Labor Arbitration: Union Grievance Over Contracting Out
This paper analyzes a labor arbitration dispute in which a company attempted to outsource bargaining unit janitor positions while appearing to cooperate with a union job evaluation process. Drawing on contract language, good faith obligations, and the recognition clause of the labor agreement, the paper argues that the company violated both its contractual duties and its obligation to bargain honestly with the union. The paper also proposes concrete contractual guidelines for regulating a company's right to contract out bargaining unit work, and concludes that the arbitrator should rule in favor of the union because the company pursued a lawful financial goal through unlawful and deceptive means.
- The Company's Bad Faith in the Job Evaluation: Company concealed outsourcing intent during union evaluation
- Contract Interpretation and the Burden of Proof: Union's grievance burden and contract violation analysis
- Proposed Guidelines for Contracting Out: Draft rules to regulate future contracting-out decisions
- The Recognition Clause and Worker Protections: How outsourcing violated the recognition clause
- Ruling in Favor of the Union: Arbitral conclusion: company acted unlawfully and in bad faith
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper builds its argument systematically, moving from factual analysis of the company's conduct to contract interpretation to a proposed remedy and finally to a clear arbitral ruling — each section advances the overall thesis.
- The author uses the company's own statements (e.g., "These jobs are probably gone") as primary evidence of bad faith, grounding the argument in the case record rather than abstract principle.
- The proposed contractual guidelines section demonstrates applied thinking, showing that the writer can move beyond critique toward constructive policy drafting.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively integrates legal and contractual reasoning with ethical analysis. By tying the "good faith" standard to specific contractual clauses — particularly the recognition clause and the management rights clause — the writer shows how procedural violations and substantive contract breaches reinforce each other, strengthening the union's grievance on two independent grounds.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by detailing the company's deceptive conduct during the job evaluation, then shifts to the burden of proof and contract interpretation framework. A middle section proposes forward-looking guidelines for contracting out. The paper then explains the recognition clause before closing with the author's arbitral ruling and moral reasoning. The Works Cited follows standard MLA format.
The Company's Bad Faith in the Job Evaluation
The notion that raising the janitor job rate from $13.89 to $14.38 would cause the company to cease "to be successful" says enough about the company's "good faith" to render it dubious at best. Yet this $0.80 raise was maintained as the reason for denial of the grievance (Schwartz 516). Moreover, during the job evaluation, the company "tipped its hand" by announcing that it did not really want to evaluate the job because, after a wage survey, it had found that "janitors were the highest paid in the area" (p. 518). At the same time, the company broke with its traditional manner of evaluating by not requesting a lowering of points, as it had done in the past when pay was at issue. Instead, the company showed its hand again when one representative stated, "These jobs are probably gone" (Schwartz 518).
In reality, it was the company's intention to give the appearance of "evaluating" by meeting with union representatives while secretly negotiating with outside contractors to outsource the janitor jobs at lower cost. When the union realized this and raised the issue, the company attempted to backtrack and claim that a contract to outsource had already been made — which was not the case at all. By tipping its hand, the company was essentially testing the waters to see whether the union would object. The union did object, citing Article 19 and Article 29 of the contract.
The company responded by citing the "very broad management rights clause" of the contract — essentially a loophole, or what it deemed to be one. The reason for this loophole-seeking is clear: by outsourcing the janitor jobs, the company could save nearly $400,000 a year.
Contract Interpretation and the Burden of Proof
In this situation, the union bears the burden of proof, since it is the party filing the grievance and the matter relates to contract interpretation. The case is, however, both a matter of "good faith" on the part of the company — which was clearly violated by its dubious intentions upon entering the evaluation — and a contract interpretation issue. In essence, unless the matter involves a disciplinary action, it is always a contract interpretation issue.
Yet "good faith" and the contract are intertwined in this dispute. The company views itself as not having violated good faith because of clauses within the contract which it itself acknowledges are "broad" in nature. By relying on those broad clauses, however, the company is undermining the company-union relationship and attempting to exploit a loophole in order to save $370,000 through outsourcing labor. If the union's purpose is to protect labor, then it has a right to file a grievance, and its burden of proof is not as great as one might initially assume: it demonstrates clearly that the company was not acting in good faith and was in violation of the contract.
Works Cited
"Five Common Grievance Issues." International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, 2010. Web. 26 September 2015.
"Union Rights-Management Rights-Recognition Clause." UEUnion. Web. 26 September 2015.
Schwartz, Bob. The Legal Rights of Union Stewards. MA: Work Rights Press, 2015. Print.
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