Court Opinion

ID: 9493914
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:23:13.060772+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:06.277707
License: Public Domain

RONALD LEE GILMAN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I fully agree with the majority’s articulation of the proper standard for reviewing the arbitrator’s award, i.e., that “[a] reviewing court will not replace an arbitrator’s construction of the Agreement with its own interpretation.” Maj. Op. at 604. Unfortunately, however, I am convinced that this is precisely what the majority has done.
The majority purports to vacate the arbitrator’s award on two grounds: (1) that the award conflicts with the express terms of the collective bargaining agreement (CBA), and (2) that the award imposes additional requirements that are not expressly provided for in the agreement. To the contrary, I am of the opinion that the award is in full accord with the CBA and based on a reasonable interpretation of its express terms. I would therefore reverse the ruling of the district court and reinstate the arbitrator’s award.
In determining that the award conflicts with the express terms of the CBA, the majority finds that the agreement recognizes the hospital’s right to require overtime of all its employees and to fix the number of hours in the work week. Article XV of the CBA, however, upon which the majority relies, is ambiguous as to whether it applies to all employees or only to full-time employees. The key terms of Article XV provide as follows:
Section A. The basic work day for all Employees under this Article shall be eight (8) hours per day. The basic work week for said Employees shall be forty (40) hours per week....
Section D. Employees shall be expected to work overtime when requested, however, the Hospital shall endeav- or, insofar as may be practicable, to make an equitable distribution of overtime among the qualified Employees within a job classification. An Employee will not be disciplined for refusing to work overtime who has good and sufficient cause for so refusing to work overtime.
(Emphasis added.)
Although Section D of Article XV could be interpreted as allowing the hospital to require overtime work for all of its employees, both full-time and part-time, I believe that the more reasonable interpretation (and the one adopted by the arbitrator) is that Section D applies only to full-time employees covered by Article XV. There is, after all, a separate Article XLVII governing part-time employees. Article XLVII is comprised of four sections covering such topics as scheduling, job benefits, and ability to post for vacancies, none of which mention overtime work.
Such ambiguity, I believe, requires this court to uphold the arbitrator’s award. When examining an arbitration award under facts “not explicitly covered” by an agreement, a court may disagree with the arbitrator’s interpretation, but may not reject the interpretation so long as it is “one of several rational interpretations.” Dallas & Mavis Forwarding Co. v. Gen. Driv*608ers, Warehousemen & Helpers, Local Union No. 89, 972 F.2d 129, 135 (6th Cir.1992) (upholding an arbitrator’s determination that the employer violated the CBA by refusing to merge its seniority list with that of another employer, even though other interpretations were possible). In the present case, the arbitrator’s remedy of reinstating the employees does not appear to conflict with any provision of the CBA.
Article XXXII of the CBA, in fact, explicitly provides that “[i]n the event a grievance concerning suspension or discharge goes to arbitration, the arbitrator shall have the authority to modify the penalty, and the Hospital and the Union agree to in all respects comply with the award of the Arbitrator.” That is exactly what the arbitrator did in the present case, and the hospital should be bound to accept the result. I would therefore defer to the determination of the arbitrator that the hospital’s authority to compel overtime work applies only to full-time employees. See Int’l Ass’n of Machinists & Aerospace Workers v. Tenn. Valley Auth., 155 F.3d 767 (6th Cir.1998) (upholding an arbitrator’s order requiring the Tennessee Valley Authority to create a bargaining unit for hourly employees, despite an existing agreement allowing outsourcing that arguably applied to these employees).
The majority also holds, in my view erroneously, that the arbitrator’s order to reinstate the three employees impermissi-bly restricts the management rights of the hospital in a manner not expressly provided for by the agreement. See Maj. Op. at 606-07. This case, however, involves an issue upon which the Agreement has spoken. Article XLII of the CBA provides as follows:
[T]he rights, among others, of hiring, discharging, and directing the working force, and of establishing reasonable policies in connection therewith, and all management rights are vested exclusively in the Hospital. However, these prerogatives shall not be used to discriminate against any member of the Union and any policy shall not abridge any term, provisions or condition of this contract.
(Emphasis added.) The terms of the contract itself, therefore, limit the hospital’s management rights to those that ace in accordance with the other articles of the agreement.
Consequently, the arbitrator did not impose any additional requirements not expressly provided for in the agreement. The arbitrator, in fact, clearly acknowledged that he could not add to, subtract from, or modify the agreement. Rather, he examined the other articles of the agreement to determine that the CBA did not grant the hospital the right to compel its part-time employees to work overtime. The arbitrator reached this conclusion by interpreting Article XV as providing the hospital with the authority to request only full-time employees, and not part-time employees, to perform overtime work. Because I believe that the arbitrator had a sound basis for this conclusion, the hospital did not have the “just cause” necessary to terminate Adkins, Mahon, and Thomas under Article XXXII, Section A, of the CBA (governing discharge).
Indeed, additional articles of the CBA establish that the hospital does not have the unfettered right to hire or fire its employees. Article X, Section D, for example, provides the bases for awarding various jobs to applicants depending on the grade of the employment openings. Similarly, Article XXXII restricts the hospital from preemptorily discharging its workers, and instead requires an initial suspension pending a hearing. In light of these articles, the arbitrator reasonably interpreted Articles XV and XLVII as cir*609cumscribing the termination rights available to the hospital under Article XXXII.
The majority’s opinion, therefore, imper-missibly replaces the arbitrator’s construction of the Agreement with its own interpretation. See Beacon Journal Publ’g Co. v. Akron Newspaper Guild, Local Number 7, 114 F.3d 596, 599 (6th Cir.1997). Here, the arbitrator recognized that Article XLII gave the hospital the general authority to direct its workforce. But he interpreted this authority as not including the right to terminate part-time workers for refusing to perform unscheduled overtime work. Because the arbitration award was based on a reasonable interpretation of ambiguous contractual provisions, we are required to defer to the determination of the arbitrator. See United Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 599, 80 S.Ct. 1358, 4 L.Ed.2d 1424 (1960) (stating that “[i]t is the arbitrator’s construction which was bargained for; and so far as the arbitrator’s decision concerns construction of the contract, the courts have no business overruling him because their interpretation of the contract is different from his.”).
For all of the reasons set forth above, I would reverse the decision of the district court and reinstate the award of the arbitrator.