Court Opinion

ID: 9449127
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:58:11.498222+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:43.281931
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(concurring in the result).
Of course noncompliances with procedural provisions of the arbitration clauses in collective bargaining agreements should be subjects of arbitration. See Livingston v. John Wiley & Sons, 2 Cir., 313 F.2d 52; Carey v. General Electric Co., 2 Cir., 315 F.2d 499; Note, Procedural Requirements of a Grievance Arbitration Clause: Another Question of Arbitrability, 70 Yale L.J. 611 (1961). The problem for me is that Black-Clawson Co. v. International Asso. of Machinists Lodge 355, Dist. 137, 2 Cir., 313 F.2d 179, closed to individual employees the sort of provision (see Article 20.e of the collective bargaining agreement, quoted in note 1 of the majority opinion) which my brothers now hold up to this employee as their reason for refusing to entertain his case. I would have preferred that the individual employee should not be left solely to the mercies of his employer and his union. See Summers, Individual Rights in Collective Agreements and Arbitration, 37 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 362 (1962). For we have seen in recent years that, in some cases, a sweet harmony develops between the two that proves a bitter lockout of the solitary employee who finds his contractual rights going unprotected. Here Belk was dismissed in flagrant violation of Article *51820 of the collective bargaining agreement, and it remains doubtful to say the least whether he will ever have redress of this wrong in the event of his eventual reinstatement or even more if he is not reinstated.
But the law of the circuit has apparently been determined to the contrary, and so I shall join in my brothers’ disposition of this case, adding only the hope that Belk’s union may yet act to rectify his wrong.