Court Opinion

ID: 9651287
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 16:12:38.932822+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:25.973176
License: Public Domain

McLAUGHLIN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The question before us is whether under Section 8 of the Selective Service and Training Act a returning veteran employee has the right to displace a nonveteran union official of less service seniority who claims actual seniority because of an employment contract entered into between the union and the employer while the veteran was in the Navy. I think this question has been answered in the affirmative by the Supreme Court in Trailmobile Co. v. Whirls, 67 S.Ct. 982. That case not only followed and approved Fishgold v. Sullivan Drydock and Repair Corp., 328 U.S. 275, 66 S.Ct. 1105, 90 L.Ed. 1230, 167 A.L.R. 110, but it expressly interpreted the language of the latter decision which is quoted by the majority here as favoring its view. Speaking of the veteran in the Fishgold litigation, Mr. Justice Rutledge for the Court in Trailmobile said at page 991 of 67 S.Ct.:
“He was to be restored and kept, for the year at least, in the same situation as if he had not gone to war but had remained continuously employed or had been ‘on furlough or leave of absence.’ It is clear, of course, that this statutory addition to the veteran’s seniority status is not automatically deducted from it at the end of his first year of reemployment. But the Fishgold decision also ruled expressly that he was not to gain advantage beyond such restoration, by virtue of the Act’s provisions, so as to acquire ‘an increase in seniority over what he would have had if he had never entered the armed services. * * * No step-up or gain in priority can be fairly implied.’ 328 U.S. at pages 285, 286, 66 S.Ct. at page 1111.
“For the statutory year indeed this meant that the restored rights could not be altered adversely by the usual processes of collective bargaining or of the employer’s administration of general business policy. But if this extraordinary statutory security were to be extended beyond the statutory year, the restored veteran would acquire not simply equality with nonveteran employees having identical status as of the time he returned to work. He would acquire indefinite statutory priority over nonveteran employees, a preferred status which we think not only inharmonious with the basic Fish-gold rationalization, but beyond the protection contemplated by Congress.” (Emphasis added.)
The Fishgold decision itself just as precisely eliminates the employment agreement seniority from the present matter when it says at page 285 of 328 U.S., at page 1111 of 66 S.Ct.:
“And no practice of employers or agreements between employers and unions can cut down the service adjustment benefits which Congress has secured the veteran under the Act.”
It cannot be too strongly stressed that we are dealing with the “extraordinary statutory security” given the veteran for the preservation of his seniority and that there is nothing in the Act permitting that seniority to be reduced by any sort of changed circumstances within the statutory year. Section 8(b) (B) reads:
“If such position was in the employ of a private employer, such employer shall restore such person to such position or to a position of like seniority, status, and pay unless the employer’s circumstances have so changed as to make it impossible or unreasonable to do so; * * * ”
I think it abundantly clear that in the above language the changed circumstances provision relates solely to restoration of the “position” and does not apply to "seniority” and that construing the section, as does the majority opinion, to mean restoration to “like seniority” is directly contrary to the plain import of that language. The Elastic Stop Nut employment contract is within “the usual processes of collective bargaining” and if its seniority provisions as to union officials were upheld against the veteran it would alter adversely the latter’s restored rights. Gauweiler, therefore, away in the Navy when the contract was entered into and hence under the protection of the *454statute is not bound by that contract’s pertinent seniority terms.1
Statements as to what Gauweiler’s seniority rights would have been had he remained in his employment cannot be other than futile speculation and are in any event irrelevant, for the statute and the cases construing it tell us not what Gauweiler’s status might have been if he had continued his civilian occupation but what he was entitled to as a returned veteran. It is also suggested that, if the veteran by his seniority displaces a union official,' then the veteran in turn would be supplanted by a senior nonveteran. Such supposition is not in this case. Its appearance would seesi to depend on various factors not present as, for example, the status, rank and wishes of the personnel involved and whether non-veteran employees would be estopped under their employment contract. Here we are dealing with a particular reemployment question on its own facts where the veteran has been deliberately given “a special statutory standing” by legislation which "is to be liberally construed for the benefit of those who left private life to serve their country in its hour of great need.” Fish-gold v. Sullivan Corporation at page 285 of 328 U.S., 66 S.Ct. 1111, 90 L.Ed. 1230, 167 A.L.R. 110.

 There is an arbitration question in this ease which quite properly under the circumstances is not discussed in the majority opinion. Proof of arbitration of a grievance concerning the job in question between the nonveteran claimant and the employer was rejected by the Trial Court because Gauweiler was not a party thereto. The issues in that arbitration were obviously different from those in the case at bar. Nor was it a class action as the claimant’s position was utterly opposed to that of Gauweiler. Finally, il the above interpretation of the statute is correct, an award by the arbitrator in favor of the nonveteran would be contrary to Section 8(b) (B).