Court Opinion

ID: 9483200
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:14:21.5515+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:29.650263
License: Public Domain

WIENER, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part, and dissenting in part.
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion to the extent it holds arbitrable the reasonableness of the alcohol and drug abuse policy (the Policy) that was implemented unilaterally by the Company following execution of new collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), given that the Company and the Unions had bargained to impasse in good faith on the issue of the Policy during the course of the very collective bargaining that produced the CBAs.
The grievance and arbitration provisions contained in each of the new CBAs are not all-encompassing or unlimited. They only mandate arbitration of grievances that involve application or interpretation of some term or provision of the CBAs. It is axiomatic thatj having bargained to impasse on the Policy so that no drug or alcohol testing provision is contained in the CBAs, the Policy is not a “term,” nót a “provision,” and not in any way part of the CBAs. As such, the Policy itself, its reasonableness, its terms, its provisions and its conditions are not, in and of themselves, subject to being held up to scrutiny in arbitration by the Unions’ invoking of the CBAs’ grievance provisions.
It seems to me that the district court was squarely on target in finding that the Unions’ efforts to use grievance-based arbitration to attack collaterally the extra-contractual Policy, which by impasse the Unions had failed to get included in the CBAs, *1454amounts to “double dipping.” As distinguished from bona fide employee grievances that might incidentally implicate the Company’s administration of the Policy, the so-called grievances proffered in the instant case are at best thinly disguised guerrilla attacks on the entire Policy per se, its reasonableness and, in stark reality, the very right of the Company to adopt the Policy and implement it.
For the Company, the game is over as soon as the panel majority takes the Unions’ “grievance” bait. It seems clear that here the Unions deliberately trumped up the purported grievances to have a foundation, however shaky, for its second “dip”— this time through the process of arbitration — after the first “dip” failed during the process of collective bargaining. This distinction should not have been ignored, but it must have been for the panel majority to reverse the district court which recognized the distinction so clearly.
This case simply is not about arbitrability of individual grievances that incidentally implicate some aspect of the Policy. Neither the Company nor I disagree with the underlying truism, stated both by the Unions and the panel majority, that bona fide employee grievances are arbitrable even though they may involve disciplinary action taken by the Company under the aegis of that Policy. But that issue is not at the heart of this case. Rather, this case probes the appropriate limits of CBAs, and their grievance and arbitration provisions, on matters like the Policy that have been affirmatively excluded from the CBAs by bargaining to impasse during the process of hammering out the contents of those contracts on the anvil of collective bargaining. And hovering just beneath the surface of that issue is the larger and more omnipresent question at the core of most if not all labor disputes: Who will dominate and control the making and implementing of personnel policy, labor or management?
The presumption in favor of arbitrability,1 however strong, is not universal, not without limits; it can never expand the aegis of arbitration beyond the finite extent to which labor and management have contracted to be amenable to that process. The arbitrability presumption is never properly used to force to arbitration an issue that the parties have not clearly agreed to arbitrate.2 Here, the bargaining history of the CBAs in general and of the Policy in particular are “the most forceful evidence” 3 that the Company and the Unions never agreed to subject the Policy per se— particularly its overall reasonableness — to arbitration. Only provisions contained within the four corners of the CBAs are, by their very terms, appropriate grist for the arbitration mill; and impasse excluded the whole issue of a drug and alcohol abuse policy from the CBAs!
To the extent that the majority opinion in this case holds arbitrable those grievances arising from Company disciplinary actions which only incidentally implicate terms of the Policy, I concur — as, for that matter, did the Company in its brief to this court. But I do not agree that the Unions can merely wrap in the cloak of grievance their redundant effort to shoot down the post-impasse, extra-contractual Policy with a second shot — arbitration—after failing to bring it down with their first shot — collective bargaining. Substance, not form, controls the arbitrability vel non of any issue.4
Indeed, the majority opinion would ascribe to the Company the overly simplistic argument that, because its post-impasse implementation of the Policy does not vio*1455late the NLRA, disputes arising out of the Policy are not arbitrable. My reading of the Company’s brief to this court, and my recollection of the Company’s position at oral argument, eschew any such ascription. Ironically, it was the Unions first, and the panel majority second, who created that flawed leap of logic in order to refute it. It is they who invoke the legal duty to maintain the status quo ante, and the contractual duty of the Company to implement “reasonable” safety regulations, to reach the conclusion that the Unions’ proffering of the so-called grievances here is somehow not an impermissible collateral attack on the implementation and reasonableness of the Policy. The procedural history of this case and the nature of the “grievances” proffered make it clear, at least to me, that in reality the efforts of the Unions to subject the Policy to arbitration orchestrate precisely such a renewed attack, and are thus accurately characterized by the district court as attempts to “double dip” the issue.
The nub of my dissent is the acceptance by the panel majority of the Unions’ means of getting a proverbial second bite at the apple, this time through arbitration under the guise of arbitrable grievances. I therefore respectfully dissent from the ultimate result of the majority opinion, allowing the Unions’ cynical use of the CBAs’ grievance provisions to gain a full, de novo examination by the arbitrator of the reasonableness of the Policy vel non when arbitration, is a method of dispute resolution properly limited to those issues contractually submitted to it via the collective bargaining contracts. Here, precisely the opposite occurred: By impasse the parties to those contracts excluded the Policy from the CBAs and thus from arbitration.

. See AT & T Technologies, Inc. v. Communication Workers, 475 U.S. 643, 650, 106 S.Ct. 1415, 1419, 89 L.Ed.2d 648 (1986).

. United Steel Workers v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 574, 582, 80 S.Ct. 1347, 1353, 4 L.Ed.2d 1409 (1960); In re Talbott Big Foot, Inc., 887 F.2d 611, 614 (5th Cir.1989).

. Warrior & Gulf, 363 U.S. at 582-83, 80 S.Ct. at 1353-54.

. See Iowa Beef Processors, Inc. v. Amalgated Meatcutters & Butcherworkmen, 627 F.2d 853, 856 (8th Cir.1980); Radio Corp. of America v. Association of Scientists & Professional Engineering Personnel, 414 F.2d 893, 896 (3rd Cir. 1969); Independent Petroleum Workers v. American Oil Co., 324 F.2d 903, 906-07 (7th Cir. 1963), aff'd by equally divided Court, 379 U.S. 130, 85 S.Ct. 271, 13 L.Ed.2d 333 (1964).