Brock Indus. Servs., LLC v. Laborers' Int'l Union of N. Am. Constr.
Opinion
*514 Brock Industrial Services, LLC, is an Illinois-based provider of industrial services, including scaffolding, painting, insulation, and shoring. In January 2016 it entered into a labor agreement with Local 100 of the Laborers' International Union 1 ("the Laborers Union" or "the Laborers"). The agreement requires arbitration of grievances and establishes a bipartite arbitration procedure for resolving most disputes. But work-jurisdiction disputes-disputes over whether the Laborers or another union is entitled to perform work-are instead subject to a tripartite arbitration procedure involving the company and the contending unions.
Sometime prior to signing the agreement, Brock hired the Laborers to perform scaffolding work at a chemical plant. On the day after the agreement became effective, Brock informed the Laborers Union that it was reassigning the work to the International Brotherhood of Carpenters ("the Carpenters Union" or "the Carpenters"). Invoking the bipartite arbitration procedure, the Laborers Union filed a grievance with the Grievance Review Subcommittee of the National Maintenance Agreement Policy Committee ("the Subcommittee"). Brock responded that the grievance involved a work-jurisdiction dispute subject to tripartite arbitration and therefore the Subcommittee lacked authority to arbitrate the matter. The Subcommittee disagreed and sustained the grievance.
Brock filed suit under section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act,
We reverse. At bottom, this grievance concerns which of two unions was entitled to perform the scaffolding work at the chemical plant. That's a jurisdictional dispute, and the labor agreement calls for tripartite arbitration of jurisdictional disputes. Accordingly, the Subcommittee had no authority over the matter and its decision must be vacated.
I. Background
Brock and the Laborers Union entered into a labor agreement effective January 7, *515 2016. The agreement provides: "Except for jurisdictional disputes and those involving general wage rates, all disputes and grievances arising out of work performed under this [a]greement ... shall be resolved" through the procedures outlined in Article VI. Article VI requires Brock and the Laborers to submit unresolved grievances to the Subcommittee for arbitration. We refer to this grievance process as bipartite arbitration.
Article I of the agreement provides a separate procedure for resolving work-jurisdiction disputes. A work-jurisdiction dispute is "a dispute between two or more groups of employees over which is entitled to do certain work for an employer."
Hutter Constr. Co. v. Int'l Union of Operating Eng'rs, Local 139
,
Prior to signing the agreement, Brock assigned several Laborers to construct scaffolding at the Afton Chemical Plant. On January 8, 2016-the day after the operative labor agreement became effective-Brock notified the Laborers Union that its services were no longer required because the project was assigned to the Carpenters Union. On January 11 the Laborers Union sent a letter to the National Maintenance Agreement Policy Committee claiming that Brock violated the agreement when it reassigned the work to the Carpenters. On January 21 the Laborers notified the Carpenters Union of a work-jurisdiction dispute between the unions over the project.
Invoking the bipartite arbitration procedure specified in Article VI, the Laborers filed a grievance with the Subcommittee complaining that Brock violated the agreement by terminating the Laborers and assigning work to the Carpenters. The grievance requested reinstatement and backpay as a remedy. Brock responded that the Subcommittee had no arbitral authority over the grievance because it constituted a work-jurisdiction dispute and requested that the grievance be dismissed or denied.
The Subcommittee denied Brock's request and sustained the grievance, finding that Brock violated Article I, Section 5 of the labor contract. That provisions states: "During the existence of the [a]greement, there shall be no strikes, lockouts, work stoppages, or picketing arising out of any jurisdictional dispute. Work will continue as originally assigned, pending resolution of the dispute." The Subcommittee determined that Brock violated this section by making "a change of assignment."
Brock brought this suit under section 301 seeking to vacate the arbitral award as void because the grievance constituted a jurisdictional dispute and thus was outside the Subcommittee's arbitral authority. A bevy of motions followed. The Laborers moved to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure ; Brock moved to vacate the award; the Laborers moved to "dismiss" the motion to vacate on timeliness grounds; and the Laborers moved to enforce the award.
The judge denied all four motions. She acknowledged that the Subcommittee lacked arbitral authority if the grievance concerned a jurisdictional dispute. She concluded, however, that if the grievance concerned both a jurisdictional dispute and a wrongful-termination claim, then the Subcommittee could properly adjudicate the latter dispute. But a material issue of fact-namely, whether the Laborers were ever assigned the project to begin with-prevented *516 the judge from resolving the case at that time.
Brock sought reconsideration, and the Laborers moved for summary judgment. The judge denied reconsideration and entered summary judgment for the Laborers Union, ruling that Brock had indeed assigned the scaffolding work to the Laborers and the Subcommittee's decision is enforceable. Both sides appealed.
II. Discussion
We review a summary judgment de novo.
Hooper v. Proctor Health Care Inc.
,
With that out of the way, we turn to the main event: Brock's argument that the Subcommittee lacked the authority to arbitrate the grievance because it raised a work-jurisdiction dispute. "[A]rbitration is a matter of contract[,] and a party cannot be required to submit to arbitration any dispute which he has not agreed so to submit."
AT&T Techs., Inc. v. Commc'ns Workers of Am.
,
By signing the agreement, Brock agreed to submit some disputes-but not all-to arbitration by the Subcommittee. Article VI of the agreement creates a bipartite arbitration procedure and vests the Subcommittee with arbitral authority. Subject to two exceptions, the bilateral procedure applies to "all disputes and grievances arising out of work performed under [the] [a]greement involving the meaning or interpretation of any provision in [the] [a]greement." Jurisdictional disputes are one of the exceptions. Article I creates a separate, tripartite arbitration procedure to resolve work-jurisdiction disputes and vests arbitral authority in the Permanent Umpire rather than the Subcommittee. Accordingly, the Subcommittee exceeded its authority if the grievance raised a work-jurisdiction dispute.
The gravamen of the grievance is work jurisdiction. The grievance and its supporting documents all complain that Brock improperly assigned work to the Carpenters instead of the Laborers. The Grievance Form Fact Sheet demanded that Brock "make proper assignment of work to the Laborers' Union," "reinstate the Laborers," and compensate workers for "lost wages and benefits." Indeed, the Subcommittee sustained the grievance because Brock "made a change of assignment." In other words, the Laborers complained (and the Subcommittee found) that Brock assigned work to the wrong union. That's the definition of a jurisdictional dispute. The Subcommittee therefore had no authority to arbitrate the grievance. The contract required tripartite arbitration in which the competing unions and the employer could be heard.
Our previous decisions amply support this conclusion. In
Local 416, Sheet Metal Workers International Ass'n v. Helgesteel Corp.
,
We held that the entire controversy constituted a jurisdictional dispute requiring tripartite arbitration.
Likewise, in
William Charles Construction Co. v. Teamsters Local Union 627
,
So too here. The Laborers Union complains that Brock improperly reassigned the project to another union, so the grievance must be resolved in tripartite arbitration. Allowing the Laborers to seek damages through bipartite arbitration could produce "inconsistent final arbitration awards,"
Helgesteel
,
This conclusion accords with the reasoning of cases in which we declined to find a jurisdictional dispute reserved for tripartite arbitration. For instance, in
Hutter v. Local 139
,
Hutter argued that the Operators' grievance was really a "disguised jurisdictional dispute" subject to tripartite arbitration and that the bipartite arbitration award should be vacated.
Although
Hutter
held that the dispute in question was nonjurisdictional, its reasoning supports the opposite conclusion here. We emphasized in
Hutter
that the subcontracting grievance "arose independently" of the work assignment; its validity was "not dependent upon the identity of the party that ultimately performed the forklift work."
Our conclusion finds additional support in
Miron Construction Co. v. International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 139
,
Miron filed a complaint in federal court seeking tripartite arbitration.
*519
Miron
too is factually distinguishable from this case, though like
Hutter
its reasoning supports our conclusion. In
Miron
we focused on whether the bipartite proceeding could generate an award that conflicts with the resolution of a jurisdictional dispute. A bipartite arbitration award is valid so long as the grievance "cannot be viewed as a veiled attempt to force a reassignment of the work."
One case cuts in the opposite direction. In
Alberici-Eby v. Local 520, International Union of Operating Engineers
,
We denied Alberici-Eby's request. We first noted that Alberici-Eby failed to timely invoke the multiparty arbitration mechanism even though it "was on notice that it faced the strong possibility of conflicting arbitral awards."
Alberici-Eby
is hard to reconcile with
Helgesteel
,
Hutter
,
Miron
, and
William Charles
. The grievances concerned work-assignment disputes, but we permitted bipartite arbitration to proceed. We based our decision in part on the language in the agreement between Alberici-Eby and the Engineers, but that language cannot be meaningfully distinguished from virtually identical language in
Helgesteel
.
Compare
Alberici-Eby
,
Because
Alberici-Eby
is an obvious outlier, we limit the case to its peculiar facts. We emphasized there that the contractor waited too long to request multiparty arbitration. That defeated the purpose of the multiparty arbitration process, "which was carefully designed to produce a speedy resolution of jurisdictional disputes in order to permit work to be properly allocated before that work is performed."
Alberici-Eby
,
The district judge offered two reasons to affirm the arbitral award but neither holds up under the caselaw we've just surveyed. First, the judge reasoned that because several Laborers were already working on the project, removing those workers from the job gave rise to a wrongful-termination claim distinct from the jurisdictional dispute. Not so. The Laborers were terminated because the work was assigned to the Carpenters; a finding of wrongful termination necessarily implies that the work was misassigned. That puts this grievance squarely on the work-jurisdiction side of the line. As such, it was subject to tripartite arbitration.
Second, the judge held that the grievance arose out of Article I, Section 5, which provides a separate contractual basis for bipartite arbitrability. The provision in question states: "During the existence of the [a]greement, there shall be no strikes, lockouts, work stoppages, or picketing arising out of any jurisdictional dispute. Work will continue as originally assigned, pending resolution of the dispute."
Grievances arising under this provision are indeed subject to bipartite arbitration. Like the subcontracting provisions in Hutter and Miron , a dispute under this provision can be separately arbitrated without interfering with a jurisdictional dispute. Suppose for a moment that the Laborers and the Carpenters submitted a jurisdictional dispute to tripartite arbitration, and to pressure Brock into taking its side, the Laborers Union called a strike, prompting Brock to file a grievance under Section 5. It would be completely consistent for one arbitrator to award the work assignment to the Laborers and another to sanction the Laborers for initiating a strike. Neither award would call the other into question.
But bipartite arbitration was not appropriate just because the Laborers labeled the grievance as one arising under Section 5. We look instead to the substance of the grievance. And in substance, this grievance is a work-jurisdiction dispute. As such, it was subject to tripartite arbitration, and *521 the Subcommittee lacked arbitral authority.
REVERSED ; CROSS-APPEAL DISMISSED .
Formally, the Laborers' International Union of North America Construction & General Laborers Local 100.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- BROCK INDUSTRIAL SERVICES, LLC, Plaintiff-Appellant/ Cross-Appellee, v. LABORERS' INTERNATIONAL UNION OF NORTH AMERICA CONSTRUCTION & GENERAL LABORERS LOCAL 100, Defendant-Appellee/Cross-Appellant.
- Cited By
- 7 cases
- Status
- Published