Court Opinion

ID: 9464112
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:25:15.181133+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:27.784410
License: Public Domain

SEITZ, Chief Judge,
concurring.
I agree with the majority’s conclusion in part II of their opinion — that the absence of an arbitration award does not preclude judicial enforcement of a settlement agreement under § 301 of the Taft-Hartley Act, 29 U.S.C. § 185. But I conclude that the district court was correct in refusing to enforce the agreements in this case for reasons other than those relied upon by the majority.
Article XXIII of the 1974 collective bargaining agreement provides that unless contractual disputes are settled, they shall be referred to arbitration. On the other hand, Article XXIII also states that: “[settlements reached at any step of the grievance procedure shall be final and binding on both parties and shall not be subject to further proceedings under this Article except by mutual agreement,”1 and this *1100might be thought to indicate that the settlement agreements actually reached by the parties here may be judicially enforced without further resort to arbitration.
But the terms of the settlement accords are basically coextensive with the clauses of the collective bargaining agreement under which the grievances arose. Thus, to hold that the settlement accords may be sued upon in district court without resort to arbitration would mean that essentially all issues arising under the basic clauses in the collective bargaining contract could be presented directly to the district court and not brought to arbitration. The settlement accords do not clearly indicate the intent to take all issues regarding the interpretation of these clauses in the collective bargaining contract out of the grievance adjustment procedure in Article XXIII, which culminates in arbitration, and to rest them directly in the hands of the federal courts. Nor is such an intent lightly to be implied in view of the federal policy favoring the arbitration of labor disputes. See Gateway Coal Co. v. UMW, 414 U.S. 368,377, 94 S.Ct. 629, 38 L.Ed.2d 583 (1974).
I need not address the question of whether prospective relief on the basis of settlement agreements is always improper when the collective bargaining agreement contains a broad arbitration clause unless the settlement agreements explicitly state that their content is not arbitrable. When the terms of settlement accords track the language of the underlying collective bargaining contract closely, as they do here, I would require a clear expression of intent before I would interpret settlement accords to allow the parties to place the content of the collective bargaining contract directly before the district courts. I say this with full realization of the fact that my position has the effect of reading this type of settlement agreement to grant no rights besides those already contained in the collective bargaining contract.
The majority refuse to enforce the settlement agreements because they are not “sufficiently specific as to be capable of implementation.” But as I have noted, the terms of the settlement agreements closely track the terms of the collective bargaining agreement itself. The majority, and properly so, do not cast doubt on the proposition that" the relevant clauses of the collective bargaining contracts are sufficiently specific to enforce, and I see no reason to treat the settlement agreements differently. But while I cannot join entirely in the majority’s reasoning, I concur in their judgment that the district court should be affirmed.

. Article XVII of the 1971 collective bargaining contract indicates that settlement agreements reached prior to referring grievances to the “umpire” “shall be binding on both parties and shall not be subject to reopening except by mutual agreement.” The 1971 and 1974 contracts contain separate procedures for resolution of health and safety grievances, but these are, for present purposes, substantially identical to the generally applicable grievance procedures.