Opinion ID: 2820784
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Temporarily Scheduled or Assigned

Text: Next, the Company argues that the McKee Award misconstrues the term temporarily scheduled or assigned and thus imposes a new obligation on the Company not bargained for in the CBA. The Company relies upon our decision in Keebler to support its position. 80 F.3d 284 (8th Cir. 1996). Because Keebler is not apposite, we are unpersuaded. In Keebler, a company and its union entered into a CBA and subsequently a side agreement to the CBA governing the sales and delivery of food products. Id. at 286. When a dispute arose, the parties settled the dispute and issued a settlement letter governing the settlement. Id. When a second dispute arose, the case was arbitrated. Id. This court vacated the arbitrator's award in favor of the union because we found that the arbitrator based his award on the settlement letter and not on the language of the CBA or the side agreement. Id. at 288 (The arbitrator found that [the company]'s obligation to obtain [the union's] agreement arose under the settlement letter, to which the arbitrator apparently also looked to discern the parties' intent under the [CBA] and the side agreement.). In this case, however, Arbitrator McKee based his award solely on the ambiguous language temporarily scheduled or assigned found in the CBA. -11- Arbitrator McKee's interpretation relied upon previous arbitration decisions that addressed the same issue in Senior Report Clerks and U-Verse. The interpretation that a work assignment is temporary until the Company has changed the job description of the lower-job classification to include the higher-classified work was first articulated by McKee in Senior Report Clerks, then adopted by Arbitrator Dana Eischen in his U-Verse decision. Arbitrator McKee recognized, however, that this interpretation was contrary to the interpretation of temporariness in the Heinsz and Fowler Awards. As we stated in Trailways, we recognize that there may be situations where an arbitrator will refuse to defer to a prior award involving the same issue, including when '(1) [t]he previous decision was clearly an instance of bad judgment; (2) the decision was made without the benefit of some important and relevant facts or considerations; or (3) new conditions have arisen questioning the reasonableness of the continued application of the decision.' 807 F.3d at 1425 n.16 (quoting F. Elkouri & E. Elkouri, How Arbitration Works 428 (BNA 4th ed. 1985)). Arbitrator McKee explained his declination of deference to a prior award involving a similar dispute by stating his disagreement with the prior decisions's interpretation of the contract's provisions. According to Arbitrator McKee, the Heinsz and Fowler Awards interpreted temporariness in a manner that gave the Company an incentive to violate the CBA as long as they violated it consistently for a given amount of time (or at least until the higher-classified job functions were performed long enough by lower-classified employees to be considered a permanent part of their job). Arbitrator McKee concluded that this interpretation was erroneous because it gave the Company the unilateral ability to render the temporariness requirement meaningless. In sum, Arbitrator McKee's decision to follow certain arbitration awards and not others, based upon those awards' factual and legal differences, does not authorize us to vacate his award under Trailways. -12-