|
|
|
OFFICE OF THE UMPIRE No. D-39 June 17, 1946
Claim Of Violation Of Paragraph 59 Unsupported By Specific Evidence
GRIEVANCE: Chevrolet Parts—Bay City—Case D-5 "Request that Management transfer according to Paragraph 59 as there is change in products. Request pay for all men that haven’t been transferred properly."
Umpire’s Decision: The grievance is dismissed. (Entire Decision should be read)
In the Matter of: United Automobile Workers of America—C.I.O.—Local 362 and General Motors Corporation Chevrolet Parts—Bay City—Case D-5
Between June 4th and June 15th, 1945, a large number of employees of the Chevrolet Plant in Bay City were laid off or transferred due to cut backs or completion of aviation engine parts schedules. In laying off and transferring these employees, Management applied the provisions of Section 3, Paragraph 9, of the local seniority agreement, which reads:
The instant grievance presents a claim that the layoffs and transfers resulted from changes in "methods, products or policies" and that they therefore fell within the terms of Paragraph 59 of the National Agreement rather than the above quoted portion of the local seniority agreement. The second paragraph of Paragraph 59 reads:
It is clear from even a superficial comparison of the two quoted paragraphs that sharp differences exist between the treatment specified for displaced employees in Paragraph 59 and that called for by the local seniority agreement. Where Paragraph 59 applies, the jobs to which displaced employees must be transferred in line with their plant-wide seniority are those which they are capable of doing "as comparable to the work they have been doing as may be available." Where the local seniority agreement applies, on the other hand, the jobs are those held by the youngest seniority employees in the plant, or, if the displaced employees are not capable of handling such work, whatever jobs are open at the time which their skill, capacity and seniority qualify them to fill. The local seniority agreement contains, moreover, an express restriction upon the replacement of males by females and vice versa which is not contained in Paragraph 59. The manner in which this case has been presented by the local Union, however, makes a ruling on the applicability of Paragraph 59 to the displacement of any specific employee or group of employees completely impossible. The grievance as presented is a policy grievance signed by a Union Committeeman. Nowhere in the grievance itself or in the information presented to Management in the earlier stages of the grievance procedure, are the names presented of any individual employee whom the Union considers to have been improperly transferred. There is not even an effort to identify them by groups, or departments, or jobs, or by the products on which they worked or the machines they operated. Instead, the Union makes in the grievance a blanket request for pay "for all men that haven’t been transferred properly", and in its brief demands that Management be directed to review all transfers made as a result of the elimination of departments (which the Union neither names nor describes) and reimburse all employees whose transfers are found not to have been in accordance with Paragraph 59. Such a request can only be described as a Union fishing expedition in which Management is asked to do the fishing. Such tactics cannot be honored by the Umpire. In Decision C-269, the Umpire clearly indicated that so-called policy grievances—grievances signed by District or Shop Committeemen rather than by the employee or employees directly affected—are a proper method of raising questions of general contractual interpretation provided that they are accompanied by information which will permit Management to understand the scope of the claim with substantial accuracy and to identify from its records the employees who will be affected if the request in the grievance is granted. In the present case the local Union has completely failed to meet this obligation. From what little evidence on the point was given at the hearing (none of which, by the way, was presented by the Union), it would appear that certain employees were displaced by mere cut backs in the production of products, whose manufacture still continued. To such employees, of course, Paragraph 59 would not apply. The production of some other products, however, appears to have ceased entirely and certain departments which had been working on these products were eliminated. Insofar as that is true, the employees displaced by such elimination were entitled by Paragraph 59 to be transferred upon the basis of plant-wide seniority "to work they are capable of doing, as comparable to the work they have been doing as may be available", and should not have been confined to the more limited opportunities open to them under the local seniority agreement. A mere finding to this effect, however, could not possibly result in an award of back pay to any individual employees. Such an award could only be made upon proof: (1) that the jobs to which individual displaced employees had been transferred were not those which were "most comparable" to the work they had been doing; and (2) that each individual was capable of performing the jobs to which, the Union claims, he should have been transferred. Proof of a Paragraph 59 violation, in other words, requires not only evidence that employees were displaced by a change in "methods, products or policies", but also proof concerning what happened to these employees and what, according to the Union, should have happened to them. In this case it was Management and not the Union who gave the Umpire what little evidence he has on the first point. But even Management could give no evidence on the second point, because until the very day of the hearing, the local Union never informed it of the identity of the employees aggrieved. In the vagueness and inadequacy of the local Union’s preparation and presentation, this grievance is rivaled only by that recently considered in Decision D-34. Like that one, it must be dismissed, not because the local Union’s case was necessarily without merit, but because it failed to take the trouble to make a case at all.
Decision: The grievance is dismissed. Signed, Ralph T. Seward UMPIRE June 17, 1946. |