Court Opinion

ID: 9461902
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:27:21.738527+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:18.917834
License: Public Domain

GIBBONS, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
The district court granted summary judgment for the defendant Cross Brothers Meat Packers, Inc. (Cross) on its counterclaim seeking enforcement of an arbitration award, and denied the motion of the plaintiff Amalgamated Meat Cutters & Butcher Workmen of North America, Local 195, AFL — CIO (Local 195) for summary judgment vacating and setting aside that award. I vote to affirm because the dispute between Cross and Local 195 was arbitrable under the terms of the governing collective bargaining agreement, the arbitration was conducted in the manner agreed upon by the parties, and the award sufficiently draws its essence from the agreement.
Across the street from the Cross Brothers Meat Packers plant is the plant of Cross Brothers Hotel Supply, Inc. (Hotel Supply), a separate corporation which purchases meat for resale to the hotel and restaurant trade. Prior to June 30, 1971 Local 195 was the collective bargaining representative of employees in a bargaining unit in Hotel Supply. The Hotel Supply unit’s collective bargaining agreement expired on June 30, 1971. At midnight on that date a picket line was established by supply employees at the Hotel Supply plant. On July 1, 1971 the Hotel Supply picketing line was extended to the Cross plant across the street. Members of Local 195 in the slaughtering and boning divisions of Cross refused to cross this picket line manned by Hotel Supply people. This work stoppage lasted one day. It came to an end when Cross sought and obtained in the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County a preliminary restraining order directing Local 195 to cease picketing at the Cross plant.1 The validity of that order is not an issue in this appeal since the dispute is over damages suffered by Cross prior to the time the work stoppage ended rather than over whether the injunction was proper.2
After the work stoppage ended Cross made a demand on Local 195 for damages. When Local 195 rejected this demand Cross filed a demand for arbitration pursuant to the arbitration clause quoted at note 2 in Judge Van Dusen’s opinion, supra. A hearing was held before Arbitrator Emanuel Stein on May 31, 1972 and on October 7, 1972 he determined:
“It is my opinion, and I so hold, that the Union shall pay to the Company the sum of $14,826.43 in damages for the breach of its no-strike agreement *1123with Packers.” Complaint, Exhibit B, Arbitrator’s Opinion at 12.
On November 9, 1972 Local 195 filed a complaint pursuant to § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, 29 U.S.C. § 185, in which it disputed the jurisdiction of Arbitrator Stein. The complaint also alleged that the award “is arbitrary and capricious and exceeds the arbitrator’s authority under the Collective Bargaining Agreement,” and so requested the court to vacate the award.
Cross filed an answer and a counterclaim for enforcement of the arbitration award, and then made a motion pursuant to Rule 12(c), Fed.R.Civ.P., for judgment on the pleadings. However, since Article X of the slaughtering division contract provided for an arbitrator’s panel of three members, while, as the pleadings made clear, the award was made by a single arbitrator, the pleadings disclosed a factual dispute as to whether Local 195 waived the provision for three members and so the district court denied this motion.3 The parties thereafter engaged in discovery. Upon its completion Cross moved pursuant to Rule 56 for summary judgment enforcing the award. From the order granting that motion Local 195 appeals. The union contends: (1) that the dispute was not arbitrable; (2) that there is a factual dispute as to its consent to proceed before a single arbitrator rather than three; and (3) that the arbitrator’s decision was arbitrary and capricious. I concur in Judge Van Dusen’s treatment of issue (2), but I reach the result he does on issues (1) and (3) by a somewhat different route.
ARBITRABILITY
Local 195 urges that since the picket line was posted by employees of Hotel Supply at a time when its collective bargaining agreement expired, there was no contract arbitration provision under which the arbitrator could have jurisdiction. It claims that this same contention was advanced to the arbitrator, and was rejected. By focusing attention upon the expired contract the local would have us disregard the two agreements which were still in force, both of which had broad no-work stoppage clauses and both of which provided for arbitration of disputes arising out of work stoppages. It was Cross’ contention that there was a work stoppage in its plant which violated those agreements and that Local 195 was liable for damages resulting from the claimed violation. I conclude that Cross’ claim that there was a work stoppage in breach of the agreements between it and Local 195 is clearly an arbitrable dispute within the meaning of those agreements. The fact that the Hotel Supply Contract had expired at the time of the picketing simply has no bearing upon the arbitrability of Cross’ claim that a work stoppage took place in breach of the collective bargaining agreements then in effect. The refusal of the Cross employees to cross the Hotel Supply picket line arguably might fall outside either contract, but the contention that such refusal was a breach of contract was a “difference arispng] between the parties hereto or between the Employer and the employees as to the interpretation or application of this agreement,” and hence a matter for arbitration.4 I conclude that the arbitrator had contractual jurisdiction over Cross’ claim for damages.
THE ARBITRATOR’S DECISION
Local 195 urges three grounds in support of its contention that the arbitrator’s decision was arbitrary and capricious and in manifest disregard of the law. The first ground is that the damages assessed were actually imposed for the picket line of Hotel Supply employees, and were therefore imposed for an alleged breach of an expired contract. This is essentially the same objection as is made to arbitrability of the dispute, and I reject it for the same reason. Upon the expiration of the Hotel Supply *1124agreement the members of Local 195 in that bargaining unit were free to strike Hotel Supply and to picket its plant. But Local 195, bound to Cross by the slaughtering and boning contracts, was not free to cause a work stoppage at the Cross plant if those contracts forbade such a stoppage. The arbitrator concluded that they did.
The second ground is that the arbitrator in holding that a work stoppage took place in breach of the Cross agreements failed to recognize and differentiate between the activities of Hotel Supply employees and the activities of the Cross employees. The union argues that “[t]he employees of [Cross] refused to cross Supply’s picket line, not because they were represented by Local 195, but rather because it was a legal picket line established pursuant to a legal strike.”5 But the dispute submitted to the arbitrator was not the legality of the picket line. It was rather the legality of the resultant work stoppage. We have recently pointed out that the right to recognize third-party picket lines may be bargained away, and the question whether that right was bargained away may be within an arbitration clause. Island Creek Coal Co. v. United Mine Workers, supra, n.5. Whether the Cross work stoppage resulted from protected activity — the refusal to cross a picket line of another union — or from activity which though otherwise protected had been bargained away, was clearly arbitrable under the language of the two Cross-Local 195 contracts which remained in force. Whether the arbitrator gave too broad or too narrow a reading to the contract provisions, or even an incorrect' reading, is a matter with which we are not properly concerned. E. g., General Drivers, Warehousemen & Helpers, Local No. 89 v. Riss & Co., Inc., 372 U.S. 517, 83 S.Ct. 789, 9 L.Ed.2d 918 (1963); United Steelworkers of America v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 598-99, 80 S.Ct. 1358, 4 L.Ed.2d 1424 (1960); Wilko v. Swan, 346 U.S. 427, 436-37, 74 S.Ct. 182, 98 L.Ed. 168 (1953); Price v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 457 F.2d 605, 611 (3d Cir. 1972). It was the arbitrator’s interpretation that the parties to the slaughtering and boning contracts bargained for and agreed to, and we must enforce the award “if the interpretation can in any rational way be derived from the agreement . . . .” Ludwig Honold Mfg. Co. v. Fletcher, 405 F.2d 1123, 1128 (3d Cir. 1969).
The third ground urged by Local 195 is that in making the award the arbitrator completely ignored the “ally doctrine” of N.L.R.B. v. Local 810, Steel Fabricators, 460 F.2d 1 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 409 U.S. 1041, 93 S.Ct. 527, 34 L.Ed.2d 491 (1972). The majority opinion in that case recognizes that the extension of a strike to other facilities of the same employer will be permitted where it can be said that in reality there is but one employer, even though separate corporations exist. The case has no application here. The scope of our review over N.L.R.B. unfair labor practice proceedings is considerably broader than that of our review of an arbitrator’s award in an enforcement proceeding. If there is such an “ally doctrine” as was recognized in the Steel Fabricators case, a question which I do not consider, the doctrine at most involves protected activity which, like the right to honor third-party picket lines, can be bargained away. Whether the slaughtering and boning contracts prevented Meat Packers employees from becoming allies of the Hotel Supply employees by recognizing the latter’s picket line was also an arbitrable issue. The arbitrator’s rejection of the “ally doctrine” defense certainly may be derived in a rational way from the broad no-work stoppage language of the contracts. Our review should go no further.
Neither in the pleadings and briefs filed in the district court, nor in the briefs filed in this court did Local 195 contend that specific items of damage were improperly included in the arbitrator’s calculation of the total award. *1125Rather, the local’s attack has been on the propriety of any award. I Conclude that the arbitrator had jurisdiction over the dispute, and find his conclusion that a breach of contract by Local 195 caused damage to Cross was derived in a rational manner from the agreements.
Essentially, Judge Hunter looks upon the individual bargaining units as separate entities for purposes of § 301, while Judge Van Dusen would hold that a contract made by a local union on behalf of members in one bargaining unit can bind the entire local. It is unnecessary, in my view of the case, to decide the issue of the effect on the Supply unit employees of the no-work stoppage contracts in the slaughtering and boning units. Judge Van Dusen’s approach suggests what could be a major enlargement of the § 301 remedy. No such enlargement is required for the affirmance of the district court order enforcing the award in this case, and I decline to participate in the difference between Judge Van Du-sen and Judge Hunter on that issue.

. Cross Bros. Meat Packers, Inc. v. Amalgamated Meat Cutters Local 195 et al., Court of Common Pleas, County of Philadelphia, June Term 1971, No. 4535.

. Compare Island Creek Coal Co. v. United Mine Workers, 507 F.2d 650 (3d Cir. 1975); NAPA Pittsburgh, Inc. v. Automotive Chauffeurs, Parts and Garage Employees, Local 926, 502 F.2d 321 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 1049, 95 S.ct. 625, 42 L.Ed.2d 644 (1974).

. Amalgamated Meat Cutters Local 195 v. Cross Bros. Meat Packers, Inc., 362 F.Supp. 127 (E.D.Pa.1973).

. See note 2 in Judge Van Dusen’s opinion, supra.

. Appellant’s Brief at 13.