Food Fair Stores, Inc. v. Raynor

Hammond, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Before us are questions of labor law and relations as to the right of an employee to sue for benefits claimed under a collective bargaining agreement between his union and the employer, questions which have not been too regular grist for American judicial mills. 1 ⁵⁰⁴ The appeal is by Food Fair Stores, Inc., operator of a chain of supermarkets, from a judgment on a jury's verdict for its employee Raynor for the difference in wages (some fifty cents an hour) between what he had been paid under a collective bargaining agreement between Food Fair and the union, and the contract rate of pay for the type of work he had in fact done. The agreement first was entered into as of August 1, 1954, by Food Fair and Truck Drivers and Helpers Local Union No. 355 of Baltimore (affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehouse-men and Helpers of America, A. F. of L.). It was identical with that entered into by the local union and all other major food chain stores in the area and, for this reason, was referred to as the master contract.

It provided for a Taft-Hartley union shop (the employee must join the union within thirty days) and specified hours of work, holidays, rates of pay for various classifications, overtime, working conditions, a health ⁵⁰⁵ and welfare fund for life, health and accident insurance, and medical care and hospitalization benefits. In addition there was in the contract one of the two provisions that led to this suit. It was: “Whenever employees other than Chauffeurs, with the consent of the Union, are required to drive trucks, they shall be paid the Regular Chauffeur’s rate while so engaged.” The other provision was contained in an addendum to the master contract, an addendum necessitated when the maintenance employees of Food Fair selected the same local union as their bargaining representative. It was executed on October 19, 1955, effective as of August 1, 1954, provided for the hours and wages of the maintenance department employees and, referring to the master contract, said: “Except as otherwise stipulated above, all of the provisions contained in the collective bargaining agreement, effective August 1, 1954, and referred to hereinabove shall apply for the benefit of the employees in their respective classifications covered by this Addenda to the agreement.” Raynor went to work in the maintenance department of Food Fair early in March 1956 under an oral contract of employment, and served as a painter, carpenter and machine cleaner.

He duly became a member of the local union. About a month after he went to work, he was told he was to drive a two and a half-ton stake body truck. Raynor says, although it was denied, that his shop steward told him that since he had been ordered to drive the truck, the union would see that he got truck driver’s wages. On the other hand, his company supervisor bluntly told him he would not pay him chauffeur’s wages.

Since April 1956 Raynor has driven the truck almost daily from a warehouse to various Food Fair stores in Maryland and northern Virginia, hauling ladders, scaffolds, refrigerator cases, and maintenance and construction materials. He has never received chauffeur’s pay. ⁵⁰⁶ In April. 1957 the master contract was renewed without change except as to hours and rates of pay. On the same day an addendum covering the maintenance employees was executed. It, too, was substantially the same as the first addendum except that hours of work were reduced, pay was increased, and each of the eight members of the maintenance department was classified.

All nine members of the department were given a fifteen-cent an hour increase in pay and Raynor twenty-two and one-half cents, that is an additional seven and one-half cents. Both union and management have consistently agreed, as they do now, that Raynor was not the kind of chauffeur referred to in the collective contracts. He was given the additional raise because the president of the local union told the personnel director of Food Fair he was dissatisfied and suggested giving him ten cents an hour more. The counter offer was a “nickel” an hour and the compromise seven and one-half cents, and a classification of “oil burner apprentice,” although neither before nor since did Raynor have knowledge of or experience with oil burners, nor did he work with them.

The classification bore no relation to reality. Raynor says he voted against the 1957 agreement because his claim as a truck driver was not recognized; the president of the local union says there were no negative votes. Food Fair’s defenses below were and here are: (a) that only as much of the master contracts as dealt with fringe benefits was incorporated in the addenda so the provision as to chauffeur’s pay for de facto chauffeurs was not applicable to maintenance employees; (b) that the chauffeurs referred to in the master contracts were only those who drove the tractor-trailers that hauled food products from the warehouses to the stores; and (c) that there was an accord and satisfaction when Raynor accepted the seven and one-half cent an hour increase. It says it unjustifiably lost the benefit of the defenses by reason of the following errors below: (1) the court should have ruled as a matter of law that the collective bargaining agreement barred Raynor from successfully suing his employer since he had not first exhausted the grievance procedures existing for his benefit; (2) the jury should not have been allowed to interpret the contracts; (3) ⁵⁰⁷ the court should have held that the meaning both union and management put on the contracts was the right one; and finally (4) the jury should have been instructed bindingly that there had been an accord and satisfaction.

In Jenkins v. Wm. Schluderberg-T. J. Kurdle Co., 217 Md. 556 , Chief Judge Bruñe for the Court exhaustively reviewed and analyzed the principles and authorities governing the rights of the individual employee under collective bargaining agreements, and no good purpose could be served by doing more than synopsize what was there said. Under any of several theories the individual employee may sue the employer for infringement of his individual rights under a collective agreement in the absence of some bar in the agreement. 2 The individual rights for which the employee can sue generally are held to be claims as to wages, seniority and wrongful discharge as opposed to matters of general union interest, such as union security, recognition and dues deductions, for example. See 2 Williston, Contracts, Rev. Ed., 1958 Cum.

Supp. Sec. 379A, and the cases cited in the annotation Labor Agreement-Lmployee’s Right in 18 A. L. R. 2d 352. In most instances the courts have held that before an employee can maintain a suit he must show that he has exhausted his remedies under the contract with the employer. The employer naturally does not wish to be harassed with complaints of, or suits as to, individual grievances. This is a main reason why many collective agreements provide for a detailed procedure through which grievances must be channeled.

Some agreements provide that all grievances that are appealed beyond the first step must be reduced to writing, with a signed statement by the individual that he agrees to be bound by what the union does. Or the union constitution or bylaws may provide that the union shall be the exclusive and binding agent in the presentation and settlement of all grievances and matters arising out of the employer-employee ⁵⁰⁸ relationship. Report of Committee on Improvement of Administration of Union Management Agreements, 1954,-Individual Grievances, 50 Nw. U. L. Rev. 143 , 152.

These provisos in contracts and constitutions were more frequently found after the decision of the Supreme Court in Elgin, Joliet and Eastern R. Co. v. Burley, 325 U. S. 711 , 89 L. Ed. 1886 . There a group of employees filed a grievance through the union claiming back pay for alleged violations of starting time provisions. The union agreed to surrender these money claims in return for an explicit company promise establishing future rights. Eater the union refiled the claims before the National Railroad Adjustment Board, which found they had been disposed of by the prior settlement.

The Supreme Court held that the individuals could maintain suits for the pay, in the absence of a showing of authorization to the union to bind the employees, saying that the mere filing of a grievance through the union does not establish, as a matter of law, the authority of the union to settle the grievance. The contracts before us contain little, if any, more than do those Professor Cox describes as the “simplest forms.” 3 Most significantly, they contain neither grievance procedures nor rights to arbitration. The implications and inferences of intent as to individual grievances are quite different in such simple contracts from those in more elaborate ones which set up machinery for continuous administration through joint efforts of union and management and, in which, if it is not explicitly stated, it is implicit that the union is to represent the individual not only in collective bargaining but in interpretation of the agreement and in settlement of disputes. On the other hand, there are thousands of agreements, like the one before us, which Professor Cox, in his article, Rights under a Labor Agreement, 69 Harv.

E. Rev. 601, 653, analyzes as follows: “Apart from the recognition clause and other sections defining the union’s status, their chief function is to set up a wage scale and schedule of hours with provision for overtime. Today some fringe ⁵⁰⁹ benefits are usually included, such as paid holidays, premiums for Saturday and Sunday work, and employer contributions to pension and health and welfare funds. Such contracts are largely self-executing in the sense that they require scant implementation through day-to-day negotiation. Few questions of interpretation can arise, and when they do there is little likelihood of internal competition among the interests of different employees in the bargaining unit.

Alleged contract violations turn chiefly on questions of fact; their outcome will have little weight as precedent. Many of these contracts contain neither a grievance procedure nor provision for arbitration. A fortiori they do not purport to permit the enforcement of the employer’s obligations by the collective bargaining representative.” (Emphasis supplied.) 4 There is nothing in the collective contracts before us to indicate that the individual employee does not have the right to sue the employer without first asking the union to represent him in the prosecution of his claim. ⁵¹⁰ Food Fair, recognizing that the contracts do not help it on this point, turns to the constitution and laws of the local union and then to custom and usage. We have not been persuaded that any of these afford it legal comfort or sustenance.

First, it is said that Raynor is bound by his signed application for union membership to abide and be governed by the constitution and laws of the union, and that they require him to follow certain procedures and, inferentially, that they bind him to what the union does in his behalf. Assuming this defense to be available to the employer in a suit to which the union is not a party, we see nothing in the union’s written rules requiring Raynor to do anything before suing. Section 3 of the constitution covers a “controversy with an employer, not covered by a local union agreement,” in which case the local union may be compelled by the parent union to arbitrate (if the employer agrees). The matters here in controversy are covered by the collective agreements, one way or the other, and the section relied on would seem inapplicable in terms.

Article XII, in the first few sections, deals with “strikes, lockouts, wage scales and disputes over jurisdiction” and with collective bargaining, not settlement of