Court Opinion

ID: 9499196
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:40:26.827695+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:20.384072
License: Public Domain

HEANEY,Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree with the majority that the district court was within its discretion to impose sanctions for the plaintiffs’ failure to comply with local rules of procedure, and further agree that the district court properly granted summary judgment on the race discrimination, age discrimination, and whistleblower claims. In my view, however, the plaintiffs presented sufficient evidence to create a jury question on the issue of whether they were terminated in retaliation for their union activities. Accordingly, I dissent from the portion of the majority’s opinion affirming the grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendants on these claims.5
The uncontroverted facts presented to the district court were as follows: Both Stephen Jones and Doyle Clark were longtime employees of UPS, enjoying tenures of roughly twenty-eight and twenty-three years, respectively. Jones had never experienced significant disciplinary problems; Clark had been fired and reinstated once in 1997. It was not until Jones and Clark embroiled themselves in a contested union election that either faced further discipline.
Jones and Clark were vocally critical of the union administration and actively campaigned for opposition candidates. Clark, in fact, campaigned for and was elected to the position of recording secretary. The timing of critical events with regard to their political activities and their discipline clearly raises an inference that Jones and Clark suffered adverse employment effects as a consequence of their opposition to the incumbent union administration. Clark was nominated as a candidate for the position of recording secretary on September 14, 2002; four days later, he was suspended two days for job abandonment.6 On October 15, 2002, the union election was held, and Clark was elected recording secretary. He was fired the next day. Less than a month later, Jones, who actively campaigned for the opposition slate of candidates, was fired. In his prior twenty-eight years of service, Jones presented no meaningful disciplinary concerns.
Moreover, the reasons given for terminating each employee were suspect. *998Clark was fired for “insubordination towards management” relating to his assignment as a haz-mat responder. (Local 41 App. at 11.) Specifically, he committed the offenses of not using his two-way radio during a shift, and acting insubordinately during a meeting with his supervisor regarding the two-way radio. Although management characterized the failure to carry the two-way radio as a serious offense that endangered Clark’s fellow employees, Clark was not disciplined until his shift was over. The insubordination charge was based primarily on an exchange in which Clark’s supervisor repeatedly asked if Clark carried the radio in his pocket, and Clark repeatedly answered that he did not put things that did not belong to him in his pockets. For this, UPS ended Clark’s twenty-three year career with the company.
Jones was fired after a dispute regarding his route as a driver. He typically drove a route from Lenexa to Wichita, Kansas. In the months prior to his termination, Jones’s Wichita route was increas-iñgly cut. When that happened, he was usually given the option of driving another route or going home. When his route was cut on November 11, 2002, however, Jones was asked to drive another route. Instead, Jones opted to go home-an option indisputably open in the past. His view was that this was not job abandonment because his job was to drive the Wichita route, and it was not available. In other words, his job was cut, so there was no job for him to abandon. Jones’s supervisor claimed to have disagreed with this interpretation, but he assisted Jones with clocking out when the electronic time clock gave him trouble. The supervisor did not call a manager or union steward to resolve the conflicting interpretation, and Jones was allowed to leave without incident or warning of potential future discipline. The next day, when Jones arrived at work, he was informed that UPS disagreed with his interpretation of what constituted job abandonment. As discipline, the company terminated a person who had given it nearly thirty years of service.
From this evidence, one could certainly conclude that Jones’s and Clark’s terminations were not wholly justified, but were rather the products of collusion between UPS and local union members to remove Jones and Clark for their union-based political activities. Evidence of their political activity or the split factions within Local 41, however, was never adequately presented to the Mo-Kan panel.7 In fact, it was not addressed at all by either the company or the union’s business agents.8 *999The business agents’ failure in this regard qualifies as perfunctory treatment that, when considered contextually, supports the inference that bad faith motivated the union’s representation of Jones and Clark. See Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171, 177, 194, 87 S.Ct. 903, 17 L.Ed.2d 842 (1967) (holding that bad faith conduct or the processing of a grievance in a perfunctory manner breaches the union’s duty of fair representation). Thus, I respectfully dissent from that portion of the majority opinion affirming the district court’s holding that Jones and Clark failed to make a case that they were dismissed in retaliation for their union activities.

. Both the district court and the majority declined to reach the issue of whether UPS violated the collective bargaining agreement, because they found no breach of the union's duty of fair representation, a necessary precondition to prevailing on a hybrid § 301 claim. Hines v. Anchor Motor Freight, Inc., 424 U.S. 554, 570-71, 96 S.Ct. 1048, 47 L.Ed.2d 231 (1976). Accordingly, I focus my dissent on this point of disagreement.

. Clark was initially fired, but was able to reach a resolution with UPS whereby he was reinstated after a two-day suspension.

. The Mo-Kan panel is the appellate body for grievances such as those in this case. That panel is made up of six members: three from the company and three from the union. An aggrieved employee is bound by the decision of the Mo-Kan panel unless it deadlocks. I question whether this structure truly affords the aggrieved party a fair review of their dispute, for the panel is comprised of people with an interest in the outcome of each case. I recognize that often the decisionmaker’s interest may be attenuated because union panel members are chosen from different local unions than the aggrieved employee, but still believe this panel is no substitute for a truly independent body. See Gen. Drivers Union, Local 554 v. Young & Hay Transp. Co., 522 F.2d 562, 567 n. 5 (8th Cir.1975) (Heaney, J.) (noting, for the court, "serious reservations" with regard to the Teamsters' joint grievance committee composition because "[t]he opportunities for discrimination against the dissident employee with a legitimate grievance or the small employer in competition with those who help control the joint panel are too real to be ignored”). Although the Supreme Court and our court have equated this procedure to arbitration, Hines v. Anchor Motor Freight, Inc., 424 U.S. 554, 557 n. 2, 562-64, 96 S.Ct. 1048, 47 L.Ed.2d 231 (1976); Tongay v. Kroger Co., 860 F.2d 298, 300 (8th Cir.1988), I continue to harbor my own doubts.

. Each employee was permitted to present any evidence they wished at the Mo-Kan *999hearing, and each stated they were satisfied with the union’s representation. Certainly, this evidence weighs in favor of the union’s position that it fairly represented Jones and Clark. It is not dispositive, however, given the evidence summarized above regarding how closely the employees’ terminations coincided temporally with their activities in opposition to the union leadership.