Court Opinion

ID: 9757082
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:17:56.684933+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:34.664385
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice,
dissenting.
Appellant, Allegheny County Prison Employees Independent Union, negotiated a collective bargaining agreement with appellee, Allegheny County, covering the salaries and working conditions of guards at the Allegheny County Jail. In 1972, appellant filed a grievance against appellee concern*40ing the food available to guards at mealtimes and security provisions in the dining hall during guards’ meals. The arbitrator sustained the grievance and granted the award requested by the Union. On appeal, the Commonwealth Court held that the grievance was not arbitrable because it does not “arise out of” the collective bargaining agreement. The Union petitioned for allocatur, which we granted. The majority now affirms the judgment of the Commonwealth Court, holding that although the grievance was arbitrable, the arbitrator’s award did not have a “rational basis in the collective bargaining agreement.”
I agree with the majority’s conclusion that the grievance is arbitrable. I disagree, however, with the majority’s conclusion that the arbitrator’s award exceeded the bounds of the collective bargaining agreement.
The majority reaches its result because it asserts that the arbitrator drew upon “past practices” in making his award, and that consideration of such practices is barred by an integration clause in the collective bargaining agreement. In so holding, however, the majority substitutes its interpretation of the integration clause for that of the arbitrator, in contravention of the contractual arbitration clause which gives the arbitrator power to interpret all parts of the collective bargaining agreement including the integration clause itself. The majority also contravenes the decisions which make the arbitrator the final interpreter of the contract both as to law and to fact. See Community College of Beaver v. Community College of Beaver County, Society of the Faculty, 473 Pa. 576, 375 A.2d 1267 (1977); Sudders v. United National Insurance Co., 217 Pa.Super. 196, 269 A.2d 370 (1970), aff’d, 445 Pa. 599, 284 A.2d 500 (1971), following Ludwig-Honold Mfg. Co. v. Fletcher, 405 F.2d 1123, 1128 (3d Cir. 1969); United Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 80 S.Ct. 1358, 4 L.Ed.2d 1424 (1960).
The majority’s holding deprives the arbitrator of two of his most valuable tools in settling labor disputes whenever the collective bargaining agreement contains a boilerplate integration clause. These tools are the arbitrator’s knowl*41edge of the particular conditions in which labor and management operate and his knowledge of the rules — the “law of the shop” — which labor and management have developed to respond to these conditions. I cannot agree that the presence of an integration clause so completely alters the basic rules of the arbitration process. I therefore dissent.
The majority holds that the arbitrator failed to give proper weight to the “integration clause” in the collective bargaining agreement. In so doing, however, the majority misapplies the “essence test,” the standard by which courts of this Commonwealth are to review arbitration awards. See Community College of Beaver v. Community College of Beaver County, Society of the Faculty, 473 Pa. 576, 375 A.2d 1267 (1977). The essence test adopted in Community College of Beaver County, supra, was first set forth by the Supreme Court of the United States in United Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 596-97, 80 S.Ct. 1358, 1360-61 (1960):
“The refusal of courts to review the merits of an arbitration award is the proper approach to arbitration under collective bargaining agreements. The . . . policy of settling labor disputes by arbitration would be undermined if courts had the final say on the merits of the awards. . . . [T]he arbitrators under these collective agreements are indispensable agencies in a continuous collective bargaining process. They sit to settle disputes at the plant level — disputes that require for their solution knowledge of the custom and practices of a particular factory or of a particular industry as reflected in particular agreements.
When an arbitrator is commissioned to interpret and apply the collective bargaining agreement, he is to bring his informed judgment to bear in order to reach a fair solution of a problem. This is especially true when it comes to formulating remedies. There the need is for flexibility in meeting a wide variety of situations. The draftsmen may never have thought of what specific remedy should be awarded to meet a particular contingency. Nevertheless, *42an arbitrator is confined to interpretation and application of the collective bargaining agreement; he does not sit to dispense his own brand of industrial justice. He may of course look for guidance from many sources, yet his award is legitimate only so long as it draws its essence from the collective bargaining agreement. When the arbitrator’s words manifest an infidelity to this obligation, courts have no choice but to refuse enforcement of the award.”
This “essence test” reflects a judgment that arbitrators, and not courts, are best equipped to deal with the multitude of potential disputes which the parties agree to submit to them. This deferential standard also serves to solidify the integrity of the arbitration process by giving the parties the assurance that the decision of the arbitrator will, in the vast majority of cases, be final.
The majority’s decision is contrary to these policies. The majority, by requiring the arbitrator to conform to the strict rules of contract law applied by the courts in non-labor contract cases deprives him of the opportunity to employ his knowledge of the customs and practices of the industry and the shop involved. As the Supreme Court of the United States stated in United Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 574, 579-80, 582-83, 80 S.Ct. 1347, 1351, 1352 (1960):
“ ‘the institutional characteristics and the governmental nature of the collective-bargaining process demand a common law of the shop which implements and furnishes the context of the agreement. We must assume that intelligent negotiators acknowledged so plain a need unless they stated a contrary rule in plain words.’
The labor arbitrator’s source of law is not confined to the express provisions of the contract, as the industrial common law, — the practices of the industry and the shop — is equally a part of the collective bargaining agreement although not expressed in it. The labor arbitrator is usually chosen because of the parties’ confidence in his knowledge of the common law of the shop and their trust *43in his personal judgment to bring to bear considerations which are not expressed in the contract as criteria for judgment.”
In view of the fact that the guards are required to eat their meals on the premises, the award here which covers the meals for guards and the security available to the guards while eating involves important working conditions. By allowing a boilerplate integration clause to divest the arbitrator of the ability to make an award concerning these important conditions, the majority defeats the policy which encourages arbitrators to draw upon their knowledge of the particular job setting so that a “fair solution of the problem” can be reached. The majority forces the arbitrator to treat the integration clause with more deference than the parties to the collective bargaining agreement may have intended, given their particular work situation. In so holding, the majority discourages the arbitrator from performing fully the services expected from him.
Moreover today’s decision destroys the stability of the arbitration process. “[T]he arbitrators are the final judges of both law and fact and their award will not be disturbed for a mistake of either.” Ludwig-Honold Mfg. Co. v. Fletcher, 405 F.2d 1123, 1128 (3d Cir. 1969). Accord, Sudders v. United National Insurance Co., 217 Pa.Super. 196, 269 A.2d 370 (1970), aff’d, 445 Pa. 599, 284 A.2d 500 (1971). If an award of an arbitrator is upheld by the courts so long as it is rationally based, then parties can respect the decision of the arbitrator as a final resolution of the dispute between them. If, instead, the award of the arbitrator is open to unnecessary judicial modification, the arbitrator becomes only a small step in the process of resolving labor disputes; the judgment of the arbitrator which the parties bargained for is thereby replaced with the judgment of the courts.1
*44It is part of the arbitrator’s function, not part of a court’s, to determine the import of an integration clause in a collective bargaining agreement, at least where the contract contains a clause submitting to arbitration any “dispute arising out of the interpretation or application, of the provisions of this Agreement.” We must realize that an arbitrator may draw his understanding of any clause in the contract, including an integration clause, from the particular labor setting in which the contract was signed. See, e. g., Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., supra; Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., supra; Ludwig-Honold Mfg. Co., supra. Here, the arbitrator specifically found that the parties could not have reduced to writing all aspects of the ongoing labor-management relationship. In fact, the “lunch period” clause does not specifically mention all the conditions under which employees are to take their meal breaks. The arbitrator concluded that the contract should be interpreted so that the conditions under which the lunch break is taken are appropriate to the workplace in which these employees find themselves. These employees are prison guards. They are prohibited from leaving prison grounds during lunch. It was wholly rational for the arbitrator to use his knowledge of what work in a prison is like to conclude that when the contract specified a “30-minute lunch period” it must have meant a lunch period during which there is adequate protection for those guards who are eating. Similarly, it is not so irrational as to go beyond the essence of the agreement for the arbitrator to conclude that a “30-minute lunch period” was intended to be a period at which the guards, like most American workers, have a reasonable choice of foods. The arbitrator was aware of the impracticality of allowing the guards to enter and leave the prison grounds during lunch in order to find a choice of foods. He also considered the prison rule prohibiting guards from bringing their own lunches. He devised means of implementing the collective bargaining agreement based on the peculiar circumstances of these particular workers in this particular prison. This is the arbitrator’s job.
*45The arbitrator reached these conclusions in light of the arbitration and integration clauses in the contract. It was his duty under the arbitration clause to interpret the “lunch” clause. He interpreted it in light of management rules and working conditions which require prison employees to remain on the premises and to eat food from the prison kitchen. In the course of interpreting the “lunch” provision of the contract, he found the integration clause did not preclude his award.2
We see from these circumstances that the arbitrator drew his conclusions from, and based his award upon, the essence of the contract. We are not free to say that whenever the arbitrator interprets a contract differently from the manner in which a court might have interpreted it, the arbitrator has stepped outside the essence of the contract. Ludwig-Honold Mfg. Co. v. Fletcher, supra; Sudders v. United National Insurance Corp., supra; see United Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., supra. Here the Commonwealth Court disagreed with the interpretation the arbitrator placed upon the collective bargaining agreement between the parties. The parties did not bargain for the judgment of the court, however. They expressed a preference for the judgment of an arbitrator. This is why the award of an arbitrator will be sustained if there is “any rational way” it can be “derived from the [collective bargaining] agreement, viewed in the light of its language, context, and any other indicia of the parties’ intention *46. .” Community College of Beaver v. Community College of Beaver County, Society of the Faculty, 473 Pa. 576, 375 A.2d 1267 (1977), quoting Ludwig-Honold Mfg Co. v. Fletcher, supra.
I would reverse the order of the Commonwealth Court and enforce the award of the arbitrator.

. The majority decision today, injecting the courts into an area properly reserved for the arbitrator, is bound to produce unnecessary additional burdens upon the judicial system. If courts will be required to assume the function of the arbitrator, the advantages of arbitration as a speedy, fair, inexpensive substitute for court litigation will be largely dissipated.

. In footnote 17, the majority opinion states that the arbitrator here did not give a “reasoned” explanation for his interpretation of the integration clause. I find that the opinion of the arbitrator does disclose the train of thought by which he reached his conclusion. But even if the opinion is unclear or ambiguous, we should remember that
“A mere ambiguity in the opinion accompanying an [arbitral] award, which permits the inference that the arbitrator may have exceeded his authority, is not a reason for refusing to enforce the award. Arbitrators have no obligation to give their reasons for an award. To require opinions free of ambiguity may lead arbitrators to play it safe by writing no supporting opinions.”
United Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U.S. at 598, 80 S.Ct. at 1361.