Opinion ID: 397075
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Application of Deference Criteria

Text: 37 Against this background we turn now to the manner in which the Board applied its deference criteria. As already indicated, the union argues that the arbitrator did not address the unfair labor practice issues and therefore the Board properly refused to defer to the arbitration award. It is true that the arbitrator did not, in so many words, find that the companies had refused to bargain over a unilateral change in working conditions, in violation of sections 8(a)(1) and 8(a)(5). Instead he found, as a matter of contract interpretation and in the light of an examination of past practice, that the companies' institution of new procedures after November 1, 1975, did not impose a change in rules. This determination, however, was necessarily dispositive of the statutory issue: if no change in working conditions was imposed, no duty to bargain arose, and no unfair labor practice could have been committed. Because both the contractual and statutory issues rest on the same factual determinations, the arbitrator's better position and expertise as a fact-finder strengthen the case for deference to his findings. Cf. Stephenson v. NLRB, 550 F.2d 535, 538 n.4 (9th Cir. 1977). Under these circumstances, to insist here that the arbitrator announce that his resolution of the contractual dispute is intended as a resolution of the statutory issue as well is to impose a purely formalistic requirement. Thus, we conclude that the Board's clearly decided criterion was met in substance in this case. 38 In addition, this case presents what might be regarded as a congruence of interests, in that the union's claim primarily involves an asserted right affecting the union as a whole-a group right to certain working conditions. It is thus not a case in which an arbitrator's award affects rights of individuals or groups not directly party to the arbitration-as, for example, when a dispute arising out of an allegedly discriminatory discharge of an individual employee is brought to arbitration. See, e. g., Banyard v. NLRB, supra; cf. Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U.S. 36, 94 S.Ct. 1011, 39 L.Ed.2d 147 (1974) (rejecting a policy of deference to arbitration awards implicating individual statutory rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act). 39 The Spielberg criteria for deference would still not be satisfied if the result reached by the arbitrator were found to be clearly repugnant to the Act. In this case, however, the Board made no such determination. Indeed, as indicated earlier, see page 322 supra, the Board's Regional Director specifically found that the award was not clearly repugnant to the Act's policies or purposes, and the Board offered no persuasive justification for setting this finding aside. The Board's only rationale for declining to defer was the assertion that the arbitrator had ruled in favor of the companies because the contract between the parties contained no provisions pertaining to the matters at issue herein, and that it precluded consideration of past practices relating to the matter. It is on this basis, therefore, that the Board's decision must be reviewed. And on this basis, we believe the decision constitutes an abuse of discretion. The Board's rationale is simply incorrect; as the excerpts from the arbitrator's decision set out above indicate, the arbitrator plainly did consider past practice relating to C.O.D. collections, concluding that the companies had not departed from past practice. The arbitrator carefully presented the evidence on which he relied in reaching this conclusion, and while there was undoubtedly evidence to the contrary as well, the underlying questions were primarily factual issues that the arbitrator was best situated to resolve. His decision, moreover, was not clearly repugnant to the Act, as the Board's Regional Director found in his initial decision to defer. In short, the Board in this case declined to defer to an arbitrator's award that satisfied all of the criteria the Board has set, on grounds that do not withstand even casual scrutiny. 40 We do not doubt that the Board has wide discretion in defining the circumstances under which it will defer to an arbitration award, or indeed in determining whether it will defer under circumstances. The Board is not required by statute to defer; as we have had occasion to note before, the Board's rules on deference, after all, are self-imposed although it has followed healthy hints from the Supreme Court. NLRB v. Horn & Hardart Co., (2d Cir. 1971) 439 F.2d 674, 679. Once the Board has announced a particular set of rules, however, some constraints necessarily arise to limit its discretion in individual cases. 3 The Board cannot lightly change the rules on a case by case basis. As we said in Horn & Hardart, 41 We do not suggest that the Board can announce a policy regarding deference to arbitration and then blithely ignore it, thereby leading astray litigants who depended upon it. But it can change its mind or alter its standards for deference in some respects without necessarily engaging in conduct so blameworthy as to justify our calling it abuse of discretion. 42 Id. See also Roadway Express, Inc. v. NLRB, 647 F.2d 415, 418-419 (text accompanying notes 4-7) (4th Cir. 1981); Hawaiian Hauling Service, Ltd. v. NLRB, 545 F.2d 674, 676 (9th Cir. 1976), cert. denied, 431 U.S. 965, 97 S.Ct. 2921, 53 L.Ed.2d 1061 (1977). 43 We want it to be clear that we hold no special brief for the conduct of the companies in this case, and we express no approval of their failure promptly to inform the salesmen's union of the changes being made in the 1975 drivers' contract or the companies' dilatory resistance to the union's initial request for arbitration. We are similarly unimpressed with the union's actions, since there is little room for doubt that before it finally accepted the 1975 contract, the union was aware of what had occurred in the companies' bargaining with the drivers; moreover, the union itself sought arbitration and then refused to abide by the result. In addition, it may be that reasonable persons will differ on whether the arbitrator reached the correct result. But all these concerns are secondary: the issue before us is whether we should enforce the Board's order. 44 In this case, the Board did not purport to clarify or revise its announced standards for deference. Strictly speaking, it did not even decide whether the circumstances presented here warranted an exercise of its discretion in deferring to the arbitrator's award. Instead, acting on a motion for summary judgment, it misconstrued the arbitrator's award and, relying exclusively on its misconstruction, blithely ignored its own standards. 4 To accept its action in this case would render the Board's-and the courts'-laboriously developed standards of deference virtually meaningless, depriving parties to collective bargaining agreements of a reasonable expectation of finality in properly conducted arbitrations and significantly undermining the value and efficacy of arbitration as an alternative to the judicial or administrative resolution of labor disputes. 45 Although these considerations alone provide ample support for our decision not to enforce the Board's order in this case, we must note in addition the difficulties posed by the nature of the order itself. As indicated earlier, the essential thrust of the order is that the companies bargain with Local 2 over the issue of C.O.D. collections. But as we also indicated earlier, the union and the companies did have an opportunity to bargain over the issue in the course of negotiating the agreements to replace the 1975 contracts when they expired in 1978. The parties were not able in those negotiations to devise rules on collections acceptable to both sides, so that, as we were informed at oral argument, the practice under the 1978 contracts has remained essentially the same as under the 1975 contracts. Thus, the Board would now, in effect, give to the union the most it could possibly have hoped to obtain in bargaining-a return to the old system of collection or its compensatory equivalent-as an interim measure, while ordering bargaining that has in fact already occurred, although not with results desired by the union. We think that such an order, in so stale a dispute originally caused by the exigencies of simultaneous bargaining with two unions almost six years ago, has a distinct air of unreality about it, and we are left with the conviction that its enforcement would not serve the ends of justice or the purposes of national labor law. 46 Accordingly, we grant the petitions for review filed by the companies and deny the Board's cross-application for enforcement of its order.