holding dispute over individual employee’s pension benefits eligibility not arbitrable, despite broad arbitration clause under AT & T, id. at 261, because the Pension Plan clearly provides a specific mechanism for resolving all grievances related to pension rights, whereby an individual can make a claim for pension benefits to the plan director, id. at 262
How later courts described this case
- holding dispute over individual employee’s pension benefits eligibility not arbitrable, despite broad arbitration clause under AT & T, id. at 261, because the Pension Plan clearly provides a specific mechanism for resolving all grievances related to pension rights, whereby an individual can make a claim for pension benefits to the plan director, id. at 262
- “A statement that a grievance is not arbitrable, which simultaneously requests additional information, does not amount to an unequivocal position that the employer will not arbitrate.”
- CBA expressly excluded from arbitration disputes over determination of rights under pension plan
- CBA covering all grievances “arising under or relating to the interpretation of” the CBA
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
KAREN NELSON MOORE, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I join Part II.A. of the majority opinion, concluding that the statute of limitations does not bar Local 783’s claim because Anheuser-Busch did not unequivocably refuse to arbitrate more than six months before Local 783 filed the complaint. I dissent from Part II.B. of the majority opinion regarding the arbitrability of the grievance. Although the majority properly holds that the arbitration clause is “broadly written” and that “arbitration should be denied in this case only if the parties have expressly excluded the grievance from arbitration,” the majority incorrectly fails to require arbitration of the grievance concerning the implications of the collective bargaining agreement’s provision in Section 11(b) regarding seniority rights. The interrelationship between CBA § 11(b) on seniority rights and the Pension Plan is a matter that comes within the scope of the broad arbitration clause, irrespective of the facts that CBA § 24 references the Pension Plan and that the Pension Plan has its own dispute-resolution mechanism. Whether there is a relationship between CBA § 11(b) and the pension claim at issue here and what the exact nature of that relationship may be are quintessentially issues for the arbitrator to decide. For this reason, I respectfully dissent from Part II.B. of the majority’s opinion.