Collective bargaining agreement

“ The Board starts with the premise that a collective bargaining agreement which contains a union security clause valid on its face, but which was entered into when the Union did not have a majority status, gives rise to two independent unfair labor practices, one being the execution of the agreement, the other arising from its continued enforcement. ”

“ For respondents to have an enforceable right as third-party beneficiaries against the Union, at the very least the employer must have an enforceable right as promisee. But the provisions in the collective-bargaining agreement relied on by respondents are not promises by the Union to the employer. ”

“ Because most collective-bargaining agreements accord finality to grievance or arbitration procedures established by the collective-bargaining agreement, an employee normally cannot bring a § 301 action against an employer unless he can show that the union breached its duty of fair representation in its handling of his grievance. ”

“ The ordinary jurisdictional dispute arises when two or more unions claim the right to perform a job which existed at the time their collective bargaining contracts with the employer were made. In such a situation it would be highly unlikely that each contract could be construed as giving each union the right to be paid for the single job. But the dispute before us now is not the ordinary jurisdictional dispute where each union claims the right to perform a job which existed at the time its collective bargaining agreement was made. ”

“ Though we accept the proposition that a union may not arbitrarily ignore a meritorious grievance or process it in perfunctory fashion, we do not agree that the individual employee has an absolute right to have his grievance taken to arbitration regardless of the provisions of the applicable collective bargaining agreement. ”

“ Under an agency-shop provision like the one that covers petitioners, dissenting (i.e., nonunion) employees are generally obliged to share the union's cost of negotiating and administering their collective-bargaining agreement. The key question we confront is whether, consistently with the First Amendment, a union may charge dissenting employees for union activities that are conducted away from the bargaining table but that are also reasonably designed to influence the public employer's position at the bargaining table. ”

“ Collective bargaining, then, is not simply an occasion for purely formal meetings between management and labor, while each maintains an attitude of 'take it or leave it'; it presupposes a desire to reach ultimate agreement, to enter into a collective bargaining contract. ”

“ Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 574, 582, 80 S.Ct. 1347, 1353, 4 L.Ed.2d 1409, '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.' Thus the existing labor contract is the touchstone of an arbitrator's powers. But the power of the union and the employer jointly to settle a grievance dispute is not so limited. The parties are free by joint action to modify, amend, and supplement their original collective bargaining agreement. ”

“ If thereby the union has been by-passed, it is not through the employer's action, but rather through that of the employees. The employer's response, so limited, is not a violation of the principle, recently stated here, [23] that individual employees cannot deal with the employer to create terms in the contract of employment inconsistent with the collective agreement. Such a situation presents no case of inconsistent individual bargaining. It involves rather one of collective bargaining, not by individuals as such, but by the majority on behalf of the unit. ”

“ In addition the restriction upon the employee's right to ask a signed agreement extending only to agreements with 'any union' is in plain conflict with the public policy of the Act to encourage the procedure of collective bargaining, see § 1, since it discriminates against labor organizations by forbidding signed contracts with labor unions while it permits them with the individual workers. ”

“ Individual contracts no matter what the circumstances that justify their execution or what their terms, may not be availed of to defeat or delay the procedures prescribed by the National Labor Relations Act looking to collective bargaining, nor to exclude the contracting employee from a duly ascertained bargaining unit; nor may they be used to forestall bargaining or to limit or condition the terms of the collective agreement. ”

“ The two unions insisted that the collective bargaining agreements that were being negotiated contain clauses or provisions to which each employer objected. The controversy as it reaches here is reduced to two clauses: first, that the hiring for the composing room be in the hands of the foreman; that he must be a member of the union; but that the union 'shall not discipline the foreman for carrying out written instructions of the publisher or his representatives authorized by this Agreement' ”

“ If a union and employer are prevented from discussing and agreeing upon issues which are, in the great majority of cases, at the central core of bargaining, unilateral force will inevitably be substituted for rational discussion and agreement. Plainly and simply, the Court would subject both unions and employers to antitrust sanctions, criminal as well as civil, if in collective bargaining they concluded a wage agreement and, as part of the agreement, the union has undertaken to use its best efforts to have this wage accepted by other employers in the industry. ”

“ Permitting insistence on an agreement by the union to attempt to impose a similar contract on other employers would likewise seem to impose a restraining influence on the extent of collective bargaining, for the union could avoid an impasse only by surrendering its freedom to act in its own interest vis-a-vis other employers, something it will be unwilling to do in many instances. ”

“ Congress was also interested in promoting collective bargaining that ended with agreements not to strike. [4] The Senate Report, supra, p. 16 states:
'If unions can break agreements with relative impunity, then such agreements do not tend to stabilize industrial relations. The execution of an agreement does not by itself promote industrial peace. The chief advantage which an employer can reasonably expect from a collective labor agreement is assurance of uninterrupted operation during the term of the agreement. ”

“ The collective-bargaining agreements between the parties provide for voluntary grievance procedures and reserve the parties' respective rights to resort to economic weapons when the procedures fail to resolve a dispute. The collective-bargaining agreements are silent as to judicial remedies. ”

“ The freedom of the employer to refuse to make an agreement relates to its terms in matters of substance and not, once it is reached, to its expression in a signed contract, the absence of which, as experience has shown, tends to frustrate the end sought by the requirement for collective bargaining. ”

“ These agreements are growing in complexity, and today they embrace not only questions of wages and hours but also methods for adjusting all the differences which may arise between the parties to the bargain.
The very success of collective bargaining hinges upon the solidarity and integrity of the union which makes the bargain. A union capable of enforcing an agreement is a necessary antecedent condition to such a contract. With this fact in mind, one can believe that John Mitchell was not unduly sanguine in stating that “the tendency is toward the growth of compulsory membership ... ”