Court Opinion

ID: 9449058
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:54:02.777974+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:40.074437
License: Public Domain

KAUFMAN, Circuit Judge
(concurring) .
In view of the extraordinarily complex problems raised in the case before us, all of which have been thoroughly and per*66suasively dealt with in the opinion of Judge MEDINA and so many of which will have broad ramifications in the growing and yet unshaped field of federal labor law, I deem it my responsibility to clarify what I interpret to be the holding of the court today. We hold that the collective bargaining agreement between Interscienee and the Union does not clearly remove from the scope of arbitration the following questions: (1) Whether the collective bargaining agreement as a whole survived the consolidation of Inter-science and Wiley; (2) If the agreement did survive the consolidation — thereby imposing upon Wiley an obligation to arbitrate at the behest of the Union disputes arising before its natural termination on January 31, 1962 — whether the Union had to comport with the three-step grievance procedure, and if so, whether it did in fact comport with it or was relieved from doing so; and (3) Whether certain Union and employee rights became “vested” under the terms of the agreement.
Although the collective bargaining agreement contains no express provision making its obligations binding upon the successors of the parties, our decision today, in effect, permits the arbitrator to “imply” such a provision into the agreement if, under the circumstances present here, such an implication is proper. In doing so, he will no doubt make an effort to extrapolate the probable intentions and expectations of the parties, to evaluate the change in the nature and scope of the employment unit and employer-employee relationships, the disruptive potential of implying such a clause, and other relevant factors. It is this power to read a successor clause into the collective agreement which makes Wiley a proper party defendant in the case before us. What we decide here is that since the arbitrator may find that the agreement was intended to bind successors, and that since Wiley is the successor of Interscience, then Wiley is a potential party to a binding arbitration decree. Our mere refusal to determine that Wiley is not a proper party defendant in this judicial proceeding does not preclude the arbitrator from determining that Wiley was not meant to be bound by the obligations in the collective agreement — either the obligation to arbitrate or the obligation to respect the allegedly “vested” rights of the employees. So too, the Union is a proper party plaintiff, even though the arbitrator may ultimately determine that, because the collective bargaining agreement was not intended to survive consolidation, the Union cannot compel arbitration.
With this interpretation of the court’s holding in mind, I enthusiastically register my concurrence.