Opinion ID: 552463
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Offer

Text: 17 The Company contends that its decision to implement unilaterally was no offer for interim employment. The core of the Company's argument is that its March 12 letter to the Union and the employees made clear the Company's position that it was unacceptable for employees to work without a signed labor agreement. As a result, the Company claims, the final offer was intended only as an offer for a three-year collective-bargaining agreement. The March 12 letter from the Company said that the Company planned a lockout because we can no longer continue operating the mill with the uncertainty of not having a signed labor contract, and the possibility of the unions calling a strike at a time best suited to their interests. Operating in this fashion is very difficult and potentially very costly. 18 As an initial matter, the Company letter is dated March 12, six days after the Company implemented its final offer and several weeks after it first announced its intention to implement the offer. The purpose of the March 12 letter was to explain the Company's decision to start a lockout a week later. Considered in context, the March 12 letter only illustrates the Company's unwillingness to continue the interim relationship created by the Company when it implemented its final offer and serves as an explanation for its decision to institute the lockout unless a long-term agreement was ratified. 19 We reject as well the Company's contention that the undisputed facts are that the terms of the offer were for the express and single purpose of a new three-year collective-bargaining agreement, and for no other purpose. Brief for Defendant at 32. The Company is confusing different kinds of offers. The Company's February 20 offer for a new three-year labor agreement is not the offer upon which the district court predicated its finding of an interim contract. Rather, it was the February 20 offer as implemented on March 6. That these two offers are distinct is without question. For example, the latter offer for interim employment did not include the two-percent wage increases or ratification bonuses included in the February 20 offer. 20 While the Company contends that [t]here is nothing which provides the least factual foundation for any conclusion that any offer was made to have the employees continue working without a contract or on any interim basis, we read the record as providing no alternative explanations for the Company's conduct. 3 The Company nowhere adequately characterizes an alternative explanation of the legal significance of its decision to implement unilaterally the modified final offer. By implementing that modified offer, the Company was in effect stating the conditions of employment under which the Union's members would work, should they choose to do so, until a long-term agreement was reached. 21 We also reject any contention that the modified final offer implemented by the Company contained no obligation to arbitrate grievances. Though the Company has suggested that such an obligation might not have been included because arbitration was not mentioned specifically in the final offer itself, the longstanding negotiation practice makes clear that only proposed changes and disputed items needed to be mentioned specifically because undisputed items carried over automatically. The Company has acknowledged that, assuming the Company had made an offer to induce the Union employees to continue working without a signed contract[,] ... then the Unions could argue the offer impliedly included all terms and conditions of employment which were not in dispute. Reply Brief for Defendant at 18. 22 It is not the case here, as it was in several of the cases relied on by the Company, 4 that the employer's implemented offer expressly included only portions of its final offer and the union now seeks to bind the employer to other portions of the final offer not expressly included in the implemented offer. The Company here announced that it intended to implement all portions of its final offer, with only two exceptions unrelated to arbitration: the two-percent per-hour wage increases and the ratification bonuses, both of which were included in the February 20 offer but which were excluded from the implemented offer. The Union here does not seek to enforce these excluded portions; instead, the Union is attempting to bind the employer to portions of the final offer that were included expressly or by clear implication in the Company's implemented offer. 23 Though the issue is not directly before us, it is noteworthy that the Company seemingly could have excluded arbitration from the implemented final offer, just as it did the wage increase and ratification bonus. 5 Because the Company made no effort to exclude the obligation to arbitrate as it had with other provisions, the Company cannot successfully complain that the final offer included only the specific items listed.