Court Opinion

ID: 9492362
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:39:32.925101+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:16.393716
License: Public Domain

KENNEDY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
This case seems to me indistinguishable from Litton Fin. Printing Div. v. NLRB, 501 U.S. 190, 111 S.Ct. 2215, 115 L.Ed.2d 177 (1991). There, the employees were laid off after the contract had expired. Here, Skinner was discharged after the contract had expired. The Court held that since the employees had no vested or accrued rights to be laid off by seniority, the company did not have to arbitrate. There too there were facts and circumstances that occurred before expiration of the contract, namely employment seniority. The Court stated,
[t]he layoffs took place almost one year after the Agreement had expired. It follows that the grievances are arbitra-ble only if they involve rights which accrued or vested under the Agreement, or rights which carried over after expiration of the Agreement, not as legally imposed terms and conditions of employment but as continuing obligations under the contract.
501 U.S. at 209, 111 S.Ct. 2215.
While the Court does say
[a] postexpiration grievance can be said to arise under the contract only where it involves facts and occurrences that arose before expiration, where an action taken after expiration infringes a right that accrued or vested under the agreement, or where, under normal principles of contract interpretation, the disputed contractual right survives expiration of the remainder of the agreement,
Id. at 205-06, 111 S.Ct. 2215, the Majority treats the first clause as one of three independent requirements. I believe that instead it is a requirement of both of the following clauses. First, the facts and circumstances must arise before expiration. When they do, then if the right accrued or vested under the agreement or a disputed contractual right survives, the grievance arises under the contract. Under the Majority’s interpretation the word “or” rather than the comma would have to be inserted after “expiration.”
The next paragraph of the Court’s opinion supports my reading.
Any other reading of Nolde Brothers seems to assume that postexpiration terms and conditions of employment which coincide with the contractual terms can be said to arise under an expired contract, merely because the contract would have applied to those matters had it not expired. But that interpretation fails to recognize that an expired contract has by its own terms released all its parties from their respective contractual obligations, except obligations already fixed under the contract but as yet unsatisfied.
Id. at 206, 111 S.Ct. 2215.
In every case where “action taken after expiration infringes” an accrued or vested right or where a disputed contractual right survives expiration of the contract, there *743will be facts and circumstances that arose before expiration. To treat the first clause as an independent ground makes the second and third clauses unnecessary.1

. As the Court explained, employees were protected by postexpiration terms imposed by the NLRA. Terms and conditions of employment continue in effect by operation of the NLRA. The NLRA is enforced by the NLRB if unfair labor practices are found to exist. See id. at 198-99, 111 S.Ct. 2215.