Court Opinion

ID: 9448531
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:38:47.92507+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:27.894413
License: Public Domain

ALBERT V. BRYAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
No genuine issue of fact relating to the daté the 27 replacements were hired and justifying a remand of the case to the District Court, it seems to me, is presented by the record. The appellant has not in this respect resisted the summary judgment. Both sides presented motions therefor; thus neither thought there was a factual conflict. The union does not complain of the accuracy or truth of the direct or inferential facts relied on by the District Judge. Its thesis of complaint throughout has been that he examined the facts at all; it urges that only the arbitrator could consider those facts. Consonantly the union’s brief states, “There is no material issue of fact relative to the question of arbitrability presented by the pleadings and motions and exhibits thereto, all material facts being undisputed. Certain minor disputes of fact * * * are neither material nor relevant to the issue.” At no time has the union denied that the 27 were irrevocably hired before December 16; rather, the “hiring” of which they complain is the coming of the 27 to work thereafter.
If these independent facts are not enough, one need only look at the strike-settlement agreement, as discussed post, for an attestation that no vacancies existed at the plant as of December 16, 1960 and immediately following. At least, however, the remand conclusively acknowledges the explicitness and clarity of the exclusion clause: the District Judge is directed to enforce it should he find the hiring was consummated before December 16. This recognition is highly significant in the decision of the remaining question in this case.
In my view this remaining question— the demanded discharge or “bumping” of both the 27 and the 75 immediately after December 16 for want of seniority—is explicitly withheld from arbitration by the exclusion clause of the strike-settlement agreement, as clearly revealed in *817paragraphs 2 and 4 of that same document:
“2. [It is agreed] That the company shall prepare a recall list of all striking employees desiring reinstatement, by seniority within each respective classification and occupation, and shall reinstate such employees as vacancies occur in their classifications and occupations in accordance with the seniority, layoff and recall provision of the Agreement, provided that the Union shall have the right to check said recall list for both completeness and accuracy, and shall further advise the Company of the names of any employees who do not desire reinstatement.” (Emphasis added.)
“4. [It is agreed that] The date of said contract to be entered into between the Company and the Union shall be retroactive to November 9, 1960, but it is specifically agreed by - the Company and the Union that any acts by the Company or the Union that may have been in violation of any of the agreed contract provisions occurring between the expiration date of the November 9 contract and the date of the signing of this Agreement, shall be deemed not to be in violation of said Contract, so that no such violation may be made the subject of a grievance or any other remedy provided for in said Contract.”
No vacancies existed on and after December 16 when the grievance was filed: all “vacancies” were then occupied, as paragraph 2 avouches.
Stated another way, not only were new men employed before December 16, but as incumbents they were endowed with a status fixed by the settlement agreement, a status which continued after December 16 by virtue of the subsistence of that agreement beyond that date. That agreement and that status were not displaced upon the inception of the séniority or “bumping” provisions of the collective bargaining agreement. These provisions had been arranged, as the opinion of the Court notes, before the strike-settlement contract was signed. It was with the collective agreement in mind that the union and the employer stipulated that reinstatement, should only follow “vacancies”. Clearly the collective agreement was not to unmake the strike-settlement by effecting at once a discharge of all employees hired before December 16.
The filling of the “vacancies” was, it is next said, an act occurring after December 16. This can only be sustained on the hypothesis that immediately after December 16 the collective bargaining agreement ex proprio vigore created vacancies through its seniority clauses and instantly ousted the occupants. But the collective bargaining agreement does not purport to create vacancies; it merely sets the pattern for filling them “as vacancies occur”. The interpretation of the Court wholly ignores the plain terms of paragraph 2 of the settlement agreement. . The result is arbitrarily and abruptly to terminate all force of the strike-settlement agreement beyond December 16, 1960. Thus, upon the Court’s opinion, the future immunity guaranteed both employer and union by that agreement for acts occurring before December 16—the very protection purposed by the agreement—was on that day ended. It is as if the parties the first moment after December 16 had rescinded the strike-settlement agreement.
This partial nullification of the strike-settlement agreement is made complete by the additional holding, in fragmentization of the agreement, that while paragraph 4 contains an exclusionary clause, paragraph 2 does not, ergo no exclusion is effective in respect to paragraph 2, especially in regard to reinstatement, vacancy and seniority. Surely the two paragraphs, in the absence of an express contrary direction, embrace each other.
Arbitration cannot be compelled by contradicting the obvious. No exclusionary clause, though precise as words could make it, would ever be effective if to make an arbitrable issue one need only deny the meaning of words. Just that *818is essayed now. No review of the history of the bargaining—indeed, no consideration of any kind beyond the grievance and the parties’ agreement—is necessary for the determination that the exclusionary clause here definitively precludes arbitration. This is all that is required of such a clause. United Steelworkers of America v. Warrior & Gulf Nav. Co., 363 U.S. 574, 80 S.Ct. 1347, 4 L.Ed.2d 1409 (1960); United Steelworkers of America v. American Mfg. Co., 363 U.S. 564, 80 S.Ct. 1343, 4 L.Ed.2d 1403 (1960).
I would affirm.