Court Opinion

ID: 9541741
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:28:15.409298+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:04:35.201317
License: Public Domain

*600BUTTLER, J.
Plaintiff in this employment discrimination action contends that defendant terminated his employment and refused to reinstate him because he had suffered a compensable injury and had received workers’ compensation benefits while working for defendant. ORS 659.410, 659.415. He appeals from a summary judgment for defendant, and we reverse and remand.
Plaintiff sustained an on-the-job injury on February 10, 1981, and received temporary total disability benefits for the period February 11 to May 12,1981. He was a member of Teamsters Local 206, which represented the bargaining unit of which plaintiff was a member. Article V, section 5.18 of the collective bargaining agreement between the union and defendant provides:
“Any employee temporarily absent from work for any reason other than vacation, or hospitalization when the employee is unable to communicate, must report his status daily by telephone to his supervisor. In the event that the employee is absent for a period in excess of two (2) weeks, or where the length of the absence is known in advance, the obligation to report shall be once a week beginning with the employee’s first scheduled working day of each week for which the employee is unavailable. Failure of an employee to report as required by this paragraph on a daily basis may result in disciplinary action up to and including suspension; failure to report for three (3) scheduled work days shall be deemed a voluntary quit.”
In early April, 1981, while plaintiff remained absent from work because of his disability, defendant notified plaintiff that his employment was terminated because of his failure to comply with the call-in requirement. Plaintiffs union filed a grievance pursuant to the collective bargaining agreement. The question presented in the grievance proceeding was whether “[plaintiff was] a voluntary quit as provided by Article V, Section 5.f8 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.” The grievance was denied after a hearing in July, 1981. Plaintiff commenced the present action in September, 1982.
The foregoing facts were developed through requests for admissions, ORCP 45, following which defendant moved for summary judgment, contending that, as a matter of law, *601plaintiff is barred by the adverse determination of his grievance under the Collection Bargaining Agreement. Plaintiffs response was that the grievance procedure could only resolve questions arising under the contract and was not the proper forum for resolving a statutory discrimination claim.
In Vaughn v. Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone, 289 Or 73, 611 P2d 281 (1980), the plaintiff had sustained a compensable injury, and the defendant refused to reemploy her after she had been released for work by her doctor. She commenced a grievance proceeding under a collective bargaining agreement between her union and the defendant, but commenced an action under ORS 659.121 before the grievance was resolved. The court held that the plaintiff was not required to exhaust the contractual grievance procedure before pursuing her independent statutory remedy. In doing so, the court relied heavily on Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Company, 415 US 36, 94 S Ct 1011, 39 L Ed 2d 147 (1974). In that case, the plaintiff, a black employe, was informed by the defendant that he was being discharged for producing too many defective parts. He invoked the grievance procedure under his union’s collective bargaining agreement, which proceeded through the full course of the procedure, which ended in arbitration. The arbitrator determined that the plaintiff had been discharged for just cause. The plaintiff then brought an action under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 USC § 2000(e) et seq, claiming that he was a victim of racial discrimination.
The United States Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion, reversed the trial court’s granting of summary judgment for the defendant, holding that the plaintiff was entitled to a trial de novo, because the statutory scheme of Title VII provided a personal cause of action which supplemented the existing remedies in a collective bargaining agreement. The court stated that the trial court should not defer to an arbitrator’s determination, because an arbitrator’s task is necessarily limited to effectuating the terms of a collective bargaining agreement, and that the arbitrator cannot decide a statutory discrimination claim involving public law concepts.
The same reasoning employed in Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Company, supra, and adopted in Vaughn, is applicable here. The most effect the grievance determination *602might have in this statutory proceeding is to resolve the question whether the contract provision on which defendant relies could be applicable to an employe who is off work because of a job-related injury. The record does not contain the entire collective bargaining agreement, however, so we do not know whether it contains a provision that the exclusive means of interpreting the contract is by way of the grievance procedure.
However, in the posture of this case, the mere proposition that defendant could have applied the contract provision to treat plaintiff as a “voluntary quit” does nothing more than suggest that possibility, and does not determine whether defendant applied that contract provision to plaintiff because he had filed a workers’ compensation claim. The latter application would be impermissible under ORS 659.410 and 659.415.
Because defendant’s motion for summary judgment raised only the one legal issue, on which we think plaintiff is correct, the trial court erred in granting defendant’s motion for summary judgment.
Reversed and remanded.