Court Opinion

ID: 9443622
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:26:06.637683+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:33.263161
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The opinion appears to read this extensive collective bargaining agreement too restrictively. In general content and intent it seems to be planned as a complete coverage of employer and employee relationships in this company. So the abitration agreement of Article IX is in terms and, I believe, in intent broader than the narrow and limited subject matter of Article. VIII entitled “Grievances.” Paragraph No. 72 in Article IX, which several times refers to “any dispute” in addition to “grievance,” would seem itself to suggest a broader application than merely to an employee’s grievance with working conditions of 'the- earlier Article on Grievances. Nor does the provision for arbitration after the reásonable third step of the grievance procedure — a meeting between employee committee, union representative, and company executives— seem to me • to intend importation herein of all the earlier steps in the grievance procedure, such as action by’■department or chief steward, which is made the real basis for my brothers’ decision. But the issue seems significantly put at rest by Paragraph 74 of the Arbitration Article, pointedly also entitled “Arbitration,” which prohibits lockouts and strikes, and in the very next sentence provides: “All complaints or grievances shall be settled in accordance with the full procedure outlined in this agreement.” The “full procedure” referred to must have been intended to include arbitration, since that is not only -the title of the paragraph, but also the subject matter of the entire Article of which it is a..part. And the prohibition of strikes, in the same paragraph can'leave little doubt that arbitration is to be one of the steps in settling “all complaints or grievances” involving that obligation. Clearly, therefore, an asserted breach of this prohibition is within the very terms of the required arbitration. Even had it seemed to me less clear I should have thought such a broad and enlightened interpretation desirable in the context of the modern labor practice; if arbitration is to be fostered even against conflicting statutory provisions, Wilko v. Swan, 2 Cir., 201 F.2d 439, surely it should be upheld where agreement points and law does not forbid.
If there is a binding agreement to arbitrate the resort to a strike here, the existence of the very cause for arbitration cannot constitute a breach ending defendants’ right to arbitrate, as the district court held. And such an agreement can be enforced without regard to the coverage of the United States Arbitration Act, as we have had occasion to point out specifically in Shirley-Herman Co. v. International Hod Carriers, Building & Common Laborers Union of America, Local No. 210, 2 Cir., 182 F.2d 806, 809, 17 A.L.R.2d 609; see also Murray Oil Products Co. v. Mitsui & Co., 2 Cir., 146 F.2d 381; 12 U. of Pitt.L.Rev. 131. If it be urged that now the federal government has taken over complete control of these labor relations, the answer is, as we noted in the Shirley-Herman case, that § 301 of the Taft-Hartley Act, 29 U.S.C. § 185, upholds employer-union contracts and provides a federal forum for their enforcement. See the acute discussion in 65 Harv.L.Rev. 1239. See also Lewittes & Sons v. United Furniture Workers of America, D.C.S.D.N.Y., 95 F.Supp, 851, where Judge Weinfeld in a carefully reasoned opinion reaches a like result by a somewhat different course, as well as the criticisms voiced as to restrictive interpretations of the Arbitration Act in labor matters in Sturges & Murphy, Some Confusing Matters Relating to Arbitration under the United States Arbitration Act, 7 Law & Contemp.Prob. 580, 605-619; 51 Mich.L. Rev. 117; 28 N.C.L.Rev. 225; 17 Duke B.A.J. 195. I think sufficient authority can be found to carry out what seems to me the reasonably clear intent of the parties. I would reverse for grant of the stay.