Court Opinion

ID: 9474901
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:12:17.936744+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:24.210517
License: Public Domain

SNEED, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I would hold that the arbitrator's award is “contrary to ... some explicit[,] ... well defined and dominant” public policy. W.R. Grace & Co. v. Local 759, International Union of the United Rubber, Cork, Linoleum & Plastic Workers, 461 U.S. 757, 766, 103 S.Ct. 2177, 2183, 76 L.Ed.2d 298 (1983). The majority do not read Sure-Tan, Inc. v. NLRB, 467 U.S. 883, 104 S.Ct. 2803, 81 L.Ed.2d 732 (1984), as expressing such a policy. I differ with this reading. Sure-Tan unmistakably requires that the sanctions imposed by reason of the labor law be reconciled with the immigration laws. 467 U.S. at 903, 104 S.Ct. at 2815. The arbitration award attempts no such reconciliation. It could have done so by providing that reinstatement and back pay were permissible only when plaintiffs Baraza and Dorme became “lawfully entitled to be present and employed in the United States.” Id. The mere presence of Baraza and Dorme in the United States does not provide the “reconciliation” of which Sure-Tan spoke. Had it done so, the Sure-Tan Court would not have approved the Board’s conditioning its remedy of reinstatement on the employees’ legal reentry. It would have adopted a position that permitted reinstatement and back pay at such time as the employees once more were available to work without regard to their status as illegal aliens. This Sure-Tan did not do. It expressed a strong policy of requiring reconciliation of labor and immigration laws. The arbitrator ignored this policy.
I respectfully dissent.