Court Opinion

ID: 9473051
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:18:02.752111+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:17.595805
License: Public Domain

BRIGHT, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Previously, I filed a dissent to the panel opinion in this case, Anderson v. Alpha Portland Industries, Inc., 727 F.2d 177, 185-187 (8th Cir.1984), and I adhere to that dissent.
The panel’s opinion relied in part on Robbins v. Prosser’s Moving & Storage Co., 700 F.2d 433 (8th Cir.1983) (en banc) to support its determination that a union owes no duty of fair representation to retirees. I disagreed because that opinion did not take cognizance of the limited scope of our holding in Robbins. In Robbins, we recognized that under certain circumstances, a union might be required to arbitrate on behalf of the trustees of various health and welfare funds. We stated:
Certainly it is true that arbitration, pension funds, and health and welfare funds, are all matters of contract. They either exist or not as the parties have agreed in the collective-bargaining contract and related documents. If the *1301agreements in the cases before us provided in express words that trustees’ claims could not come to court before questions of contract interpretation had been settled by arbitration, this would be quite a different case.
Id. at 442.
The Supreme Court granted certiorari in Robbins and affirmed the judgment of this court. Schneider Moving & Storage Co. v. Robbins, — U.S. —, 104 S.Ct. 1844, 80 L.Ed.2d 366 (1984). I believe the Court’s opinion preserves the limited nature of our holding in Robbins. The Court stated:
There simply is no evidence that the Union owes any statutory or contractual duty of fair representation to the trustees. In the absence of such evidence, we will not engage the unlikely inference that the parties to these agreements intended to require the trustees to rely on the Union to arbitrate their disputes with the Employer. (Emphasis added) (footnotes omitted).
104 S.Ct. at 1851.
In the present case, as I have previously observed, the insurance agreements provide for arbitration by explicit language: “Any difference arising under this Program respecting the administration, determination and/or implementation of the Program shall be subject to the grievance procedure established in the Basic Agreement * * *.” Thus, I think the district court properly determined that the retirees had failed to exhaust their contractual remedies.
I would affirm the district court, subject to the district court retaining jurisdiction in the event arbitration procedures cannot be carried out because of the closing of the cement plant and the dissolution of the local union.