Court Opinion

ID: 9762282
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:18:52.905333+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:32.769099
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. The issue presented is not whether a bifurcated arbitration of a single grievance is permissible but rather whether appellants should have been permitted a second, separate arbitration of a second, separate “grievance” arising not from “the work situation” but from appellants’ dissatisfaction with the original arbitrator’s decision. As the second arbitrator lacked jurisdiction to consider appellants’ new claim, the order of the Commonwealth Court should be affirmed.
Section 903 of the Public Employee Relations Act provides:
“Arbitration of disputes or grievances arising out of the interpretation of the provisions of a collective bargaining agreement is mandatory. The procedure to be adopted is a proper subject of bargaining with the proviso that the final step shall provide for a binding decision by an *71arbitrator or a tri-partite board of arbitrators as the parties may agree. . .. ”
43 P.S. § 1101.903 (1970) (emphasis added). Here, appellants took their grievance to an arbitrator who, on January 16, 1976, rendered a binding decision in accordance with the statute. The arbitrator’s decision was that the school board’s unilateral rescheduling of the final days of the strike-shortened school year as full days of student instruction constituted a violation of the collective bargaining agreement. The arbitrator further decided that the description of the grievance stipulated to by the parties did not empower him to grant appellants a remedy for this violation.
Rather than appeal the arbitrator’s decision as to the scope of his powers to the court of common pleas, appellants followed the arbitrator’s gratuitous suggestion and attempted to negotiate a remedy with appellee school district. By February 10, 1976, well within the thirty-day period permitted for an appeal from an arbitrator’s decision, appellees were aware that the school district “considered the matter closed” and that further negotiation would be fruitless. However, instead of filing an appeal, appellees filed a new “grievance” with a second arbitrator, seeking the remedy which the first arbitrator had found himself powerless to award.
Contrary to the second arbitrator’s erroneous finding, this second “grievance” was not properly arbitrable. The collective bargaining agreement between the parties, in relevant part, defined arbitrable issues as “complaint[s] involving the work situation.” The issue before the second arbitrator was not a “complaint involving the work situation”: that complaint had already been the subject of a binding decision by the first arbitrator. Rather, this second “grievance” was nothing more than a complaint involving the first arbitrator’s decision as to the scope of his authority. The threshold issue was not whether a remedy should have been granted, but whether the first arbitrator misperceived the scope of his powers. Manifestly, such an issue relates only to the arbitration procedure itself and is not a proper issue for a *72second arbitration. As a “party aggrieved” by the limited decision of the first arbitrator, appellants should have appealed that decision to the court of common pleas pursuant to Pa.R.Civ.P. 247 [rescinded May 24, 1979; now 42 Pa.C.S. § 933(b)], see Pennsylvania Labor Relations Bd. v. Commonwealth, 478 Pa. 582, 589-90, 387 A.2d 475, 478-79 (1978), rather than prolonging resolution of the controversy through a second, improper arbitration hearing.
In another case involving the same parties, the same school year, and the same issue of successive, separate arbitrations, the Commonwealth Court vacated the second arbitrator's award of back pay, stating:
“In local public employment disputes, the courts of common pleas have exclusive jurisdiction to review an arbitrator’s award. Pa.R.C.P. No. 247. The Federation failed to follow the appropriate appellate procedure when the first arbitration did not award backpay, i.e. appeal.”
Scranton School District v. Scranton Federation of Teachers, 43 Pa.Cmwlth. 102, 106, 402 A.2d 1091, 1093 (1979) (allocatur denied). So too here, where appellants chose to invent a second “grievance” and seek a second arbitration rather than follow the appropriate appellate procedure, the Commonwealth Court properly vacated the second arbitrator’s award. Its order should be affirmed.