Court Opinion

ID: 9490738
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:53:14.26879+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:17.368468
License: Public Domain

RANDOLPH, Circuit. Judge,
dissenting:
My colleagues believe the arbitrator’s remedy — the hotel shall restore the classification it unilaterally abolished — was outside the scope of the arbitration. In support, they point to the union’s letter starting the arbitration, and to the arbitrator’s initial opinion. I have five points in opposition.
First, the union’s letter signaling the beginning of arbitration tells us nothing of particular significance. It states that “pursuant to our collective bargaining agreement,” the union “is opposing and taking to arbitration the action taken by your establishment against the above-captioned employee.” Letter from Richardson to Jacques of 7/24/92, at 1 (italics added). Now we know that the grievance was not just for one employee, so right from the start the letter loses any claim to being the definitive guide to the scope of the arbitration that eventually followed.
Little wonder then that the union treats its letter as unimportant. The hotel did so too, and said as much at oral argument. The letter was not before the district court, it was not part of the record before us, and when my colleagues asked for a copy during argument, the parties were not at all sure they could find one.
The complaint, according to the union’s letter, is merely “Improper Layoff.” Id. There is no elaboration, no citation' to -any part of the labor contract, nothing. How then can one say on the basis' of this letter that the arbitrator misinterpreted the scope of the issues? The arbitrator listened to the parties, he read their submissions, he heard their evidence. And he presumably knew the customary manner in which union and management treat such informal proceedings. We decidedly do not.
*750Second, considerations such as those just mentioned are partly behind the settled law that an arbitrator’s interpretation of the scope of the issues submitted to him for arbitration gets the same deep judicial bow as an arbitrator’s interpretation of a collective bargaining agreement. See, e.g., Sheet Metal Workers’ Int’l Ass’n Local Union No. 859 v. Madison Indus., 84 F.3d 1186, 1190 (9th Cir.1996); El Dorado Technical Servs. v. Union General De Trabajadores de Puerto Rico, 961 F.2d 317, 321 (1st Cir.1992); Lattimer-Stevens Co. v. United Steelworkers of America, Dist. 27, Sub-Dist. 5, 913 F.2d 1166, 1170 (6th Cir.1990); Mobil Oil Corp. v. Independent Oil Workers Union, 679 F.2d 299, 302 (3d Cir.1982); Waverly Mineral Products v. United Steelworkers of America Local No. 8290, 633 F.2d 682, 685-86 (5th Cir.1980). This rule of deference also rests on federal labor policy, judicial economy, and the Supreme Court’s directive that “when the subject matter of a dispute, is arbitrable, ‘procedural’ questions which grow out of the dispute and bear on its final disposition are to be left to the arbitrator.” United Paper-workers Int’l Union v. Misco, 484 U.S. 29, 40, 108 S.Ct. 364, 372, 98 L.Ed.2d 286 (1987) (citing John Wiley & Sons, Inc. v. Livingston, 376 U.S. 543, 557, 84 S.Ct. 909, 918, 11 L.Ed.2d 898 (1964)).
If an arbitrator’s interpretation gets the “greatest deference imaginable,” Utility Workers Union of America, Local 246, AFL-CIO v. NLRB, 39 F.3d 1210, 1216 (D.C.Cir. 1994), I see no plausible ground for setting aside this arbitrator’s view of what was before him. Certainly the grievance letter cannot shoulder such a heavy load.
Which brings me to my third point. All indications point in favor of the arbitrator’s version of the scope of this arbitration. Even if we were on a level, no-deference playing field, I would find the .arbitrator’s view far more,persuasive than the majority opinion’s. , Consider the context. The hotel did two things: it announced an across-the-board layoff of-its bus employees and it abolished the bus classification. Both of the hotel’s actions were therefore in play.
The “on behalf of’ language — viewed by my colleagues and the district judge as critical — comes from the first paragraph of the arbitrator’s initial opinion. Now, it seems to me the person best situated to pronounce on the import of those words is not a judge, but the arbitrator who wrote them. And here is what the arbitrator thought. From the second paragraph of his opinion onward, the arbitrator treats the hotel’s unilateral abolishment of the bus employee position as a chief topic of dispute between the parties. This is compelling evidence of what the parties believed they were arbitrating. A court cannot rightly claim to be giving deference to an arbitrator when it reaches out so far to overturn him.
My fourth point is that to restrict the scope of arbitration to the union’s opening grievance letter is to adopt a formal arbitration pleading requirement, judicially monitored — something like, “The scope of the union’s first letter defines the scope of the arbitration.” Yet I had thought informality was one of the hallmarks of this sort of nonjudicial dispute resolution. The approach my colleagues adopt, if it were to have any lasting impact (I cannot imagine that it will), means that no longer will the arbitrator hear the parties out, consider the evidence they wish to present, and make a considered determination of the scope of the issues before him. Instead he will examine only the initial grievance letter, much in the manner of a common law judge in Blackstone’s time. Such a regime, I can say with no exaggeration, flies in the face of, contradicts, deviates from, upsets, disregards, conflicts with, tosses aside, ignores and repudiates a large portion of the law of labor arbitration from the Steelworkers Trilogy on down.
Indeed, such a regime would impose upon arbitration practice procedural requirements even stricter than the more formal rules governing the trial of a federal civil case. Consider Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 15(b): “When issues not raised by the pleadings are tried by express or implied consent of the parties, they shall be treated in all respects as if they had been raised in the pleadings.” Here the union and the hotel “tried” the issue of the classification abolishment and the arbitrator issued his findings and conclusions about that issue in his initial *751award. And so, if this had been a district court case, the union’s grievance letter — its “complaint” — would be deemed to have raised that issue. It is utterly incomprehensible that arbitration proceedings should be more regimented.
This brings me to my fifth and final point. My colleagues say that the arbitrator’s remedy of restoring the bus classification fell outside' the issues the parties arbitrated and came about only “post hoc.” This is doubly mistaken. In his initial award the arbitrator held, for instance, that “the Hotel violated the layoff, seniority and classification provisions of the Agreement ... insofar- as it eliminated completely the Bus Employee classification, laid off all of the Bus Employees and transferred the substantial remaining Bus Employee duties to the Waiters .... Consequently, the Hotel is directed to restore the Bus Employee position, to reinstate the laid off Bus Employees and to make them whole for all losses attributable to the improper layoff.” J.A. 31. Having found, as an initial matter, that the hotel violated the contract by eliminating the classification, the arbitrator simply followed elementary logic in ordering the hotel to restore the classification. It is an old rule that the scope of the violation determines the scope of the remedy.
The majority’s other error is in supposing that the arbitrator’s rulings after his initial award may be dismissed as merely “post hoc.” After the initial decision, the parties returned to the arbitrator for clarification. Parties sometimes do the same thing in this court. The arbitrator issued an opinion stating that the bus classification had to be restored. Even then the district court did not think the arbitration proceedings had ended and so, at the district court’s direction, the parties' returned to the arbitrator again for a final ruling and again the arbitrator ordered the hotel to restore the classification. The majority’s post hoc rationale thus embodies a legal principle — whatever the arbitrator says first in the course of ongoing arbitration proceedings is all that counts. There is probably no need to point out that in all the annals of arbitration law, this marks the first appearance of such ■ a legal principle. If there is something, anything to be said in favor of it, the majority has neglected to enlighten us.