
An arbiter is not of course free 'to dispense his own brand of industrial justice' but is admonished 'to reach a fair solution of a problem' within the letter and spirit of the collective bargaining agreement. United Steelworkers of America v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 597, 80 S.Ct. 1358, 1361, 4 L.Ed.2d 1424. The past practices of the parties, as well as the contractual provisions themselves, are the guidelines.6 Local 77, American Federation of Musicians, AFL—CIO v. Philadelphia Orchestra, D.C., 252 F.Supp. 787. The agreement to arbitrate is, moreover, more than a contract; it is a generalized code that is understood only in light of the "common law of the shop which implements and furnishes the context of the agreement." Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Nav. Co., supra, 363 U.S., at 580, 80 S.Ct., at 1351, 4 L.Ed.2d 1409. It is sometimes called 'a cooperative effort by the parties and the arbitrator to develop a workable solution to the problem.'7 There is a more jaundiced view. Judge Hays, who has had considerable experience in the field, has stated:
'A proportion of arbitration awards * * * are decided not on the basis of the evidence or of the contract or other proper considerations, but in a way which in the arbitrator's opinion makes it likely that he will be hired for other arbitration cases.' P. Hays, Labor Arbitration: A Dissenting View 112 (1966).8
See generally Nathanson v. NLRB, 344 U.S. 25, 29—30, 73 S.Ct. 80, 83, 97 L.Ed. 23 (1952); Note, A Survey of Labor Remedies, 54 Va.L.Rev. 38, 41—95 (1968).
Steelworkers Trilogy, 363 U.S. 564, 574, 593, 80 S.Ct. 1343, 1347, 1358, 4 L.Ed.2d 1403, 1409, 1424 (1960). Congress established the judicial remedy of § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 61 Stat. 156, 29 U.S.C. § 185, in lieu of a proposal to make breach of a collective bargaining agreement itself an unfair labor practice. H.R.Conf.Rep.No. 510, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 41—42. The House Conference Report asserts that '(o)nce parties have made a collective bargaining contract the enforcement of that contract should be left to the usual processes of the law and not to the National Labor Relations Board,' id., at 42. See Textile Workers Union of America v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U.S. 448, 452, 77 S.Ct. 912, 915, 1 L.Ed.2d 972 (1957). Cf. LMRA § 201, 61 Stat. 152, 29 U.S.C. § 171.
See, e.g., Aaron, 'On First Looking into the Lincoln Mills Decision,' in Arbitration and the Law (Proceedings, National Academy of Arbitrators) (J. McKelvey ed. 1959); Bickel & Wellington, Legislative Purpose and the Judicial Process: The Lincoln Mills Case, 71 Harv.L.Rev. 1 (1957); Bunn, Lincoln Mills and the Jurisdiction to Enforce Collective Bargaining Agreements, 43 Va.L.Rev. 1247 (1957); Cox, Reflections Upon Labor Arbitration, 72 Harv.L.Rev. 1482 (1959); Cox, The Legal Nature of Collective Bargaining Agreements, 57 Mich.L.Rev. 1 (1958); Feinsinger, Enforcement of Labor Agreements—A New Era In Collective Bargaining, 43 Val.L.Rev. 1261 (1957); Gregory, The Law of the Collective Agreement, 57 Mich.L.Rev. 635 (1959); Jenkins, The Impact of Lincoln Mills on the National Labor Relations Board, 6 U.C.L.A.L.Rev. 355 (1959).
See Aaron, Arbitration in the Federal Courts: Aftermath of the Trilogy, 9 U.C.L.A.L.Rev. 360 (1962); Davey, The Supreme Court and Arbitration: The Musings of an Arbitrator, 36 Notre Dame Law. 138 (1961); Fleming, Some Observations on Contract Grievances Before Courts and Arbitrators, 15 Stan.L.Rev. 595 (1963); Gregory, Enforcement of Collective Agreements by Arbitration, 48 Va.L.Rev. 883 (1962); Jones, The Name of the Game is Decision—Some Reflections on 'Arbitrability' and 'Authority' in Labor Arbitration, 46 Texas L.Rev. 865 (1968); Mayer, Labor Relations, 1961: The Steelworkers Cases Re-examined, 13 Lab.L.J. 213 (1962); Meltzer, The Supreme Court, Arbitrability and Collective Bargaining, 28 U.Chi.L.Rev. 464 (1961); Jones & Smith, Management and Labor Appraisals and Criticisms of the Arbitration Process: A Report with Comments, 62 Mich.L.Rev. 1115 (1964).