Court Opinion

ID: 9460772
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:00:04.92512+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:46.712540
License: Public Domain

WILLIAM J. CAMPBELL, Senior District Judge
(dissenting):
Section 8-B-l of the Collective Bargaining Agreement provides that “crew boards showing the order in which the crews are to go out shall be maintained.” For approximately forty years prior to the substitution of “print-out” sheets, the defendant had maintained a “crew board” in book form at its Colehour Yard. Effective February 1, 1969, the railroad unilaterally and without written notice removed this “crew board” and substituted print-out sheets in its place. The majority maintains that the railroad’s bare assertion that print-out sheets are crew boards “is clearly within the realm of a good faith, reasonable interpretation of Section 8-B-l,” and that what is here involved is no more than a dispute over contract interpretation. From this premise, the majority concludes that the instant case presents a section 3 dispute, thus depriving the district court of jurisdiction.
The district court entered detailed findings of fact regarding the characteristics of, and the information provided by the original crew board, and also made findings of fact regarding the inadequacy of the print-out sheets as a substitute. The majority has concluded that this “detailed analysis of what a crew board should show and how the print-outs failed to measure up to the expected criteria” should not have been made. It is with this conclusion that I respectfully disagree.
I am convinced that the district court, . following the Sixth Circuit’s lead in United Transportation Union v. The Penn Central Company, 443 F.2d 131 (6th Cir. 1971), was correct in assuming jurisdiction for the purpose of conducting a full evidentiary hearing. The contract clearly requires that crew boards be maintained and there is no doubt that the railroad unilaterally discontinued use of the Colehour crew board in the form which had been employed for approximately forty years. A major dispute was thus created by the railroad’s action unless the print-outs can be said to constitute a crew board, for if they do not, it follows that crew boards have not been maintained at the Colehour Yard since February 1,1969.
The evidentiary hearing was therefore held not to “interpret” the contract, but rather to determine whether the railroad had initiated a unilateral change in the contract. This determination could only be made on the basis of a “detailed analysis” designed to ascertain whether the computer print-outs could reasonably be considered to constitute a crew board. I fail to see any basis for assuming the reasonableness of the railroad’s bare assertion that the print-outs constitute a crew board, until such time as the district court has had an opportunity to determine the adequacy of the print-outs as a substitute for the crew board formerly maintained.
In essence, the district court found that the use of print-outs so thoroughly failed to achieve the purposes for which crew boards had formerly been maintained that the print-outs could not be said to constitute a crew board within the meaning of Section 8-B-l.1 The district court therefore properly found *733that the railroad had made a unilateral change in the contract by discontinuing use of the original crew board, thus creating a major dispute.
Accordingly, I would affirm.

. As the district court found in United Transportation Union v. Penn Central Company, supra, “The evidence does not reveal a mere dispute over the meaning of the language in the contract, for it clearly shows that the defendant’s print-outs are not just another form of crew board. They are not what a crew board is, and they do not do what a crew board does.” See, 443 F.2d at 132.