United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 99-1688
TEAMSTERS LOCAL UNION NO. 42,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
SUPERVALU, INC.,
Defendant, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Reginald C. Lindsay, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Torruella, Chief Judge,
Selya and Lipez, Circuit Judges.
John D. Burke, with whom Law Offices of Gabriel Dumont was
on brief, for appellant.
Keith P. Spiller, with whom Thompson Hine & Flory LLP,
Gregory C. Keating, and Choate, Hall & Stewart were on brief,
for appellee.
May 15, 2000
SELYA, Circuit Judge. Arbitral awards are nearly
impervious to judicial oversight. See Advest, Inc. v. McCarthy,
914 F.2d 6, 8-9 (1st Cir. 1990) (describing exceptions); Maine
Cent. R.R. Co. v. Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees,
873 F.2d 425, 428 (1st Cir. 1989) ("Judicial review of an
arbitration award is among the narrowest known in the law.").
Accordingly, disputes that are committed by contract to the
arbitral process almost always are won or lost before the
arbitrator. Successful court challenges are few and far
between.
Undaunted by this bleak prospect, Local Union No. 42
(Local 42 or the union), a Teamsters affiliate, invited a
federal district court to vacate a labor arbitrator's award in
favor of Supervalu, Inc. (Supervalu or the employer). The court
refused the invitation. Because we agree that the arbitrator,
regardless of whether his decision was right or wrong, acted
within the realm of the authority vested in him by the
applicable collective bargaining agreement, we affirm.
I. BACKGROUND
Supervalu is a large wholesale grocer that operates a
regional facility in Andover, Massachusetts. Local 42
represents all the warehouse workers and truck drivers at that
site. The parties' current collective bargaining agreement (the
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CBA) took effect in May of 1994. Among other things, the CBA
designates Local 42 as the exclusive bargaining agent for its
members, lays out wage rates for the multi-year period covered
by the pact (distinguishing, in the process, between "present"
and "new" full-time employees), and sets out guidelines for the
allocation of benefits.
About two months before the CBA took effect, Supervalu
acquired the business of a competitor, Sweet Life Foods (SLF),
which operated a grocery warehouse in Northboro, Massachusetts.
As part of that transaction, Supervalu assumed the collective
bargaining agreement then in effect between SLF and Teamsters
Local 170 (which represented workers at the Northboro facility).
Supervalu soon decided to move all the Northboro work to
Andover, transferring some of the crew and discharging the rest.
To that end, it commenced negotiations with Local 170 anent
transfer and severance terms, but failed to reach an accord.
In August of 1994, Supervalu made a so-called "final
and best offer" to Local 170 in the form of a memorandum that,
among other things, laid out anticipated terms of engagement
(including compensation) for those workers who would be
redirected to Andover. Supervalu informed a representative of
Local 42 about the proposal (or so the arbitrator supportably
found), but it never bargained with Local 42 anent the terms and
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conditions of the transferees' employment. In all events,
neither Local 170 nor Local 42 ever formally accepted the offer.
Supervalu, acting unilaterally, nonetheless started shifting
workers from Northboro to Andover in late August and September.
Upon reporting for duty at Andover, the transferees
automatically became members of Local 42.
Supervalu applied the wage rate and conditions of
employment specified in the memorandum to the transferred
workers. Overall, these terms were a compromise between
treating them like veteran employees and treating them like
neophytes.1 This hermaphroditic status sowed the seeds for an
horrific harvest.
The first poisonous plant bloomed when the union,
acting on the transferees' behalf, grieved the allocation of
bonus days (i.e., extra personal days), charging that under
Article 25 of the CBA the transferees' entitlement to bonus days
should be determined in light of their years of service with
1
To offer a few illustrations, the transferred workers were
treated like experienced hands in that they were exempted from
the 60-day probationary period for new hires imposed by Article
2 of the CBA and received credit toward vacation eligibility for
the time they had worked with SLF. They were, however, paid
less than veteran workers (although their starting wage — $13.23
per hour — was substantially above the minimum rate set for
beginners in the CBA), and their eligibility for bonus days was
calculated as if they had begun work on the date the CBA took
effect.
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SLF. In mounting this challenge, the union brushed aside the
CBA's definition of seniority as "the period of employment with
[Supervalu] in the work covered by this Agreement, at the
terminal (or terminals) within the jurisdiction of the Local,"
and posited that "years/service" — the critical integer in the
bonus days equation — was a broader term that could include
periods in the employ of SLF. Supervalu rejected the grievance,
asserting that years of service, like seniority, had to be
calculated from the date it hired an employee to work full time
at Andover.
The parties submitted the case to arbitration. The
arbitrator, Greenbaum, observed that some workers who came to
the Andover facility from acquired companies had been permitted
to carry over years of service (as well as seniority). She then
determined that, from and after 1989, the terms "years/service"
and "seniority" had developed distinct meanings. Beginning at
that time, the CBA made provision for "casual employees," i.e.,
part-time workers hired, as needed, to toil in the Andover
warehouse, and those employees, collectively, had come to
constitute the pool from which most new full-time workers were
recruited. Arbitrator Greenbaum noted that when a casual worker
became a regular full-time employee, Supervalu figured his years
of service from his original date of hire as a casual employee,
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even though he accrued no seniority in respect to the time spent
in casual work.
The arbitrator found additional support for the theory
that years of service and seniority were independent variables
in the differing uses of those terms within the four corners of
the CBA:
A review of [the terms'] uses in the
Agreement shows that where the intent is to
provide an employee with a benefit that is
non-competitive, i.e., does not impact on
any other employee, such as bonus days and
entitlement to vacation days, the parties
used the synonymous terms of date of hire or
years of service or length of service or
"the period of employment with the Company"
and "in the Company's employ" all meaning
essentially the same thing. In contrast,
the term "seniority" is generally used where
competitive rights are involved. This is
the case in bidding for promotions,
preferences for vacation schedules,
preference for work assignments, . . . .
She also found that this dichotomy characterized the treatment
of the transferees (at least to some degree), inasmuch as their
vacation entitlement — a non-competitive benefit — was
determined in light of the years they had worked at SLF, while
preference in vacation scheduling — a competitive benefit — was
allocated strictly in accordance with seniority.
Based on these facts, the arbitrator found that, as
used in the CBA, "years/service" was broader than "seniority"
and sometimes included work other than full-time Local 42 work
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at the Andover warehouse; and that the transferees' previous
service at SLF should have informed the calculation of their
bonus days. The fact that the SLF transferees were not treated
generically as new hires (unlike another group that had
previously joined the work force from an acquired company)
contributed heavily to her conclusion that Supervalu had
breached the CBA in computing the transferees' entitlement to
bonus days without regard to "years/service" (including time
spent at SLF).2
The battleground then shifted to wages and, in
particular, to Article 13 of the CBA (governing "minimum hourly
wages"). Article 13 sets out separate wage schedules for
"present" and "new" full-time workers, and lists wage rates for
casual (part-time) workers in a separate chart. Both before and
after the CBA took effect, Supervalu's prevailing practice was
to pay former casual workers who became regular full-time
employees at the rate specified by the controlling CBA for new
2
Arbitrator Greenbaum found Supervalu's breach of the CBA
especially flagrant because it had allowed transferees to
receive bonus days as early as May 1995, even though they had
not yet been working at Andover for a full year. In the
arbitrator's words, "[t]he Company created a fiction for them by
changing their date of hire from September or October 1994 to
May 1994 [when the CBA had taken effect], which certainly was
not in accordance with its agreement with Local 42." This
approach both ignored the transferees' years of service at SLF
and defied the CBA's rules anent new hires.
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hires. When Supervalu began to integrate SLF personnel into its
Andover work force, it paid them at a rate of $13.23/hr. — one
that fell somewhere between the rate for new recruits and the
rates applicable to present workers.
Buoyed by Arbitrator Greenbaum's award, Local 42 filed
a second grievance. This time, it argued that the starting
wages paid to erstwhile casual employees and SLF transferees
were too stingy and placed Supervalu in breach of Article 13.
The union asseverated that wages, like bonus days and vacation
eligibility, were a non-competitive benefit and should be
determined by years of service, not seniority, in accordance
with Arbitrator Greenbaum's construct. If this were so, the
union's thesis ran, workers who had accumulated years of service
could not properly be deemed "new," and Supervalu's praxis of
paying them differently than "present" employees transgressed
the CBA because Article 13 contained no classification for full-
time workers other than "new" and "present."
This second grievance was heard by Arbitrator Cooper.
He adopted Arbitrator Greenbaum's extensive findings of fact and
acknowledged that Local 42 had never agreed to a specific wage
scale for the transferees. The question for the transferees,
then, was whether the wages unilaterally imposed by the employer
breached the CBA. Noting that Article 13's wage-rate provision
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did not state whether the wage progression limned thereby was to
be based upon "seniority" or "years/service," Arbitrator Cooper
concluded that the article was thus ambiguous as to whether the
transferees and former casual employees — who had accrued years
of service but no seniority — were to be regarded as "new" or
"present" workers for purposes germane to this article. The
arbitrator proceeded to explore the perceived ambiguity.
He first examined the historical development of the
wage provisions. Doing so revealed to his satisfaction that
paying former casual workers as "present" workers (i.e.,
according to their original dates of hire) would create some
obvious anomalies. For example, the CBA dictated that "all new,
full time employees" would reach the top rate in their
classification after seven years, but, on the union's
interpretation, some casual workers would receive the top rate
simultaneous with their engagement as regular full-time
employees, leapfrogging more senior members of Local 42 in the
process.3 The arbitrator expressed grave doubt that the parties
3
This would create a stark inequity in regard to workers who
had been recalled after forced layoffs. When reinstated, such
workers are paid at the rates they were earning when furloughed,
not at the current rates for "present" workers. They are
nonetheless entitled, under Article 27 of the CBA, to a
preference over casual workers when positions open up.
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intended the CBA to produce such eccentric results "without a
single word in the [text]."
Arbitrator Cooper also found that longstanding practice
suggested that the parties "did not consider [a casual
employee's] date of hire as the point for measuring his or her
progression on the salary scale." In this vein, he observed
that the employer had paid former casual workers who became
regular full-time workers at the rate for "new" hires ever since
the casual employee category had been established in 1989.
Coupling this evidence of prior practice with the language of
the CBA, Arbitrator Cooper concluded that Supervalu had not
contravened the intention behind Article 13 by paying former
casual employees according to the schedule for new hires.4
Arbitrator Cooper then turned to the issue of whether
the wages paid to workers transferring from SLF should have been
based on years of service or seniority. He found that his
resolution of the earlier question — involving the entry-level
rate for former casual employees who converted to full-time
status — was decisive:
4This aspect of the arbitral award is not before us.
Although the union's complaint prayed for vacation of the entire
award, its arguments before this court have dealt exclusively
with the rates paid to transferees. We limit our analysis
accordingly and deem forfeited all arguments about the wages for
former casual employees. See Sheinkopf v. Stone, 927 F.2d 1259,
1263 (1st Cir. 1991).
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Unless there is some compelling aspect of
Article 13 which demonstrates that
notwithstanding the narrow definition of
"seniority," wages were to be determined by
time in service including time spent with
the Company at the former Sweet Life
facility, the Union does not have a valid
contractual claim. Arbitrator Greenbaum
relied upon the fact that for employees who
served as casual employees and later became
regular full-time employees, the Company
counted their service time from their
initial date of hire, not their seniority
date, to measure their entitlement to bonus
days. The opposite is true in the current
case, the Company never counted from the
date of hire to determine the appropriate
wage rate for casual employees. Given this
circumstance, Arbitrator Greenbaum's Award
requires a different outcome.
Thus, Supervalu had not violated Article 13 of the CBA by
declining to pay SLF transferees the wages guaranteed to
"present" employees.
In resolving the second grievance favorably to the
employer, the arbitrator gave short shrift to the union's claim
that Supervalu was in breach because it had paid the transferred
workers more than the wages stipulated in Article 13 for "new"
employees. In his view, Article 13 established "only a minimum
wage rate and therefore if the Company seeks to pay the
employees more than is required, it is permitted to do so." He
bolstered this finding by noting the transferees' acquiescence
in the rates paid and concluding that "the general acquiescence
by the employees involved should be inferred to the Union."
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Displeased with Arbitrator Cooper's award, Local 42
filed suit for vacation in the federal district court. See 29
U.S.C. § 185. After weighing cross-motions for summary
judgment, the court determined that the union's jeremiad
amounted to no more than a litany of factual and legal errors
allegedly made by the arbitrator, and concluded that it lacked
authority to intercede. Consequently, it granted brevis
disposition in Supervalu's favor. This appeal ensued.
II. STANDARD OF REVIEW
In an action to vacate an arbitral award, this court
reviews the district court's grant of summary judgment de novo,
applying the same standard as did that tribunal. See
Wheelabrator Envirotech Operating Servs. Inc. v. Massachusetts
Laborers Dist. Council Local 1144, 88 F.3d 40, 43 (1st Cir.
1996). In this type of case, the district court's authority
(and, hence, our authority) is very tightly circumscribed:
The courts are not authorized to reconsider
the merits of an award even though the
parties may allege that the award rests on
errors of fact or on misinterpretation of
the contract. . . . As long as the
arbitrator's award "draws its essence from
the collective bargaining agreement," and is
not merely "his own brand of industrial
justice," the award is legitimate.
United Paperworkers Int'l Union v. Misco, Inc., 484 U.S. 29, 36
(1987) (quoting United Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car
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Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 597 (1960)). This standard has been
described in different ways over time. See Advest, 914 F.2d at
9 (citing examples). Whatever words are used, however, all the
formulations reflect the idea that a court ought not to vacate
an arbitral award "as long as the arbitrator is even arguably
construing or applying the contract and acting within the scope
of his authority." Misco, 484 U.S. at 38; see also Labor
Relations Div. of Constr. Indus. v. Int'l Bhd. of Teamsters,
Local #379, 29 F.3d 742, 743 (1st Cir. 1994) (concluding that
"courts must resist the temptation to substitute their own
judgment about the most reasonable meaning of a labor contract
for that of the arbitrator and avoid the tendency to strike down
even an arbitrator's erroneous interpretation of such
contracts").
In a case in which the arbitrator purports to interpret
the language of a collective bargaining agreement, a party who
seeks judicial review ordinarily must demonstrate that the award
is contrary to the plain language of the CBA and that the
arbitrator, heedless of the contract language, preferred instead
to write his own prescription for industrial justice. See Kraft
Foods, Inc. v. Office & Prof'l Employees Int'l Union, Local
1295, 203 F.3d 98, 100 (1st Cir. 2000); Challenger Caribbean
Corp. v. Union General de Trabajadores, 903 F.2d 857, 861 (1st
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Cir. 1990). Put another way, a successful challenge to an
arbitral award in such circumstances necessitates a showing that
the award is "(1) unfounded in reason and fact; (2) based on
reasoning so palpably faulty that no judge, or group of judges,
ever could conceivably have made such a ruling; or (3)
mistakenly based on a crucial assumption that is concededly a
non-fact." Local 1445, United Food and Commercial Workers Int'l
Union v. Stop & Shop Cos., 776 F.2d 19, 21 (1st Cir. 1985).
III. ANALYSIS
Local 42 maintains that Arbitrator Cooper committed
four fundamental mistakes. First, the union asserts that the
arbitrator impermissibly relied upon the transferees'
acquiescence in regard to their wage rate (reliance which, in
the union's view, contradicts the union's status as the
transferees' exclusive bargaining representative in respect to
wages). Second, the union contends that, whereas Article 13
created only two classifications of regular full-time employees,
the arbitrator took it upon himself to rewrite the agreement and
construct another category. Third, the union charges that the
arbitrator departed from his proper province when he allowed
Supervalu to pay the transferees more than the minimum hourly
wage for new workers specified in the CBA. Finally, the union
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raises a claim of procedural error. We find none of these four
arguments persuasive.
A
Local 42 calumnizes the arbitrator's comment that
"[w]hile the Union did not agree to [the transferees'] wage
rate, the general acquiescence by the employees involved should
be inferred to the Union." The union claims that acquiescence
is irrelevant, and that the arbitrator's reliance on it
effectively rewrote the CBA and frustrated the union's
prerogative as the exclusive negotiating agent for all the
employees in the bargaining unit (including those who
transferred from SLF). As a subset of this argument, the union
claims that glorifying the effect of acquiescence inserted into
the CBA a brand-new timeliness requirement for union grievances.
This argument is a red herring. We do not agree with
the union that Arbitrator Cooper premised his award on
acquiescence. As the passage quoted supra at 10 makes manifest,
the arbitrator understandably determined that "new," as used in
Article 13, must mean "without seniority" in order to make sense
of the overall payment scheme vis-à-vis former casual employees.
Based on this determination — one which the union does not
challenge, see supra note 4 — he then concluded that the
transferees (whom the union concedes had no seniority) likewise
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must be deemed "new" employees for purposes of the wage
provision.5 This reasoning depended on the contract language and
the arbitrator's discernment of the parties' mutual intent. It
did not "ignore the plain language of the contract," Misco, 484
U.S. at 38, because "new" plausibly could mean "new to Local 42
and the Andover warehouse." Nor did it depend in any way,
shape, or form on a finding of acquiescence.
We hasten to add that Arbitrator Cooper's rendition of
the wage provision seems reasonable — especially since the
parties knew, when the CBA was signed, that the category of
"new" employees under the previous CBA had been deemed to
include former casual employees for wage purposes. Indeed, the
only way to avoid the conclusion that he reached (after deciding
that "new" meant "without seniority") would have been to decide
that "new" had different meanings for different categories of
workers. We cannot fault the arbitrator for his reluctance to
engage in that type of linguistic microsurgery. In all events,
what counts is that the arbitrator's reading of the wage
5
Arbitrator Cooper was not precluded from reaching this
result by Arbitrator Greenbaum's conclusion that the parties
typically used years of service to quantify non-competitive
benefits. Earlier holdings of a previous arbitrator do not bind
a new arbitrator to read a collective bargaining agreement in a
way that he determines is contrary to the parties' intent. See
Boston Shipping Ass'n v. International Longshoremen's Ass'n, 659
F.2d 1, 3 n.4 (1st Cir. 1981).
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provision, right or wrong, had a plausible basis in the language
and structure of the CBA. A reviewing court can go no further.
See Coastal Oil of New Engl., Inc. v. Teamsters Local A/W, 134
F.3d 466, 469 (1st Cir. 1998); Challenger Caribbean, 903 F.2d at
863-64.
If more were needed — and we doubt that it is — we note
that Local 42 wrests the arbitrator's statements about
acquiescence from their contextual moorings, thus distorting
their meaning. Placing the remarks in context clarifies their
possible role in the decisional calculus.6 Toward the beginning
of Arbitrator Cooper's discussion, he wrote that "[o]nce the
facts are determined, an arbitrator's first step is to look at
the parties' Agreement and, if the clear and unambiguous
language of that Agreement does not answer the question posed,
the parties' conduct should be used to help decipher their
intent." He then seems to have used the transferees'
acquiescence (and that of Local 42) to cast light upon the
parties' initial understanding that the transferees' wage rate
was acceptable. That understanding — as the arbitrator
suggested in the very next sentence — could reflect that the
6
Neither the arbitrator's factual finding of acquiescence
nor his legal determination that acquiescence could be imputed
to the union are susceptible to review in this proceeding. See
Misco, 484 U.S. at 36, 38.
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union knew all along that the CBA established a minimum wage
rate and thus permitted the employer to pay more than the
minimum if it so desired. Applying this original understanding
to what was done vis-à-vis the transferees lends support to his
holding.
To be sure, the arbitrator's decision is not entirely
a model either of consistency or clarity. But we do not review
arbitral decisions for style points, and the arbitrator's core
message — that the CBA, as drafted, permitted the employer
unilaterally to pay classes of employees more (but not less)
than the agreed minimum wage — comes through with sufficient
precision. To cinch matters, although rational minds can differ
about whether the arbitrator accurately divined the parties'
intent, the standard of review does not allow an inquiring court
to second-guess the correctness of that determination. See
Enterprise Wheel, 363 U.S. at 599; Labor Relations Div., 29 F.3d
at 745. Nor does the arbitrator's use of acquiescence as
relevant evidence open the award to judicial nullification.
Even if his usage is susceptible to the union's charge that he
impermissibly read a timeliness provision into the CBA, "[a]
mere ambiguity in the opinion accompanying an award, which
permits the inference that the arbitrator may have exceeded his
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authority, is not a reason for refusing to enforce the award."
Enterprise Wheel, 363 U.S. at 598.
We add a postscript of sorts. An arbitrator has no
duty to set forth the reasons underlying his award.
Consequently, a reviewing court may "uphold[] the arbitrator's
decision on grounds or reasoning not employed by the arbitrator
himself." Labor Relations Div., 29 F.3d at 747. For that
reason, we see no problem in approving the instant decision
based on the arbitrator's plausible construction of the terms
"new" and "minimum hourly wages," without more.
B
This brings us to Local 42's contention that Arbitrator
Cooper arbitrarily engrafted a hybrid category of regular full-
time workers — transferees — onto Article 13. This contention,
too, stems from an insensitive reading of the arbitrator's
decision. We explain briefly.
The arbitrator's award, whether or not mistaken,
resulted directly from his interpretation of two terms set forth
in Article 13 of the CBA ("new" and "minimum hourly wages"). On
that basis, he determined that the employer was entitled as a
matter of contract to pay more (but not less) than the rates
listed as "minimum hourly wages." This determination did not
create a third category of full-time employees. Rather, under
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the arbitrator's plausible construction, the transferees were
members of the CBA's new-worker category who were being paid
more than the minimum wage, as the CBA permitted. 7 Viewed in
this light, the arbitral decision did not amend the CBA, but,
rather, derived its essence from the CBA. No more is exigible.8
See Misco, 484 U.S. at 36; Kraft Foods, 203 F.3d at 102, 103.
C
Local 42 makes a last-ditch assertion that the
arbitrator exceeded his authority because "[n]othing in the
[CBA] provided Supervalu with the right to pay more than the
contractually stated terms without Local 42's agreement." In
its estimation, the CBA is not a "minimum standards contract,"
and thus deprives the employer of the freedom to pay more than
the stipulated wages. This is the same whine — a protest
against the arbitrator's construction of the term "minimum
7We note in passing that, for much the same reason, the
higher wages did not contravene Article 9(C) (which barred
"attempt[s] to arrange other conditions [of employment] with any
of its employees than are set forth in this Agreement").
8Although the workers who had been transferred from SLF did
not comprise a third category of regular full-time employees
within the meaning of Article 13 of the CBA, the separate
definitions of "years/service" and "seniority" described by
Arbitrator Greenbaum plainly allowed for three classes of full-
time workers overall, namely, workers with years of service and
seniority; workers with neither years of service nor seniority;
and workers with years of service but no seniority. This
taxonomy does no violence to the CBA — and it was the union that
urged the taxonomy on Arbitrator Greenbaum in the first place.
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hourly wages" — in a new bottle, and it is equally unpalatable.
See Misco, 484 U.S. at 38. Put another way, to the extent that
the arbitral award properly can be characterized as embodying a
conclusion that the CBA functioned like a minimum standards
contract, that is a legal conclusion which falls outside the
narrow confines of judicial review. See id. Moreover, there is
no sign that Local 42 ever argued this point to the arbitrator,
and it is therefore procedurally defaulted. See Dorado Beach
Hotel Corp. v. Union de Trabajadores de la Industria
Gastronomica Local 610, 959 F.2d 2, 5-6 (1st Cir. 1992).
The related argument that federal law requires
employers to negotiate wages with union representatives, see 29
U.S.C. § 159(a), also comes too late in the day. The union's
contention before the arbitrator was simply that "the Company is
in violation of Article 13 of the collective bargaining
agreement between the parties." The statutory argument was,
therefore, waived.
At any rate, because arbitrators acquire their power
from the parties' agreement to submit to their decisions, they
generally lack the authority, absent a contrary stipulation, to
consider laws external to the CBA. See Barrentine v. Arkansas-
Best Freight Sys. Inc., 450 U.S. 728, 744 & n.23 (1981);
Challenger Caribbean, 903 F.2d at 866. That being so, we cannot
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take the arbitrator to task for concentrating on the CBA's
language and not on federal labor law. See Graphic Arts Int'l
Union Local 97B v. Haddon Craftsmen, Inc., 796 F.2d 692, 697-98
(3d Cir. 1986); cf. Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U.S.
36, 49-50 (1974) (explaining that contractual rights under a CBA
and statutory rights are "distinctly separate" and may be
enforced "in their respectively appropriate forums" without
inconsistency).
The authorities cited by the union do not convince us
otherwise. In Leed Architectural Products, Inc. v. United
Steelworkers of America, Local 6674, 916 F.2d 63 (2d Cir. 1990),
the court affirmed the vacatur of an arbitral award that
required an employer to pay aggrieved workers the same wage that
it had agreed to pay a new employee. In that case, however, the
CBA specified a maximum as well as a minimum wage, and the
awarded rate of pay exceeded the cap. See id. at 64. Here, the
CBA only sets forth a minimum, and the wage rate paid to the
transferees (and sanctioned by the arbitrator) is not
inconsistent with it.
The arbitral decisions cited by Local 42 are beside any
relevant point. While they suggest that Arbitrator Cooper
interpreted the CBA differently than other arbitrators in
kindred situations, that suggestion misses the mark. Because
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"an arbitrator's refusal to follow a previous arbitrator's
interpretation of a specific contractual provision does not
expose an ensuing award to judicial tinkering," El Dorado
Technical Servs., Inc. v. Union General de Trabajadores, 961
F.2d 317, 321 (1st Cir. 1992), these citations afford the union
no traction.
D
Local 42's procedural argument need not detain us. It
complains that, at the arbitration hearing, the arbitrator
denied its representative the opportunity to present evidence.
We have perused the record with care and find that the
arbitrator merely declined to hear the witness's elucidation of
the contents of certain items of documentary evidence. Thus,
the union's claim of error fails.
Generally speaking, documents are the best evidence of
their contents. See, e.g., Fed. R. Evid. 1002. Consequently,
an arbitrator, like a trial judge, usually acts within his
rights in admitting documents into evidence without permitting
external elaboration. Nothing about this case removes it from
the sweep of this general rule. We add only that any error in
this regard would have been benign; the union had ample
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opportunity to explain the significance of the documents in its
post-hearing brief and took full advantage.
IV. CONCLUSION
We need go no further. The arbitral award at issue
here stemmed rationally, if not inevitably, from the
arbitrator's construction of the CBA. It is founded in
reasoning that can be questioned, but not dismissed as
chimerical. It does not depend on invented or imagined facts.
Because this is so, and because the union's claim of procedural
error is jejune, the award must stand. When all is said and
done, "courts must confine themselves to determining whether the
arbitrator's construction of the contract was in any way
plausible," Labor Relations Div., 29 F.3d at 743, and the
decision here passes that undemanding test.
Affirmed.
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Teamsters Local Union No. 42 v. Supervalu, Inc.
Court: Court of Appeals for the First Circuit
Date filed: 2000-05-15
Citations: 212 F.3d 59
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