Court Opinion

ID: 9452175
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:31:54.124787+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:05.850815
License: Public Domain

DUNIWAY, Circuit Judge:
I dissent. In my opinion the dispute is a minor dispute falling under section 3, not a major dispute falling under section 6. I cannot quarrel with my brother Pope’s opinion as an exercise in judicial logic. It says that the union’s notice of August 3, which refers to section 6 of the Act, sought “an intended change in agreements affecting rates of pay, rules, or working conditions” (section 6). Hence a dispute falling within section 6 was created. My difficulty is with his premise. It is a too simple solution of a complex problem. It seems to me to disregard what I consider basic, the language and the purpose of the 1964 White House Agreement, as well as the purpose of sections 3 and 6.
Two provisions of that agreement, which was a nationwide settlement following threat of a most serious nationwide strike, are particularly pertinent here. With specific reference to the away-from-home expenses of train crews, Article II, Section 1 of the Agreement provides:
“When the carrier ties up a road service crew (except short turnabout passenger crews), or individual members thereof, at a terminal (including tie-up points named by assignment bulletins, or presently listed in schedule *107agreements, or observed by practice, as regular points for tying up crews) other than the designated home terminal of the crew assignment for four (4) hours or more, each member of the crew so tied up shall be provided suitable lodging at the carrier’s expense or an equitable allowance in lieu thereof. Suitable lodging or an equitable allowance in lieu thereof shall be worked out on a local basis. The equitable allowance shall be provided only if it is not reasonably possible to provide lodging.
“If an allowance is being made in lieu of lodging as well as other considerations under provisions of existing agreements, the amount attributed only to lodging shall be removed if suitable lodging is supplied, or offset against an equivalent allowance. This shall be worked out on a local basis.
“The provisions of this section shall be made effective at a date no later than 30 days following the effective date of this Agreement.”
This was as definite a settlement of this issue, on a national basis, as could be made. Local conditions vary widely; therefore this provision was to be “worked out” locally. But there is no indication that these matters were to be “worked out” outside the definitions and limitations laid down in the agreement itself : “suitable lodging” or an “equitable allowance,” and the latter “only if it is not reasonably possible to provide lodging,” plus a requirement that existing allowance in lieu of lodging is to be removed if “suitable” lodging is supplied. Under the agreement the carrier is required to provide lodging or an allowance. All that remains is to determine what lodging is “suitable” and “reasonably possible to provide,” and what allowance is “equitable.” Surely this requires that when the parties undertake to work these matters out on a local basis, they do so within those definitions and limitations. To say that defining what lodging is “suitable” and what allowance is “equitable” under a given set of circumstances is not “interpretation” within the meaning of section 3, is to' me a far too restrictive view of what “interpretation” means, in the context in which it is used in section 3. And to say that working out these matters is not “application” within the meaning of section 3, is also, to me, a far too restrictive view of what “application” means in that context.
I think that the parties to the White House Agreement intended that this type of dispute be a section 3 dispute. Article VII of that agreement provides :
“Any dispute involving the interpretation or application of this agreement shall be settled by the parties in accordance with the established procedures therefor, including the creation of Special Boards of Adjustment and other procedures of Section 3 of the Railway Labor Act.” (Emphasis added.)
What happened here is completely consistent with an attempt to interpret and apply Article II, Section 1 of the Agreement. Being unable to reach an agreement as to what lodging was “suitable” and what allowance was “equitable,” the carrier, by its July 24 notice, put into effect its version, which states what accommodations it will provide and what allowance in lieu thereof it will pay. The union’s August 3 notice, while stated to be “in accord with section 6”, is in fact no more than a statement of its version of what shall constitute “acceptable suitable lodging” and what shall be “an equitable allowance.” These are the terms used by the union. They are also the terms used in Article II, section 1. They are nothing but an attempt to interpret and apply the White House Agreement.
The reference in the union’s notice to section 6, when the notice itself discloses that that section is not applicable, cannot, in my opinion, change what is in fact a section 3 dispute into a section 6 dispute.1 This is because section 6 is ap*108plicable only if there is to be a “change in agreements affecting rates of pay, rules, or working conditions” (emphasis added). Here the union can perhaps be said to have sought a change in “rules” or “working conditions,” and even in “rates of pay” as to the in lieu allowance. But it sought them within the White House Agreement: it sought interpretation and application of that agreement; it did not seek a “change in [that] agreement.”
I think that it is a disservice to the cause of peaceful settlement of railway labor disputes, as carefully worked out in section 3, to hold that a union can so easily escape its obligations by merely labelling a section 3 dispute a section 6 dispute. I also think that in the White House Agreement both parties agreed and intended that this dispute be a section 3 dispute, as is witnessed by Article VII. I do not think that the union should now be permitted, by a mere verbal device, to repudiate and dispute so important an agreement.
I would affirm.

. “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” (Genesis XXVII, 22). Isaac was blind. This court is not, nor does the law require that it act as if it were!