Court Opinion

ID: 9755686
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:47:09.271318+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:10.164703
License: Public Domain

Baldwin, C. J.
(concurring). I do not understand the opinion of the majority to mean that every award of an arbitrator which looks to the future relationship of the parties to a collective bargaining agreement is necessarily invalid for that reason. We have long endorsed a policy favoring arbitration as a means of resolving labor-management disputes. See United Electrical Radio & Machine Workers v. Union Mfg. Co., 145 Conn. 285, 288, 141 A.2d 479; Local 63, Textile Workers Union v. Cheney Bros., 141 Conn. 606, 612, 109 A.2d 240, cert. denied, 348 U.S. 959, 75 S. Ct. 449, 450, 99 L. Ed. 748; Colt’s Industrial Union v. Colt’s Mfg. Co., 137 Conn. 305, 309, 77 A.2d 301. Arbitration of such disputes involves the resolution of many detailed problems of the labor-management relationship. These problems are often not specifically foreseen, or at least they are often not expressly provided for by the contract negotiators. The negotiators, however, are presumed to have left these problems to be resolved by reference to the long-standing practices of the industry and the shops covered by the contract. Sofar as these prac*692tices, the “common law of the shop,” are not inconsistent with the express provisions of the contract, they are an equally valid source of law for the arbitrator. United Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 574, 580-82, 80 S. Ct. 1347, 1363, 4 L. Ed. 2d 1409, 1432; Posner v. Grunwald-Marx, Inc., 56 Cal. 2d 169, 177, 363 P.2d 313. Logically, then, an award, to render explicit what the contract negotiators have left implicit, should not only settle present disputes but serve, if possible, as a guide to avoiding future ones.
The difficulty in the present case is that the submission by its terms prevented the arbitrator from looking to the future. As the majority point out, the submission called for an answer to the question whether “the Company’s present operating practice” violated the terms of the agreement. It required a precise answer of “Yes” or “No,” not a determination of what might in the future constitute a violation of the agreement.