Court Opinion

ID: 9693660
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:55:23.929627+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:49.256899
License: Public Domain

LARSEN, Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I.
As the majority does, I reject the notion that a union’s breach of duty in processing a grievance is an unfair labor practice within Section 1201(b) of the Public Employe Relations Act, 43 P.S. § 1101.1201(b) and is therefore within the exclusive jurisdiction of the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board. I concur with the majority’s ruling that a member of a bargaining unit has a right to sue the union for damages for breach of its duty of fair representation in the grievance process. Falsetti v. Local Union No. 2026, United Mine Workers, 440 Pa. 145, 161 A.2d 882 (1980). Accord: Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171, 87 S.Ct. 903, 17 L.Ed.2d 842 (1967).
II.
I disagree, however, with the majority in holding that the appellant is not entitled to maintain an action against her employer for discharge without just cause in violation of the collective bargaining agreement. As a rule, an employee who is a beneficiary of a bargaining agreement is strictly bound by the terms relating to the pursuit of remedies for alleged violations of that agreement. Whatever remedial rights the employee has must originate within the terms of the collective bargaining agreement. Falsetti v. Local Union No. 2026, United Mine Workers, supra.
“In effect, the [employee] is a beneficiary of the [employer’s] promises [under the Agreement] but the [employer] has limited those promises by refusing to entertain claims based on [violations of the Agreement] . . . unless brought by the other party to the Agreement, the [employees’ bargaining representative]. The limited character of the *334[employer’s] promises serves to defeat any attempt to get redress individually.”

Falsetti v. Local Union No. 2026, United Mine Workers, supra.

As a result, where an employee is discharged in violation of a bargaining agreement, (as is alleged by appellant in this case) the aggrieved employee is limited to seeking a remedy through the contractually adopted procedures. Generally, the employee who is wrongfully discharged may not resort to the courts before the grievance procedures established by the contract have been fully exhausted. However, because the remedies provided by a collective bargaining agreement, more often than not, are controlled by the union and employer, “they may prove unsatisfactory or unworkable for the individual grievant”. Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. at 184, 87 S.Ct. at 914 (1967). The question that arises then is whether there are instances where an individual employee may obtain judicial review of a breach of contract claim against the employer notwithstanding the failure to exhaust contractually provided remedies.
I believe such an instance exists where an employee seeks enforcement of contractual rights and a union, which possesses the exclusive power to invoke the higher stages of the grievance procedure, prevents the employee from exhausting the contract remedies by wrongfully refusing to process the grievance. In such a situation an employee is forced into an untenable position. The employee has a grievance against the employer for breach of contract. Under the terms of the contract which the employer has breached, the employee is restricted to seeking relief within the remedial procedures established by the agreement. Such employee, thus, cannot pursue, on his own, the contract remedies to the fullest extent. Under the agreement, the employee must rely on the union to prosecute his grievance. If the union breaches its obligation by wrongfully refusing or neglecting to pursue the grievance, then the aggrieved employee would be left without an effective remedy as to the employer. He would have a theoretical remedy and yet be deprived of the *335means of enforcement. This is the plight of the appellant in this case. She alleges that her employer has wrongfully discharged her in violation of the collective bargaining agreement. The agreement which she claims the Commonwealth violated restricts her pursuit of a remedy to the procedure established therein. Further, that same agreement provides that only the union may prosecute a grievance at the arbitration level. Additionally, she alleges that the union has wrongfully failed to proceed with arbitration on her behalf. As a result, she is unable to pursue the remedy she seeks within the procedures established by the contract. In short, she was prevented from exhausting her contractual remedies by alleged wrongful conduct on the part of the union.
“It is true that the employer in such a situation may have done nothing to prevent exhaustion of the exclusive contractual remedies to which [the employer] agreed in the collective bargaining agreement. But the employer has committed [an alleged] wrongful discharge in breach of that agreement, a breach which could be remedied through the grievance process to the [employee’s] benefit were it not for the union’s breach of its [duty to represent the employee fairly in the grievance process]. To leave the employe remediless in such circumstances would, . . . be a great injustice. We cannot believe that [the legislative intent], in conferring upon employers and unions the power to establish exclusive grievance procedures, was to confer upon unions such unlimited discretion to deprive injured employees of all remedies for breach of contract. Nor do we think that the [legislative intent] was to shield employers from the natural consequences of their breaches of bargaining agreements by wrongful union conduct in the enforcement of such agreements”.

Vaca v. Sipes, supra.

In Falsetti v. Local Union No. 2026, United Mine Workers, supra this court recognized (in Note 22) that in cases where an employee sues his union for a breach of duty, “the employer may be joined, under proper circumstances, as a *336codefendant for participating in the union’s breach of its fiduciary obligations.”
Accordingly, I would hold that in instances where an employee is wrongfully discharged (as the appellant alleges here) and seeks a remedy through the established grievance procedure, but is prevented from pursuing a contract remedy by the union’s breach of duty of fair representation in processing the grievance, (as the appellant alleges here) that employee can maintain an action against the employer despite the failure to exhaust the contractual remedies.
O’BRIEN, C.J., and ROBERTS, J., join in this concurring and dissenting opinion.