Board of arbitration

“ Far from intruding upon the preserve of the arbitrator, the Board's action was in aid of the arbitral process. Arbitration can function properly only if the grievance procedures leading to it can sift out unmeritorious claims. For if all claims originally initiated as grievances had to be processed through to arbitration, the system would be woefully overburdened. Yet, that is precisely what the respondent's restrictive view would require. It would force the union to take a grievance all the way through to arbitration without providing the opportunity to evaluate the merits of the claim. ”

“ The rules of arbitration provide for a board, three of whom shall be members of the local film board of trade and three proprietors or managers of theaters in its region. This arbitration board shall have power to determine the controversy, make findings, direct what shall be done with respect to the dispute; 'and shall fix the maximum amount,' not exceeding $500, which each distributor may demand as security pursuant to the arbitration clause in the event of the failure of the exhibitor to submit to arbitration or to comply with the award. ”

“ If it is a work assignment dispute, arbitration conveniently fills a gap and avoids the necessity of a strike to bring the matter to the Board. If it is a representation matter, resort to arbitration may have a pervasive, curative effect even though one union is not a party. ”

“ The arbitrators could not agree; each adhering to his own view. All the arbitrators believed the assessment too high, but for lack of agreement the arbitration failed, and after 10 days from the date of naming of the arbitrator designated by the board had expired, the statutory requirement that the valuation of the board of assessors should stand affirmed was followed, and the collector demanded payment of the taxes in the sum of $80,640, the valuation fixed by the assessors. ”

“ This assistance both sides often 410accept, although they are under no obligation to do so. By arbitration is meant an agreement to submit the dispute to some one man or group of men, and to abide by whatever decision may be rendered. An arbitration board is commonly made up of three members, one chosen by the employers, one by the workers, and a third mutually agreed upon as neutral. Some states maintain official boards of arbitration to which industrial disputes may be referred at any time by consent of the disputants. ”

“ We think the Board's decision in Hilton-Davis Chemical Co. is both rational and consistent with the Act. The rule is grounded in the strong statutory principle, found in both the language of the NLRA and its drafting history, of consensual rather than compulsory arbitration. See Indiana & Michigan, supra, at 57-58; Hilton-Davis Chemical Co., supra. The rule conforms with our statement that " [n] o obligation to arbitrate a labor dispute arises solely by operation of law. The law compels a party to submit his grievance to arbitration only if he has contracted to do so." Gateway Coal Co. ”

“ As already hinted, this was not a board of arbitrators. An arbitration implies a difference, a dispute, and involves ordinarily a hearing and all thereby implied. The right to notice of hearings, to produce evidence and cross-examine that produced, is implied when the matter to be decided is one of dispute and difference. But when, as here, the parties had agreed that one should sell and the other buy a specific thing, and the price should be a valuation fixed by persons agreed upon, it cannot be said that there was any dispute or difference. ”

“ We acknowledge that where an effective bargaining agreement exists between the parties, and the agreement contains a broad arbitration clause, "there is a presumption of arbitrability in the sense that ' [a] n order to arbitrate the particular grievance should not be denied unless it may be said with positive assurance that the arbitration clause is not susceptible of an interpretation that covers the asserted dispute.' " Id., at 650, 106 S.Ct., at 1419 (quoting Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 564, 582-583, 80 S.Ct. 1343, 1352-1353, 4 L.Ed.2d 1403 (1960) ) . ”

“ It is that policy that is reflected in § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, which was before us in Lincoln Mills, 353 U.S. at 452, 77 S.Ct. at 915. That policy was to exchange an agreement to arbitrate grievance disputes for a no-strike agreement. Id., at 455, 77 S.Ct. at 917.
Arbitration is not a process which the Board is either equipped or qualified to follow. Those who are arbiters have special qualifications in a particular industry and come to know the common law of the shop. ”

“ But there can be no doubt that the nation is ready to go further, and that if the two well-organized parties, together with the men in whom both sides put their confidence, are still not able to come to harmonious agreement, nor even to the appointment of a court of arbitration, then the nation will quite likely appoint an official and legally authorized board for compulsory arbitration. ”

“ Often, too, most of the parties to a dispute have been ready to accept a board's suggestions, but it has needed the firm hand of the Arbitration Court to bring one or two stubborn men to acquiescence. {329} "The process may be tedious, but it is not costly. Lawyers are not employed as counsel before either the boards or the court unless all parties to the action agree thereto, and they very seldom do agree. A firm of employers may appear by a manager or accredited representative, a trade union is usually represented by its Secretary or other official. ”

“ If their estimate should differ from the estimate of Mickle, according to which the settlement had been made, the difference should be paid by the board or refunded by the plaintiffs. The stipulation that the three engineers should 'constitute a board of arbitrament for the adjustment of all questions of difference' was necessarily limited to questions of difference in relation to the subject to be referred to them. If such measurement by the arbitrators should not modify the estimate of work done, or if the arbitration should fail without fault of the levee board, the settlement stood. ”

“ Even where they have not done so, it by no means follows that their labors have been useless. Very often the appeal to the Arbitration Court is merely on one or two points out of many involved, and the advice of the Conciliation Board is accepted on the others. ”

“ If, in selecting representatives to deal with the carriers, disputes arise among employees as to what organization they desire to represent them, it is the duty of the Board, on request of either party, to investigate and to certify in writing to the parties and to the carrier the names of the individuals or organizations that have been designated and authorized to represent the employees.
(5) If the National Railroad Adjustment Board undertakes arbitration, and it fails to select a referee, the Mediation Board has the duty of doing so. ”

“ And when parties commit to arbitrate contractual disputes, it is a mainstay of the Act's substantive law that attacks on the validity of the contract, as distinct from attacks on the validity of the arbitration clause itself, are to be resolved "by the arbitrator in the first instance, not by a federal or state court." ”

“ This is being accomplished by requiring consumers to sign an agreement to forgo their Constitutional rights to ask the courts to settle a dispute with the dealer. Instead of an impartial judge or a jury of randomly selected jurors, the consumers are required to place their fate in the hands of an arbitrator. This is called binding arbitration which keeps the consumer from seeking justice in the court room even after the arbitrator's decision. ”

“ And it is far better that the relationship be disclosed at the outset, when the parties are free to reject the arbitrator or accept him with knowledge of the relationship and continuing faith in his objectivity, than to have the relationship come to light after the arbitration, when a suspicious or disgruntled party can seize on it as a pretext for invalidating the award. The judiciary should minimize its role in arbitration as judge of the arbitrator's impartiality. ”

“ Hence, who—court or arbitrator—has the primary authority to decide whether a party has agreed to arbitrate can make a critical difference to a party resisting arbitration.
We believe the answer to the "who" question (i.e., the standard of review question) is fairly simple. Just as the arbitrability of the merits of a dispute depends upon whether the parties agreed to arbitrate that dispute, see, e.g., Mastrobuono v. ”

“ And, given the principle that a party can be forced to arbitrate only those issues it specifically has agreed to submit to arbitration, one can understand why courts might hesitate to interpret silence or ambiguity on the "who should decide arbitrability" point as giving the arbitrators that power, for doing so might too often force unwilling parties to arbitrate a matter they reasonably would have thought a judge, not an arbitrator, would decide. ”

“ Even when the parties’ contract delegates the threshold arbitrability question to an arbitrator, the Fifth Circuit and some other Courts of Appeals have determined that the court rather than an arbitrator should decide the threshold arbitrability question if, under the contract, the argument for arbitration is wholly groundless. ”

“ There is one other thing we should do if we are true champions of arbitration. We should make all arbitral awards judgments by record of a court of law in order that their interpretation and enforcement may lie, not with one of the parties to the arbitration, but with an impartial and authoritative tribunal. ”

“ On the contrary, if respondent's claims are not reached by his promise to arbitrate, or if the promise to arbitrate is unenforceable, a master or owner could pay off wages in full, but grossly late, secure in the knowledge that the obligation to pay the penalty would not be susceptible of the quick and informal arbitration process, but must await the attention of a federal district court which may be thousands of miles away. ”

“ To be sure, since arbitration is a creature of contract, a court must always inquire, when a party seeks to invoke its aid to force a reluctant party to the arbitration table, whether the parties have agreed to arbitrate the particular dispute. ”

“ First Options asked us to decide whether this is so (i.e., whether courts, in "reviewing the arbitrators' decision on arbitrability," should "apply a de novo standard of review or the more deferential standard applied to arbitrators' decisions on the merits") when the objecting party "submitted the issue to the arbitrators for decision." Pet. for Cert. i. Second, the Court of Appeals stated that it would review a district court's denial of a motion to vacate a commercial arbitration award (and the correlative grant of a motion to confirm it) "de novo." 19 F. 3d, at 1509. ”

“ If the parties have not been able to come to an understanding on all or on some of the points necessary to enable the arbitration to be carried out, it lies with the Council to settle the unsettled points, with the exception of the formulation of the questions to be answered, which the arbitrators must seek in the claims set out by the parties or by one of them if the others make default. ”

“ In approaching the first question for ourselves, one thing becomes clear immediately. While a court’s authority under the Arbitration Act to compel arbitration may be considerable, it isn’t unconditional. If two parties agree to arbitrate future disputes between them and one side later seeks to evade the deal, §§3 and 4 of the Act often require a court to stay litigation and compel arbitration “accord [ing to] the terms” of the parties’ agreement. But this authority doesn’t extend to all private contracts, no matter how emphatically they may express a preference for arbitration. ”

“ Thus, when a complaint contains both arbitrable and nonarbitrable claims, the Act requires courts to "compel arbitration of pendent arbitrable claims when one of the partiesfiles a motion to compel, even where the result would be the possibly inefficient maintenance of separate proceedings in different forums." ”

“ Arbitration clauses, the Court has decreed, may preclude judicial remedies even when submission to arbitration is made a take-it-or-leave-it condition of employment or is imposed on a consumer given no genuine choice in the matter. ”

“ Finally we turn to Section 4, which permits 'a party aggrieved by the alleged failure' of his opponent to arbitrate as agreed, to petition any federal court of appropriate jurisdiction at law, in equity or in admiralty, for an order directing that arbitration proceed. Provision is made for framing an issue and trying it as to whether the parties are bound to arbitrate and the entry of an order accordingly. From this provision it is clear that the parties may proceed in an admiralty case without the customary libel and seizure. ”

“ We can perceive no way in which the effectiveness of the arbitration process will be hampered by the simple requirement that arbitrators disclose to the parties any dealings that might create an impression of possible bias. ”

“ But it must be borne in mind that this arbitration was made under a rule of court. Not only that, but special provision was made for the action of the court in deciding questions of law arising upon the report of the arbitrator, so that the arbitration was not an outside and independent proceeding, but simply one had in court, for the purpose of facilitating the disposition of the case. ”