Court Opinion

ID: 9686732
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:04:05.209411+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:44:37.444489
License: Public Domain

Currie, J.
(dissenting in part). I cannot agree with the interpretation of the vacation clause of the collective-bargaining contract adopted by the majority opinion, nor with the holding that past vacation practices of the company had any materiality upon the issue of allocating weeks of vacation to layoff periods.
The material sentence of such contract governing vacations reads, “The vacation period shall be set at a convenient time by the company, except that the wishes of the individual employees as to their vacation period shall be taken into consideration as much as possible.” The majority opinion restricts the meaning of the word “convenient” as only applicable to an interruption of production. This narrow and restricted interpretation overlooks entirely the right the company was undoubtedly seeking to protect by this clause.
Without any vacation clause in the contract the company would have had the unrestricted right to designate the vacation period of each employee. This right continued under the contract except in so far as it was yielded up by the clause in question. Under such clause the company’s convenience still controlled, and the right of an employee to select a particular time for his vacation was subject to the express limitation that it would not interfere with the company’s *365convenience. It surely would not have been the objective of the company to safeguard production as an end in itself but rather its costs of production. Among such costs were its contributions required under the Wisconsin Unemployment Compensation Act. Prior to 1954 the company had experienced a steady level of employment so that its unemployment compensation account had been built up to the point of requiring little or no further annual contributions. Any depletion of such account by payment of benefits would have to be replaced by the company by means of further contributions.
Therefore, in the situation which confronts us here, where employees were on layoff and the controversy is over whether weeks of such layoff period selected by the company or the employee shall govern, the real issue of convenience resolves itself down to cost. It will be of less expense for the company to have its designation of weeks 29 and 30 prevail, while certain plaintiffs would gain financially by having the vacation pay applied to other portions of the layoff period. Employees falling in this category are the plaintiffs Darling, Brudos, Harnisch, and Stein.
Up until the 1954 layoff for lack of business there had been no past practice with respect to designating weeks of vacation during a layoff. The situation with respect to such a layoff is so entirely different than that which prevails during production that it is difficult to see why past practices during production, as to permitting employees to have some choice of selection of their weeks of vacation, should have any application whatever to a period when they are on layoff.
Here, before weeks 29 and 30 arrived, the company designated such two weeks as the weeks of vacation for employees on layoff and paid them their vacation pay in advance of the beginning of such two weeks. This should be conclusive as to all plaintiffs who had not prior thereto, with the company’s approval, designated different weeks for their vacations. *366Plowever, the company had no right retroactively to change weeks of vacation previously selected by the employees. The claims for benefits of the plaintiffs Foellmi, Nolte, and Gildermeister for both weeks, and Schaffer, Wallace, and Wheeler as to one week each, should have been allowed on this basis. It is for this reason that I concur in the result of the majority opinion to this extent.
The claims of the plaintiffs Lemke, Schaffer, Wallace, and Wheeler as to their second week of vacation, and the plaintiff Briggs as to both weeks of vacation, fall into still another category. They contended that they had the right to wait until the layoff ended and the production had again started and then take their remaining vacation time to which they were entitled even if this did not occur until the last two weeks in December. Even under the majority opinion’s highly restrictive interpretation of what was “convenient” for the company, it would seem to be inescapable that it would be more convenient for the company to have them take their vacation during the months of layoff rather than after production had resumed.
For the reasons hereinbefore stated, the following are the only claims of the plaintiffs which should have been allowed:
Foellmi for both weeks.
Gildermeister for both weeks.
Nolte for both weeks.
Lemke for one week.
Schaffer for one week (conceded by the company).
Wheeler for one week.
Wallace for one week.
Chapman for one week.
The judgment of the circuit court in so far as it allowed claims of the plaintiffs beyond this should be reversed.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice BROAdfoot joins in this dissenting opinion.