Court Opinion

ID: 9471524
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:34:35.799315+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:27.016202
License: Public Domain

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
For the reasons so well stated by the Court, I agree that we have jurisdiction. But as to the merits, I respectfully dissent. If this were a case where the hearing process had been invoked by the employees or their representatives, the Union could not contest the settlement except on the ground that the abatement period was unreasonably long. In this case, however, the hearing process was triggered by a contest filed by the employer. In this situation, I do not believe that the statute, 29 U.S.C. § 659(c), limits the Union so strictly. The employees have a vital interest in the subject matter of this case, an interest that goes beyond the issue of how long the employer should be given to abate the dangerous condition. They seem to believe, and understandably so, that labelling this violation as other than serious, and relieving the employer of any penalty whatever, will not be a sufficient deterrent to the repetition of similar events in the future. No one wants to .work in a plant with high levels of carbon monoxide, and the employees are naturally interested in doing everything possible to see that such a hazard does not- again occur.
The Court agrees that “[i]n such employer-invoked hearings, employee participation is not limited solely to objecting to the reasonableness of the abatement time .... ” Ante, p. 1419. If this case had gone to hearing, then, and no settlement had been agreed upon between/the Secretary of Labor and the employer, the Union could have participated fully in the hearing, and could have argued that the citation as originally filed properly characterized the violation as “serious” and properly sought a monetary payment. Here, as the ' Court points out, the case has been settled. I cannot agree that this circumstance limits the issues that the employees are entitled to raise, when the only provision in the statute indicating that the issues should be so limited applies in terms only to proceedings initiated by the employees or their representatives. It is also significant that the statute specifically authorizes the Commission to adopt rules of procedure giving affected employees or their representatives an opportunity “to participate as parties to hearings under this subsection.” The right to participate as a party, I should think, includes the right to raise all issues in which a party has an interest, except those issues specifically placed off limits by the express words of the statute.
I forego a fuller statement and refer simply to the dissenting opinion of Judge Poliak in Marshall v. Sun Petroleum Products Co., 622 F.2d 1176, 1188-91 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1061, 101 S.Ct. 784, 66 L.Ed.2d 604 (1980). I cannot improve on his reasoning, and I therefore respectfully dissent in this case.