Desert Coca Cola Bottling Co. v. General Sales Drivers, Delivery Drivers & Helpers Local 14

(dissenting).

The court is right', of course, in concluding that it is obliged, under the binding precedents, to lean strongly in the direction of arbitration. But I think the court has leaned farther than the Supreme Court’s impulsion a tergo requires it to do. I think the union, when it insisted upon the addition to the conventional language of the contract of the sentence:

meant that', so far as the wages which an employee should draw at the end of the week, such a question should be determined on a strictly legalistic basis, and not in the discretionary or mediatory fashion in which an arbitrator is free to act. The words “in any way” concerning wages ought to be pointed enough to include a dispute as to whether an employee’s pay envelope should, or should not, include some dollars for the overtime which he worked. If the question were whether one, under the contract, is entitled to straight time or to time and a half for overtime, that would, the court indicates, be a “wages” question, since it relates to the “general wage scale.” The instant question whether he get's nothing, or something, for overtime work seems to me to relate to the wage scale.

The District Court took…

This is an appeal from a judgment of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada. The appellants, a group of employers comprising the soft drink bottling industry in their area, brought a suit for a declaratory judgment against the appellee, a labor union with which the appellants had a collective bargaining agreement. The appellants’ suit sought a determination by the district court' that a certain controversy which had arisen between the appellants and the union was, under the provisions of the collective bargaining agreement, required to be resolved by arbitration, and was not, as the union contended and still contends, a dispute of the kind which the agreement said should not be included within the scope of the arbitration provision of the agreement.

The district court had jurisdiction of the case under Section 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 (the Taft-Hartley Act), 29 U.S.C. § 185 , and the Federal Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2201 . The court, after a trial, construed the arbitration provision of the parties’ labor agreement as excluding the pending dispute from arbitration. It therefore rendered judgment against the appellants,…