Court Opinion

ID: 9477067
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:12:53.683439+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:40.350915
License: Public Domain

MILBURN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent for the reasons that follow. Initially, I disagree with the standard employed by the majority in reviewing the district court’s conclusion that a valid collective bargaining agreement exists between the parties. The majority holds that a district court’s conclusion that a collective bargaining agreement exists, or that any valid contract exists, is a factual determination that will not be set aside unless it is clearly erroneous.
A determination by a court that a contract exists is a two-step determination. First, the court must determine what conduct took place, a factual determination. Then, it must decide what legal significance attaches to that conduct; viz., whether the conduct gives rise to a legally enforceable and binding contract, a question of law. Therefore, a determination of whether a valid contract exists is a mixed question of fact and law which is subject to de novo rather than clearly erroneous review.
In Cordovan Associates, Inc. v. Dayton Rubber Co., 290 F.2d 858 (6th Cir.1961), we explained our inherent authority to act independently and draw our own inferences and legal conclusions when we held that:
[wjhere a finding designated as a finding of fact is not in reality a finding of fact, but is a conclusion of law or a mixed finding of fact and conclusion of law, it is not binding on the appellate court. Where a finding is of an ultimate fact in the making of which is involved the application of legal principles, it is subject to [de novo ] review.
Id. at 860 (citations omitted). Accord, Taylor & Gaskin, Inc. v. Chris-Craft Industries, 732 F.2d 1273, 1277 (6th Cir.1984); K & M Joint Venture v. Smith International, Inc., 669 F.2d 1106, 1111-12 (6th Cir.1982). As the Ninth Circuit recently held in a case directly on point, when “[njone of the relevant facts are in dispute ... [t]he only question is, given these facts, did the parties have a contract as a matter of law?” Warehousemen’s Union Local No. 206 v. Continental Can Co., 821 F.2d 1348, 1350 (9th Cir.1987) (emphasis supplied). In my view, the majority has improperly limit*1171ed our review to the clearly erroneous standard.
I further disagree with the majority’s conclusion that a valid and enforceable collective bargaining agreement was reached between the parties. I agree that a contract does not arise if union and management have not resolved a dispute concerning a substantive term of the contract. However, I cannot agree with the majority’s holding that a collective bargaining agreement can be binding and enforceable despite certain terms being left open for future resolution.
Any discussion in this area of labor law must begin with the Supreme Court’s holding in H.K. Porter Co. v. NLRB, 397 U.S. 99, 90 S.Ct. 821, 25 L.Ed.2d 146 (1970), which is not referred to in the majority opinion. In H.K. Porter, the Supreme Court made it clear that if a union and company are unable to reach agreement on an issue being negotiated, neither the federal courts nor the NLRB have the authority to bind the parties to any aspect of the agreement to which they cannot reach agreement.
The object of this Act was not to allow governmental regulation of the terms and conditions of employment, but rather to insure that employers and their employees could work together to establish mutually satisfactory conditions. The basic theme of the Act was that through collective bargaining the passions, arguments, and struggles of prior years will be channeled into constructive, open discussions leading, it was hoped, to mutual agreement. But it was recognized from the beginning that agreement might in some cases be impossible, and it was never intended that the Government would in such cases step in, become a party to the negotiations and impose its own views of a desirable settlement.
Id., 397 U.S. at 103-04, 90 S.Ct. at 823 (emphasis supplied). The Court discussed the powers of the federal government under the Act and held:
[t]he Board’s remedial powers under § 10 of the Act are broad, but they are limited to carrying out the policies of the Act itself. One of these fundamental policies is freedom of contract. While the parties’ freedom of contract is not absolute under the Act, allowing the Board to compel agreement when the parties themselves are unable to agree would violate the fundamental premise on which the Act is based — private bargaining under governmental supervision of the procedure alone, without any official compulsion over the actual terms of the contract.
Id. at 108, 90 S.Ct. at 826 (emphasis supplied, footnotes omitted). Finally, the Court concluded:
the Act ... does not contemplate that unions will always be secure and able to achieve agreement even when their economic position is weak, or that strikes and lockouts will never result from a bargaining impasse. It cannot be said that the Act forbids an employer or a union to rely ultimately on its economic strength to try to secure what it cannot obtain through bargaining.
Id. at 109, 90 S.Ct. at 826. As the Supreme Court has reiterated in holdings subsequent to H.K. Porter, neither the NLRB nor the federal courts have the power to impose on parties to a potential collective bargaining agreement any terms to which the parties did not themselves agree or reach a meeting of the minds. See NLRB v. Bildisco & Bildisco, 465 U.S. 513, 534, 104 S.Ct. 1188, 1200, 79 L.Ed.2d 482 (1984); NLRB v. Burns International Security Services, Inc., 406 U.S. 272, 92 S.Ct. 1571, 32 L.Ed.2d 61 (1972); see also Heheman v. E.W. Scripps Co., 668 F.2d 878, 879 (6th Cir.) (Weick, J., dissenting from a denial for a rehearing en banc), cert. denied, 456 U.S. 991, 102 S.Ct. 2272, 73 L.Ed.2d 1286 (1982).
The majority holds that if parties have reached agreement on all but one issue and have agreed to table the resolution of that issue until a later date, a valid and enforceable collective bargaining agreement exists. The majority relies upon Georgia Kraft Co., Woodcraft Division v. NLRB, 696 F.2d 931, 937 (11th Cir.), cert. granted, *1172464 U.S. 981, 104 S.Ct. 421, 78 L.Ed.2d 357 (1983), vacated in part and remanded, 466 U.S. 901, 104 S.Ct. 1673, 80 L.Ed.2d 149 (1984); and NLRB v. Beckham, Inc., 564 F.2d 190, 194-95 (5th Cir.1977).1 However, when the issue is examined within the parameters of H.K. Porter, as it must, then the error of the majority opinion becomes clear. The majority presumes that agreement will always be reached in the future on every issue tabled. The history of the labor movement in this country obviously disproves any such presumption. If the parties are unable to reach agreement on the issue tabled, as is quite possible, an earlier pronouncement by a federal court that a valid and enforceable contract existed would preclude either party from exercising the economic weapons normally available to them, economic weapons that the Supreme Court in H.K. Porter made quite clear the federal courts are not to disturb. In such a situation, the employees could not go on strike and the employers could not have a lockout because such conduct would violate the collective bargaining agreement the court had previously found to exist.
Prior to the company’s decision to cease operations in this case, which implicitly revoked any outstanding offers concerning a then needless collective bargaining agreement, the union had unequivocally insisted that there was absolutely no way they could agree to a contract containing no nonunion production limitation. Otherwise, the union insisted, all other employers would insist on a similar contract. In fact, testimony from the union revealed that every contract since the 1930s had contained a nonunion production clause limiting such production, and that the nonpro-auction clause was the “linch-pin” of the agreement.
As the majority notes, in order for the district court to enforce the arbitration clause of the contract, it had to first determine the scope of the contract. In doing so, the district court held that a contract existed between the parties consisting of what they had previously agreed on, but absent any liquidated damage clause for violation of the nonunion production provision. Thus, when the district court fashioned a contract between the parties containing no damages for nonunion production, the court in effect “drafted” an agreement to which the union had previously refused to agree to, and one upon which there was no meeting of the minds. While a federal court is empowered to enforce labor contracts, it does not have the power to draft them.
Because I feel that the majority has employed the wrong standard of review and has improperly approved the involvement of the federal judiciary in the collective bargaining process, I respectfully dissent. I would REVERSE the judgment of the district court and REMAND for further proceedings.

. A careful reading of Georgia Kraft reveals that it does not stand for the proposition supported by the majority. The Eleventh Circuit did not hold that parties could table an issue and thereby have an enforceable bargaining agreement. In Georgia Kraft, the Eleventh Circuit found that the issue in dispute, striker discipline, "was never intended to be a contractual provision," and therefore could not be “an impediment to a collective bargaining agreement." Georgia Kraft, 696 F.2d at 937. The other issue in Georgia Kraft was whether or not acceptance was timely. It does not stand for the proposition that parties can table resolution of a contract provision and still have a collective bargaining agreement. An examination of Beckham, the only reported case truly supporting the majority’s position, reveals that it was far from a unanimous opinion, as a member of the panel strongly dissented. Beckham, 564 F.2d at 195-97 (Fay, J., dissenting).