Court Opinion

ID: 9470491
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:07:35.583644+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:55.938655
License: Public Domain

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree that there was no abuse of discretion in denying the Union’s motion for attorneys’ fees. As to Part I of the Court’s opinion, however, I respectfully dissent.
On November 24,1980, Litton notified its employees that there would be an inventory shutdown during one week in March and that all employees who did not work then would have to take that week as paid vacation. Litton had, in the past, closed during the summer months and had not forced employees to take paid vacation during the inventory shutdown. That same day the union filed a grievance claiming that Litton was acting in violation of the collective-bargaining agreement. The parties did not resolve their dispute. From March 23 to March 27 the company closed to take inventory and assigned work to all employees who had volunteered to assist with inventory and to approximately 180 other bargaining-unit employees. There was no work for 101 employees, and they were forced to take their paid vacation in March. Pursuant to Section 21 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (Designated Record p. 64-66) the parties submitted their dispute for arbitration.
A hearing was held on May 1,1981, and a decision was rendered on June 15, 1981. The arbitrator looked to the terms of the contract. Section 11E provides:
11E. The Company will schedule employees’ vacations so far as is consistent with good plant operations to satisfy the desires of the employees. The Company has the option of closing the plant or putting it on a limited production schedule during the vacation season. The Company will grant leaves of absence to a limited number of employees during a vacation shutdown, so that such employees may schedule vacations during other weeks of the year, provided that the requirements of the business and the need to meet production schedules will outweigh the scheduling of vacations to be *401taken other than during the vacation shutdown.
Section 11G states in part:
11G. The Company may require all employees ... to take their vacations during the plant shutdown or during a period defined as the vacation season if the Company provides a minimum of four (4) months prior notice of the proposed shutdown.
The arbitrator construed Section 11G as providing Litton no right to require that employees take vacation at a time not within the “vacation season.” The “vacation season” included the summer months and not March. (D.R. 19). By forcing some employees to take their vacations during an inventory shutdown in March, Litton violated the terms of the contract. This holding is not in dispute.
In order to remedy the breach of contract, the arbitrator decided (1) that employees who had to take paid vacation in March were entitled to a second vacation during the summer months, and (2) that the second vacation should be a paid vacation. In his opinion the employees suffered a real loss compensable in money when they were forced to take paid vacation in March. He specifically found the following:
Finally, I cannot credit the Company’s argument that no employee has been harmed in this matter. Surely any worker who made plans and looked forward to a summer vacation with loved ones is substantially harmed by being constrained to take his/her vacation in the melancholy month of March in Minnesota. The high probability is that rather than the vacation being a shared experience the typical grievant spent much of this time in March alone, as family and friends were scheduled to work or attend school.
(D.R. 22).
I am not sure I should have awarded this particular kind of relief, or indeed that the arbitrator was correct in interpreting the contract. But those questions are, in all but the clearest cases, the arbitrator’s business, not ours. Moreover, we are admonished to be particularly deferential when reviewing an arbitrator’s remedy.
When an arbitrator is commissioned to interpret and apply the collective bargaining agreement, he is to bring his informed judgment to bear in order to reach a fair solution of a problem. This is especially true when it comes to formulating remedies. There the need is for flexibility in meeting a wide variety of situations. The draftsmen may never have thought of what specific remedy should be awarded to meet a particular contingency.
United Steelworkers of America v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 597, 80 S.Ct. 1358, 1361, 4 L.Ed.2d 1424 (1960). It is difficult for judges to say what harm, if any, the employees in this case suffered. Courts simply do not have the expertise that labor arbitrators have to resolve disputes between labor and management and determine an appropriate award. .
The labor arbitrator is usually chosen because of the parties’ confidence in his knowledge of the common law of the shop and their trust in his personal judgment to bring to bear considerations which are not expressed in the contract as criteria for judgment .... The ablest judge cannot be expected to bring the same experience and competence to bear upon the determination, of a grievance, because he cannot be similarly informed.
United Steelworkers of America v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 574, 582, 80 S.Ct. 1347, 1352-53, 4 L.Ed.2d 1409 (1960). In view of the Supreme Court’s clear command that we defer to an arbitrator’s judgment, and especially to his remedy, I would enforce the arbitrator’s award in its entirety-
The Court gives three reasons for setting aside the arbitrator’s award: (1) The arbitrator, incorrectly assuming that Litton could not lay off employees, improperly awarded paid vacation as compensation for being laid off in March; (2) the remedy constitutes an unwarranted award of punitive damages; and (3) the award contravenes a limitation contained in the collective-bargaining agreement.
*402I do not agree that the arbitrator’s opinion shows that he misapprehended facts central to his decision to award paid vacation. He did proceed on the working hypothesis that a normal work year includes 51 weeks of paid work and one week of paid vacation, and he pointed out that the 101 employees involved here would receive 50 weeks of paid work, plus one week of paid vacation, plus one week of unpaid vacation, unless the company were ordered to pay for the second vacation week. He also compared the absence of pay for the second week of vacation to a lay-off. I do not read this passage in the opinion as holding that the company had no right under the contract to lay off employees. This case has nothing to do with lay-offs as such. If, for example, the company had paid employees for 51 weeks and then given them an unpaid vacation for the 52nd week, the unpaid 52nd week would have been analogous to a lay-off, but it would also be a breach of contract. The arbitrator was saying no more than that. He simply assumed, correctly, that lay-offs are not at issue here. Everyone now seems to agree that no layoffs occurred at the relevant time. During inventory week in March, everyone either worked or had to take paid vacation. No one was laid off.1
Nor does the award of a paid vacation constitute punitive damages. The arbitrator clearly believed that the employees, by having to take their vacations in March, suffered compensable harm. An award of paid vacation during the summer remedied this harm and insured that their “summer vacation” not be a mere lay-off.
Finally, in my view, the arbitrator did not exceed his authority by granting the employees a paid summer vacation in addition to' the number of paid vacation days the employees would normally have under the contract. The agreement sets out the number of vacation days a worker should normally receive, but it does not limit the arbitrator’s authority to fashion a remedy where, as in this case, there has been a breach of contract. A collective-bargaining agreement cannot explicitly regulate all aspects of labor-management relations, and it is the arbitrator’s duty to fill in gaps. United Steelworkers of America v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., supra, 363 U.S. at 580-81, 80 S.Ct. at 1352. The contract may not specify the relief that is required for every conceivable contractual violation, but absent express limitations, and as long as the remedy is not clearly unfair, courts should enforce the arbitrator’s award. See General Telephone Co. v. Communications Workers of America, 648 F.2d 452, 457 (6th Cir.1981); Carpenters’ District Council of Greater St. Louis v. Anderson, 619 F.2d 776, 778 (8th Cir.1980); Fabricut, Inc. v. Tulsa General Drivers, Warehousemen, and Helpers, Local 523, 597 F.2d 227, 229 (10th Cir.1979); Local 369, Bakery & Confectionery Workers International Union of America v. Cotton Baking Co., 514 F.2d 1235, 1237 (5th Cir.1975), cert. denied, 423 U.S. 1055, 96 S.Ct. 786, 46 L.Ed.2d 644 (1976).
It is true that the arbitrator’s award gives the employees 50 paid weeks of work and two paid weeks of vacation, more than they would have received had the contract not been broken. This Court gives the workers 50 paid weeks of work, one paid week of vacation, and one unpaid week of vacation, for a total yearly pay less than they would have received had the contract not been broken. They get just as much vacation as the contract provides for, but they are deprived of their right to take their vacation during the preferred time of year, a right guaranteed by the contract as construed by the arbitrator. This right is surely worth something. The arbitrator did not think it was trivial, and I believe he was within his rights in so deciding. If there is a doubt as to remedy, it is not unfair to *403resolve the doubt against the party that has broken its contract.
I would enforce the award in full, and therefore I respectfully dissent in part.

. Even if the arbitrator’s discussion is ambiguous and could be read as suggesting that Litton could not have laid off employees, we would still have to uphold the award. “A mere ambiguity in the opinion accompanying an award, which permits the inference that the arbitrator may have exceeded his authority, is not a reason for refusing to enforce the award.” United Steelworkers of America v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., supra, 363 U.S. at 598, 80 S.Ct. at 1361.