Opinion ID: 500031
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Arbitration Proceeding Was Improper

Text: 114 The ground service employee arbitration was fundamentally improper, both because the arbitrator deferred to an invalid implementing agreement and because he was not provided with information vitally relevant to his decision. 115 The arbitrator clearly based his decision on the October 22, 1980 interim agreement. He declared, without support from the record or any coherent reason, that the Rock Island employees had sufficient participatory rights to ensure the implementing agreement was consistent with the March 4th Agreement. Further, he specifically deferred to the October 22, 1980 agreement, declaring both that it would be inappropriate to make a redetermination of seniority and that prior rights and dovetailing were not contemplated by the March 4th Agreement. 116 Next, the arbitrator made his decision without an understanding of the requirements of the union's constitution. To conform with the UTU constitution, the union should have entered the arbitration with a unified position and actively sought seniority for Rock Island employees. What happened in the ground service employees' arbitration, however, could not have been more different. The union allowed the claims of the CNW employees with regard to the allocation of seniority--a position contrary to its centrally determined seniority policy--to go unchallenged to the arbitrator. This impropriety strongly contributed to providing a legitimate forum to a position which it had previously determined illegitimate and which otherwise would probably not have prevailed.