Court Opinion

ID: 9428344
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:23:30.284926+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:13.063986
License: Public Domain

Justice Powell,
with whom The Chief Justice joins, dissenting.
I join Justice Rehnquist’s dissent, and write briefly to *697emphasize a rationale — suggested by an amicus curiae* — that is consistent both with national labor policy and the relevant precedents.
In briefest summary, I would hold that in the circumstances of this case no issue concerning the breach of the union’s statutory duty of fair representation properly can be said to arise at all. The union has not made a final determination whether to pursue arbitration on Clayton’s behalf. Clayton should not be able to claim a breach of duty by the union until the union has had a full opportunity to make this determination. No such opportunity exists until Clayton exhausts the procedures available for resolving that question. Thus, as Clayton cannot claim a breach of duty by the union, he cannot bring a breach of contract suit under § 301 against his employer.
In my view, the asserted distinction in a tripartite case such as this one between contractual and internal union remedies, ante, at 687, is immaterial. The situation presented in this case is well within the doctrine underlying Republic Steel Corp. v. Maddox, 379 U. S. 650 (1965), that employees must pursue all procedures established for determining whether a union will go forward with a grievance. Employees must pursue available procedures even if the collective-bargaining agreement contains time limits that appear on their face to bar revival of the grievance. As the Court noted in John Wiley & Sons v. Livingston, 376 U. S. 543, 556-557 (1964), “[q]uestions concerning the procedural prerequisites to arbitration do not arise in a vacuum; they develop in the context of an actual dispute about the rights of the parties to the contract or those covered by it.” Therefore, “it best accords with the usual purposes of an arbitration clause and with the policy behind federal labor law to regard procedural disagreements not as separate disputes but as aspects of the *698dispute which called the grievance procedures into play.” Id., at 559. Thus, the question whether such time limits should be waived in a particular case is itself an arbitrable matter.

Brief for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations as Amicus Curiae 3-4, 5-14.