GENERAL ELECTRIC CO.
v.
LOCAL 205, UNITED ELECTRICAL, RADIO AND MACHINE WORKERS OF AMERICA (U. E.)
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The Court held that Section 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act provides federal substantive law for enforcing collective bargaining agreements, including arbitration clauses for grievances. The Norris-LaGuardia Act does not bar injunctions to enforce such arbitration obligations.
A union and employer had a collective bargaining agreement with a grievance procedure culminating in arbitration. The employer refused to arbitrate gr…
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Mr. Justice Douglas delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a companion case to No. 211, Textile Workers Union of America v. Lincoln Mills of Alabama, ante, p.
448. Respondent-union and petitioner-employer entered into a collective bargaining agreement governing the hours of work, rates of pay, and working conditions in a Massachusetts plant owned by petitioner. The agreement provided a procedure for the settlement of employee grievances, a procedure having four steps. It also provided that, when the four steps had been exhausted, either party could, with exceptions not material here, submit the grievance to arbitration. The respondent filed written grievances, one asking higher pay for an employee and another complaining that an employee had been wrongfully discharged. Both complaints were carried through the four steps. The union, being dissatisfied, asked for arbitration. The employer refused. The union brought suit in the District Court to compel arbitration of the grievance disputes. The District Court dismissed the bill, being of the view that the relief sought was barred by the Norris-LaGuardia Act. 129 F. Supp.
665. The Court of Appeals reversed, 233 F. 2d 85. It first held that the Norris-LaGuardia Act did not bar enforcement of the arbitration agreement. It then held that while § 301 (a) of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 gave the District Court jurisdiction of the cause, it supplied no body of substantive law to enforce an arbitration agreement governing grievances. But it found such a basis in the United States Arbitration Act, which it held applicable to these collective bargaining agreements. It accordingly reversed the District Court judgment and remanded the cause'"to that court for further proceedings.
We affirm that judgment and remand the cause to the District Court. We follow in part a different path than the Court of Appeals, though we reach the same result. As indicated in our opinion in No. 211, Textile Workers Union of America v. Lincoln Mills of Alabama, supra, we think that § 301 (a) furnishes a body of federal substantive law for the enforcement of collective bargaining agreements in industries in commerce or affecting commerce and that the Norris-LaGuardia Act does not bar the issuance of an injunction to enforce the obligation to arbitrate grievance disputes.
Affirmed. [For dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Frankfurter, see ante, p. 460.]
Mr. Justice Burton, whom Mr. Justice Harlan joins, concurs in the result in this case for the reasons set forth in his concurrence in No. 211, Textile Workers Union of America v. Lincoln Mills of Alabama, ante, p. 459.
Mr. Justice Black took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.
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Citator
Cited By (44 total)
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Smith v. Evening News Ass'n, 371 U.S. 195 (U.S. 1962)…ing. Id., at 456, 457. Section 301 has been applied to suits to compel arbitration of such individual grievances as rates of pay, hours of work and wrongful discharge, Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, supra; General Electric Co. v. Local 205, UEW, 353 U. S. 547; to obtain specific enforcement .of an arbitrator’s award ordering reinstatement and back pay to individual employees, United Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U. S. 593; to recover wage increases in a contest over the validity of th…
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Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U.S. 20 (U.S. 1991)…s was one of the issues raised in the petition for certiorari and [*41] briefed at great length in Lincoln Mills and its companion cases, Goodall-Sanford, Inc. v. Textile Workers, 353 U. S. 550 (1957), and General Electric Co. v. Electrical Workers, 353 U. S. 547 (1957). Although the Court decided the enforceability of the arbitration provisions in the collective-bargaining agreements by reference to §301 of the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 29 U. S. C. § 185, it did not reject the Courts of Appea…
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Lundgren v. Freeman, 307 F.2d 104 (9th Cir. 1962)…om the agreement of the parties (e. g., Metro Industrial Painting Corp. v. Terminal Const. Co., 2 Cir., 1961, 287 F. 2d 382; Local 205, United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America v. General Electric Co., 1 Cir., 1956, 233 F. 2d 85, affd. 353 U.S. 547, 77 S.Ct. 921, 1 L.Ed.2d 1028). The policy of the Arbitration Act is that the agreement be liberally construed in favor of arbitration. (E. g., Metro Industrial Painting Corp. v. Terminal Const. Co., supra, 2 Cir., 1961, 287 F. 2d 382; see Local 2…
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- Local 205 v. Gen. Elec. Co. (Telechron Dep't, 233 F.2d 85 (1st Cir. 1956)