Opinion ID: 527829
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Background and Players

Text: 3 Plaintiff-appellee Robert Guidry (Guidry) became a member of the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 406 (the Union) in 1949. The Union is a constituent division of the International Union of Operating Engineers and is an unincorporated labor organization with six districts in the state of Louisiana. There is an office within each district, and the statewide central office is in New Orleans. 4 The Union elects a statewide Business Manager and Financial Secretary who works out of the central New Orleans Office. Defendant Peter Babin III (Babin) has served in this position since 1976. The Business Manager negotiates collective bargaining agreements in Louisiana, serves on a committee that negotiates the National Pipe Line Agreement, acts as a trustee of the Union's Health and Welfare Fund, and appoints and supervises assistant business managers in the various districts who oversee the day-to-day functioning of the Union. These assistant business managers are also known as business agents (BAs) and they represent the Union at pre-job conferences, administer the hiring hall procedures, and appoint union stewards and master mechanics to act as representatives for the Union on the job. 5 Babin's predecessor as Business Manager appointed defendant Willard Carlock, Sr. (Carlock) as BA for the Union's Lake Charles District. After he took office, Babin retained Carlock as BA until Carlock and his administration of the district came under criminal investigation. Babin fired Carlock on March 10, 1984. Taliaferro v. Schiro, 669 F.Supp. 763, 766 (W.D.La.1987). 6 Babin appointed defendant Columbus J. Laird (Laird) as BA for the Lake Charles District in 1978. Laird technically had as much authority as Carlock, but he considered Carlock his boss and followed Carlock's instructions. Laird was in office until January 15, 1985 when he resigned after an indictment was brought against him, Carlock, and others. Id. 7 Babin appointed Don Schiro (Schiro) to be statewide Pipe Line Business Agent in March 1980. Schiro represented the Union in pipeline construction jobs controlled by the National Pipe Line Agreement and was responsible for attending pre-job conferences and appointing stewards and referring workers to pipeline jobs. However, Schiro generally left these details to BAs such as Carlock and Laird. Id. 8 The district court found that Babin's supervision of the BAs was totally inadequate. Id. at 775-76. Upon appointing a BA, Babin instructed him to run the hiring hall on a non-discriminatory basis, but otherwise did very little to supervise him. He met with each BA semi-annually to discuss local problems. He had no formal evaluation procedure, but instead relied on his own re-election as evidence that Union members were satisfied with the performances of the BAs from their districts. Id. at 765.B. The Lake Charles District Hiring Hall 1) Generally 9 The Union, as the exclusive collective bargaining agent for operating engineers in its jurisdiction, signed two major collective bargaining agreements. The first agreement is between the Union and the Lake Charles District, Associated General Contractors of Louisiana, Inc. and governs the building and construction industry (the Building Trades Agreement). The National Pipe Line Agreement covers all transportation mainline pipeline and underground cable work. Both agreements specify that the Union will provide labor through an exclusive hiring hall. The method for registering applicants for referral is set out in the agreements and involves placing individuals in four groups according to their work experience. The Union has always disregarded this rule and it has, instead, grouped workers together, keeping only a separate group for oilers. The hiring hall maintains two separate lists for building trades projects and pipeline projects, and, since March 1984, a worker can keep his or her name on only one list at a time. Both lists contain names in the order in which the applicant notifies the Union that he or she is available for work. 10 2) Departures from the Hiring Hall Procedure 11 Both Agreements allow the contractor to hire some of its employees on any given job outside the structure of the hiring hall. The Building Trades Agreement allows the contractor to hire key personnel directly and to recall any worker who has been employed by that contractor for at least six of the previous twelve months. The National Pipe Line Agreement allows the contractor to hire half its workforce from a group of regular employees. Regular employees have either been employed by the contractor in the prior six months or are customarily employed by that contractor whenever it has work. Id. at 767. 12 Additionally, the Union has developed informal departures from the regular hiring hall procedure of offering a referral to the first applicant on the list. The first of these exceptions is based on the fact that the Union can, according to the agreements, name stewards to pipeline projects and master mechanics to building trades jobs to act as Union representatives. The procedure for such appointment under the agreements is to name an individual from among the Union members already referred to the job. Carlock, Laird, and Schiro departed from this rule by naming stewards and master mechanics to jobs, regardless of their positions on the list. Schiro sometimes appointed individuals who were not yet even on the list to steward positions when the job they were working on at the time was nearing completion. Id. at 768. 13 Short-term jobs, which are expected to last one to three days, also were treated as exceptions to the hiring hall procedure. Referrals for these jobs were simply given to those applicants who were present at the Union hall at the time the referral was received, irrespective of the applicants' places on the list. Union leadership made a similar exception for temporary replacements of workers who were incapacitated or could not otherwise perform their jobs. Id. at 768. 14 Finally, the Union's collective bargaining agreement with Dolphin Construction Company required that the Union refer residents of Allen Parish to its construction project there. Allen Parish residents, therefore, received referrals to those jobs before non-residents whose names were higher on the list. 15 3) Manipulation of the Hiring Hall Procedures and the Exceptions 16 The district court found that Carlock exploited[ed] and, at times, disregard[ed] entirely the hiring hall procedures to enrich his confederates to the detriment of the plaintiff and others. Id. at 769. The district court went on to explain specifically the various ways in which Carlock accomplished this: (1) appointing his confederates as stewards or master mechanics irrespective of their skills or their places on the list; (2) abusing the short-term referral exception to designate some jobs as short-term that he knew to be substantially longer than three days; (3) allowing contractors to employ as regular employees workers who did not meet the requirements of that group as outlined in the National Pipe Line Agreement; (4) designating a referral as a recall under the Building Trades Agreement regardless of the individual's eligibility for recall. Id. at 769. 17 The district court found that Carlock quelled opposition by means of intimidation and threats of retaliation in the form of economic discrimination and physical injury. Id. Also, the court found that Union members feared voting against Carlock because the balloting was not secret and they feared retaliation. Id. Finally, the court noted that Carlock made it difficult for disgruntled or suspicious workers to check their positions on the out-of-work list by keeping possession of, or control over, that list. Id. at 769-70.