UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
AMERICAN POSTAL WORKERS UNION, AFL-CIO,
Plaintiff,
v. Case No. 1:24-cv-442-RCL
UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE,
Defendant.
MEMORANDUM OPINION
The American Postal Workers Union (“APWU” or the “Union”) has been engaged for
nearly twenty years in a workplace safety dispute regarding conditions at a United States Postal
Service (“USPS” or the “Postal Service”) facility in Colorado. In that time, and pursuant to their
collective bargaining agreement (“CBA”), the parties have submitted the case to regional
arbitration four times before three different arbitrators. In the most recent episode, the arbitrator
ruled in favor of the Union and ordered USPS to exclusively allow Union tractor-trailer operators
(“TTOs”) to perform certain docking operations for trucks brought to the facility by non-Union
private contractors.
The Union alleges that USPS has not complied with this award. In response, the Union
first invoked the jurisdiction of the arbitrator who rendered the most recent award and asked for a
remedy hearing. USPS agreed to arbitration, and the arbitrator provided his availability for the
hearing. But then, the Union changed course: it decided to escalate its grievance to a national-
level dispute procedure, after which the remedy hearing was held in abeyance and eventually
abandoned. While that national-level dispute was pending, APWU filed a Complaint in this Court.
USPS now moves to dismiss the Complaint for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction or, in the
1 alternative, for failure to state a claim. The Union, for its part, has moved for summary judgment,
seeking an injunction to enforce the most recent arbitral award, as well as attorneys’ fees and costs.
For the reasons provided herein, the Union’s voluntary decisions to initiate a remedy
hearing and to bring a national-level interpretive dispute deprive this Court of subject-matter
jurisdiction to consider its Complaint. Therefore, USPS’s Motion to Dismiss will be GRANTED,
and the Union’s Motion for Summary Judgment will be DENIED.
I. BACKGROUND
A. Statutory Background
Pursuant to 39 U.S.C. § 1203, the American Postal Workers Union is the exclusive
collective bargaining representative of USPS’s clerical workers, maintenance personnel, motor
vehicle operators, and support services employees. Compl. ¶ 4, ECF No. 1. The relationship
between the Union and USPS is governed by a CBA that provides a multi-stage dispute resolution
procedure. According to Article 15 of the CBA, “Step One” of the grievance process requires an
aggrieved employee to first discuss any grievance with his or her immediate supervisor; the Union
may opt to do so on an employee’s behalf. See CBA Art. 15 at 87,1 Mot. for Summ. J. Ex. B, ECF
No. 12-5. If the supervisor rules against the employee or the Union, the Union may then appeal to
“Step Two,” at which point the dispute is escalated to the head of the installation where the
employee works or, if that installation has fewer than twenty employees, a designated official
outside of the installation.2 CBA Art. 15 at 88–89. If the Step Two proceeding again results in a
decision adverse to the grievant, there are two possible routes. If the dispute concerns a
1 The pagination for Article 15 of the CBA refers to the page number printed at the bottom of the page in the attachment provided by the Union as an exhibit to their Motion for Summary Judgment, ECF No. 12. 2 Other provisions of the CBA provide for certain grievances to be initiated directly at Step Two. CBA Art. 15 at 89 (referring to Article 2 and Article 14 of the CBA). This nuance is immaterial for purposes of this litigation.
2 disciplinary grievance or a contract grievance involving a Local Memorandum of Understanding,
the Union may cause the dispute to be submitted directly to arbitration. Id. at 90. Otherwise, the
Union may appeal to “Step Three” within fifteen days, at which point the grievance is submitted
to an official at USPS’s Grievance/Arbitration Processing Center. Id. at 91. If the grievant does
not secure his or her requested relief at Step Three, the Union may appeal to arbitration within
twenty-one days. Id. at 93. The CBA further provides that “[a]ll decisions of an arbitrator will be
final and binding.” Id. at 100.
The CBA provides a separate grievance channel exclusively for disputes that involve
“interpretive issues under [the CBA] or supplements thereto of general application . . . .” Id. at
105. These disputes, which are inherently national in character, skip the three-Step process just
described, and are instead filed directly at “Step Four.” Id. at 98. In a Step Four dispute, the
grievant, represented by a national-level Union representative, confers and attempts to reach a
mutually agreeable settlement with USPS’s representative. Id. at 94. If no agreement is reached
within sixty days, the Union may then appeal the dispute to national-level arbitration within thirty
days. Id. at 95.
As the Union points out, and despite its name suggesting otherwise, Step Four is not an
additional rung in the appellate ladder above the three-Step process described in the preceding
paragraph; it is a separate procedure available only for interpretive disputes of national
significance, which are filed at Step Four in the first instance. However, that is not to say that Step
Four exists in a vacuum: the CBA provides that if the parties to a Step Four dispute decide that no
national interpretive issue is presented, the dispute should be “returned to Step 3.” Id. at 94.
Moreover, the CBA contemplates that the outcome of a Step Four dispute may have relevance to
a dispute pending at Step One, Two, or Three, and therefore provides that “[a]ny local grievances
3 filed on the specific interpretive issue”—i.e., any related Step One, Two, or Three proceeding—
"shall be held in abeyance at the appropriate level pending resolution of the National [Step Four]
interpretive dispute.” Id. at 98.
B. Factual and Procedural Background
The following allegations are drawn mostly from the Union’s Complaint and an arbitral
award attached thereto, but the narrative also includes facts drawn from declarations attached to
the parties’ motions. The Court may consider these declarations because, as explained below, this
Opinion hinges on whether the Court may exercise subject-matter jurisdiction over this dispute,
and “[a] court may consider materials beyond the pleadings in deciding whether it has subject-
matter jurisdiction.” Kumar v. Garland, No. 23-cv-1314-RCL, 2024 WL 4564273, at *2 (D.D.C.
Oct. 24, 2024) (citing Am. Freedom L. Ctr. v. Obama, 821 F.3d 44, 49 (D.C. Cir. 2016)).
USPS truck drivers are sometimes required to perform a task known as “spotting,” which
entails first backing a truck into a loading dock, then connecting the truck to an independent power
source during the loading or unloading process, and then disconnecting the power and pulling out
of the dock. Compl. ¶ 12. The Union alleges that, in 2006, an independent contractor working for
the Postal Service executed this procedure improperly at the Postal Service’s Denver National
Distribution Center (“NDC”, then called the “Denver Bulk Mail Center”), causing an accident. Id.
¶ 9. The Union initiated a grievance, arguing that only unionized TTOs had the expertise to
perform spotting safely. Id. ¶ 12. That grievance eventually worked its way up to a Step 3
arbitration, at which Arbitrator Mary Gregory ruled in favor the Union and gave USPS a choice of
remedies: it could either “implement screening or verification measures” to ensure that private
operators known to be unsafe were not permitted access to the facility, or else allow Union TTOs
to spot the private operators’ trailers. Id. ¶¶ 15–16; Reeves Arbitration Award 6, Compl. ex. 1,
4 ECF No. 1-1 (quoting Arbitrator Gregory’s award). The Postal Service’s seeming failure to
comply with this award has led to two additional adverse arbitration decisions by Arbitrator Harry
MacLean in February and August 2017, see Reeves Arbitration Award at 7, and a fourth adverse
arbitral determination by Arbitrator Zane Reeves in August 2022 (the “Reeves Award”). Id. at
11–13. Arbitrator Reeves, remarking that the Postal Service had failed on multiple occasions to
install and maintain a reliable means of identifying visiting drivers, ordered the Postal Service to
comply with Arbitrator Gregory’s alternative remedy: to allow Union TTOs to spot private
operators’ trailers. Id. at 13. Arbitrator Reeves gave USPS thirty days to comply with his order
and stated that he would “retain[] jurisdiction until the US Postal Service fully complies with this
order.” Id. USPS never challenged any of the arbitrators’ awards in court. Pittman Decl. ¶ 11,
Pl.’s Mot. for Summ. J. Ex. D, ECF No. 12-7.
On the twenty-ninth day after the Reeves Award was issued, USPS ordered all private truck
drivers to drop their trailers at the NDC’s gate so that Union TTOs could perform the spotting, in
conformity with the Reeves Award. Compl. ¶ 48. But after just one day of complying, USPS
reversed course and announced that it would no longer permit Union TTOs to perform spotting on
behalf of the private contractors. Id. ¶ 49. As a result, in November 2022, the Union sent a message
to USPS “requesting that the arbitrator’s jurisdiction be invoked and that a remedy hearing be
scheduled” to address USPS’s noncompliance with the Reeves Award. See Pittman Email, 1st
Richardson Decl. Attach. A, Mot. to Dismiss Ex. 1, ECF No. 9-1. USPS contacted Arbitrator
Reeves, who provided a handful of dates in January and February 2023 to hold the remedy hearing.
See Martin Email, 1st Richardson Decl. Attach. B, Mot. to Dismiss Ex. 1. But instead of following
through with its requested hearing before Arbitrator Reeves, the Union instead initiated a Step 4
national level dispute in February 2023. Foster Email, 1st Richardson Decl. Attach. C., Mot. to
5 Dismiss Ex. 1. The Union nominally framed the Step 4 dispute as a pure interpretive question
about the CBA, with the operative question being “[a]t what point does a regional arbitration award
become final and binding?” Id. However, the Union attests that the submissions which initiated
the Step 4 dispute “specifically mentioned the Reeves Award,” and that the intention animating
the dispute was to “get the attention of managers at postal headquarters on what seemed to the
Union to be a particularly egregious situation of non-compliance” and to “give the Union another
opportunity for discussing the Reeves Award” with key USPS stakeholders. 1st Cash Decl. ¶¶ 18–
19, Pl.’s Mot. for Summ. J. Ex. C., ECF No. 12-6. The proposed remedy hearing was held in
abeyance due to the initiation of the Step Four dispute and the Union has evidently taken no further
action in pursuit of a remedy from Arbitrator Reeves. See Richardson Email 1, 1st Richardson
Decl. Attach. E, Mot. to Dismiss Ex. 1.
One year later, in February 2024, the Union filed a Complaint in this Court. See generally
Compl. USPS moved to dismiss the suit in August 2024. See Mot. to Dismiss, ECF No. 9. The
following month, the Union filed a combined Response and cross-Motion for Summary Judgment.
See Mot. for Summ. J., ECF No. 12. USPS submitted its combined Reply and Response in
October, see Def.’s Reply, ECF No. 16, and the Union filed its Reply two weeks later. See Pl.’s
Reply, ECF No. 18. The Step Four dispute was still pending when the Complaint was filed in this
Court, and the parties were in parallel discussions about setting a date for the national-level
arbitration while briefing the dispute. See 1st Richardson Decl. ¶¶ 11–13, ECF No. 9-1; 2d
Richardson Decl. ¶ 7, Def.’s Reply Ex. 1, ECF No. 16-1. The Union withdrew its Step Four
dispute in mid-October, after USPS had submitted its final Reply brief in this Court, but before the
Union had submitted its own Reply brief. See 2d Cash Decl. ¶ 5, Pl.’s Reply Attach. A, ECF No.
18-1.
6 Both motions are now ripe for this Court’s review. Because the Union has not exhausted
its bargained-for dispute resolution procedures under the CBA by reaching a complete arbitration
at Steps Three and Four before bringing its case to federal court, the Court will GRANT USPS’s
Motion to Dismiss and DENY the Union’s Motion for Summary Judgment.
II. LEGAL STANDARDS
A. Rule 12(b)(1) and Subject-Matter Jurisdiction
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1) provides for dismissal of an action or a claim over
which the court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction. Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1). The party seeking to
invoke the court’s jurisdiction bears the burden of demonstrating that it exists. Khadr v. United
States, 529 F.3d 1112, 1115 (D.C. Cir. 2008). When evaluating a Rule 12(b)(1) motion, a court
must accept the complaint’s factual allegations as true. Hill v. Smoot, 308 F. Supp. 3d 14, 18
(D.D.C. 2018) (citing Leatherman v. Tarrant Cnty. Narcotics Intel. & Coordination Unit, 507 U.S.
163, 164 (1993)). However, because the Court has an obligation to independently assure itself of
its subject-matter jurisdiction, the plaintiff’s allegations “‘will bear closer scrutiny in resolving a
12(b)(1) motion’ than in resolving a [Rule] 12(b)(6) motion for failure to state a claim.” Grand
Lodge of Fraternal Ord. of Police v. Ashcroft, 185 F. Supp. 2d 9, 13–14 (D.D.C. 2001) (quoting
5A Charles A. Wright & Arthur R. Miller, Fed. Prac. & Proc. § 1350 (2d ed. 1987)).
B. The Postal Reorganization Act and Alternative Dispute Resolution
“A case is properly dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction when the court lacks
the statutory or constitutional authority to hear the case.” Westberg v. Fed. Deposit Ins. Corp.,
926 F. Supp. 2d 61, 66 (D.D.C. 2013) (citing Nowak v. Ironworkers Loc. 6 Pension Fund, 81 F.3d
1182, 1187 (2d Cir. 1996)). The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, Pub. L. No. 91-375, 84 Stat.
719 (1970), provides statutory authority for the federal courts to exercise subject-matter
jurisdiction over disputes concerning the Postal Service. Specifically, 39 U.S.C. § 409(a) provides
7 that the U.S. district courts “shall have original but not exclusive jurisdiction over all actions
brought by or against the Postal Service,” and 39 U.S.C. § 1208(b) further provides that “[s]uits
for violation of contracts between the Postal Service and a labor organization representing Postal
Service employees, or between any such labor organizations, may be brought in any district court
of the United States having jurisdiction of the parties . . . .”
However, even where a Court would otherwise have jurisdiction over an action, parties
may agree by contract to pursue alternative dispute resolution mechanisms such as arbitration, in
which case the Court ordinarily may not act on the dispute until those mechanisms have been
exhausted. See Sanders v. Wash. Metro. Area Transit Auth., 819 F.2d 1151, 1158 (D.C. Cir. 1987)
(“[E]mployees who fail[]to exhaust the grievance and arbitration proceedings [] available to them
[] may not seek redress in court on claims that could and should have been grieved.”) (collecting
cases); see also DelCostello v. Int’l Bhd. of Teamsters, 462 U.S. 151, 163 (1983) (Noting that
“[o]rdinarily, . . . an employee is required to attempt to exhaust any grievance or arbitration
remedies provided in the collective bargaining agreement” before he “may bring suit against his
employer for breach of a collective bargaining agreement”).
Accordingly, multiple courts in this District interpreting 39 U.S.C. § 1208 have held that
jurisdiction does not lie until the parties have exhausted any mandatory remedial processes
provided by a collective bargaining agreement and arrived at a final, binding arbitral award. See
Am. Postal Workers’ Union, AFL-CIO v. U.S. Postal Serv., 646 F. Supp. 2d 1, 3 (D.D.C. 2009)
(holding that “a union and its members must exhaust the remedies provided in their collective
bargaining agreement . . . before they seek judicial intervention,” and that “[a] federal court only
has jurisdiction to vacate or enforce a labor arbitration award if it is final and binding”) (quoting
Nat’l Post Off. Mail Handlers Loc. No. 305, LIUNA, AFL-CIO v. U.S. Postal Serv., 594 F.2d 988,
8 991 (4th Cir. 1979)); Am. Postal Workers Union, AFL-CIO v. U.S. Postal Serv., 65 F. Supp. 3d
134, 141 (D.D.C. 2014) (“To maintain a suit under [39 U.S.C. § 1208(b)], . . . a union first must
exhaust the remedies provided for through the collective bargaining agreement.”); Sullivan v.
Potter, No. 05-cv-818-HHK, 2006 WL 785289, at *3 (D.D.C. Mar. 28, 2006) (holding, in a dispute
between a union Motor Vehicle Operator and the Postmaster General, that “until [an] arbitration
is final and the procedures set forth in the collective bargaining agreement are completed, [a] claim
is premature and must be dismissed for failure to exhaust administrative remedies”).3
III. ANALYSIS
The Court concludes that it lacks subject-matter jurisdiction over this dispute for two
independently sufficient reasons. First, by invoking Arbitrator Reeves’s jurisdiction and
cooperating with USPS to initiate a remedy hearing, the Union vitiated the finality of his 2022
arbitral award and was therefore required to go through with the remedy hearing before submitting
its case to federal court. Second, the Step Four dispute—which, by the Union’s own admission,
concerned the same factual circumstances at the core of the Step Three dispute and the
Complaint—had not produced an arbitral decision at the time the Complaint was filed (and still
has not). The Union’s half-measures under the CBA’s grievance procedures have prevented the
requisite final and binding arbitration awards from taking shape, so it has failed to exhaust its
contractual remedies. The Court therefore lacks subject-matter jurisdiction and the case must
accordingly be dismissed.
3 For additional authority on this topic, see also Noble v. U.S. Postal Serv., 537 F. Supp. 2d 210, 219–20 (D.D.C. 2008) (holding that “when a collective bargaining agreement contains a mandatory provision for dispute resolution through arbitration, an employer is entitled as a defense to rely on the plaintiff’s failure to utilize those procedures,” and concluding that the court lacked jurisdiction); Nat’l Postal Pro. Nurses v. U.S. Postal Serv., 461 F. Supp. 2d 24, 31 (D.D.C. 2006) (“To bring suit under [39 U.S.C. § 1208], . . . plaintiffs would first have to have exhausted the provisions of their collective bargaining agreement.”) (collecting cases); but see Roman v. U.S. Postal Serv., 821 F.2d 382, 386 (7th Cir. 1987) (acknowledging the Postal Reorganization Act’s contractual exhaustion requirement, but treating failure to exhaust as a merits issue, rather than as a jurisdictional one).
9 A. The CBA’s Step Three and Step Four Arbitration Mechanisms Are Mandatory
Arbitration is “a matter of contract between the parties; it is a way to resolve those
disputes—but only those disputes—that the parties have agreed to submit to arbitration.” First
Options of Chi., Inc. v. Kaplan, 514 U.S. 938, 943 (1995). Therefore, the first step in assessing
whether the Court has subject-matter jurisdiction is whether the CBA evinces the parties’
intentions to require arbitration before a dispute be submitted to a federal court.
It is clear that, for ordinary grievances governed by Steps One through Three of the CBA,
arbitration is a prerequisite to judicial review. In describing Step One, the mouth of the funnel for
most grievances, the CBA uses unquestionably mandatory language: “Any employee who feels
aggrieved must discuss the grievance with the employee’s immediate supervisor within fourteen
(14) days of the date on which the employee or the Union first learned or may reasonably have
been expected to learn of its cause.” CBA Art. 15 at 87 (emphasis added). Step Two and Step
Three follow in an appellate chain from Step One, which logically suggests that the contracting
parties intended for Step One disputes to proceed through each phase of the grievance process,
culminating in arbitration after Step Three. To suppose that a party could short-circuit this chain
simply by opting to take their case to federal court, instead of pursuing it to its conclusion, would
severely contravene “[f]ederal labor policy[’s] . . . heavy presumption in favor of mandatory
arbitration of disputes under collective bargaining agreements, unless the agreement expressly
provides that arbitration is not the exclusive remedy.” Commc’n Workers of Am. v. Am. Tel. &
Tel. Co., 40 F.3d 426, 435 (D.C. Cir. 1994); see also United Steelworkers of Am. v. Warrior &
Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 574, 584–85 (1960) (“[I]n the absence of any express provision
excluding a particular grievance from arbitration, we think only the most forceful evidence of a
purpose to exclude the claim from arbitration can prevail . . . .”).
10 The Union argues, however, that “Step [Four] is not an appellate procedure for reviewing
regional arbitration awards,” and is therefore “not a substitute for or a prerequisite to court action.”
Mot. for Summ. J. 7, 14. The Union is correct that a typical appellate relationship does not exist
between Steps Three and Four. But as described above, like Step Three, Step Four contains its
own independent arbitration provision, which cuts strongly against the argument “that arbitration
is not the exclusive remedy” for disputes that reach Step Four. Commc’n Workers of Am., 40 F.3d
at 435. Certainly, the agreement does not “expressly provide” that the parties to a Step Four
dispute may simply opt to bypass arbitration before bringing suit in federal court. Id.
Moreover, if the Court were to interpret the CBA as not requiring arbitration of Step Four
disputes, it would enable and incentivize plaintiffs to reframe quotidian grievances as national-
level interpretive disputes, thus bypassing Steps One through Three and proceeding directly into
court. The plaintiffs’ conduct in this very case suggests this concern is not at all farfetched: they
first initiated a remedy hearing, then abandoned it in favor of a Step Four dispute that, according
to their own representations, concerns the same subject-matter as the aborted remedy hearing and
is meant to achieve the same outcome—to wit, compliance with the Reeves Award. In light of the
“heavy presumption in favor of mandatory arbitration” and the background principle that
“questions of arbitrability must be addressed with a healthy regard for the federal policy favoring
arbitration,” which extends to “the construction of the contract language itself,” Moses H. Cone
Mem. Hosp. v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U.S. 1, 24–25 (1983), the Court will not adopt such a
self-defeating interpretation of the CBA. The Court must conclude that both Steps Three and Four
contemplate mandatory arbitration as a precondition for bringing suit in federal court.4
4 This is not to say that a grievant who loses a Step Three arbitration must appeal to Step Four and then arbitrate at that level before proceeding to federal court. That would require a judicial rewriting of the CBA, which makes clear that Step Four is designed for a different type of dispute than Steps One through Three, and does not sit in an appellate
11 B. Initiation of the Remedy Hearing Rendered the Reeves Award Not Final and Binding
To its credit, the Union appears to have adhered to the CBA’s grievance procedures in the
lead-up to the Reeves Award in 2022; USPS does not contend otherwise. The operative question,
then, is whether the Reeves Award is final and binding, and thus a suitable subject for judicial
review. The Court concludes that, although it may have been final and binding at the time it was
rendered, the Union’s decision to initiate a remedy proceeding fatally undermined that finality.
The notion that “an arbitration award must be final and binding before a district court may
vacate or enforce it” is called the “complete arbitration rule.” Am. Postal Workers Union v. U.S.
Postal Serv., 422 F. Supp. 2d 240, 246 (D.D.C. 2006) (collecting cases). An arbitral award is not
yet complete if “a substantive task remain[s] for the arbitrator to perform.” Id. at 246 (quoting
McKinney Restoration Co. v. Ill. Dist. Council No. 1, 392 F.3d 867, 871 (7th Cir. 2004)).
Conversely, an award is considered complete if “it is ‘intended by the arbitrator to be his complete
determination of every issue submitted to him.’” Id. (quoting McKinney, 392 F.3d at 871).
The parties present the Court with dueling textual indicators of finality. First, USPS notes
that Arbitrator Reeves stated in his award that he would retain jurisdiction over the dispute until
USPS was in compliance with his award. Mot. to Dismiss at 7. The Union counters that
“boilerplate language generally retaining jurisdiction does not make an award nonfinal.” Mot. for
Summ. J. at 12 (quoting Am. Postal Workers Union, 422 F. Supp. 2d at 246 n.3).
On this narrow point, the Court agrees with the Union: Boilerplate language, such as a
generic retention of jurisdiction, is a weak indicator of finality. However, the Union next argues
that the Reeves Award was final and binding because the CBA provides that “[a]ll decisions of an
posture in relation to them. It is rather to say that, if a dispute reaches either Step Three or Step Four, the parties must arbitrate before submitting their case to federal court.
12 arbitrator will be final and binding.” Id. at 5 (citing CBA Art. 15 at 100). The Union is hoisted
with its own petard: this language is every bit as “boilerplate” as Arbitrator Reeves’s statement
retaining jurisdiction. To understand why, imagine that the Court took this language from the
CBA literally. In that case, every “decision” made by an arbitrator, even the most trivial
interlocutory order, would constitute a “final and binding” arbitration ripe for judicial review; a
party could submit the case to federal court based on something as inconsequential as a scheduling
order.
Furthermore, it is not uncommon for an arbitrator to decouple liability and remedy
determinations, deciding liability first and purposefully leaving the remedy to be determined in
later proceedings. See, e.g., Am. Postal Workers’ Union, 646 F. Supp. 2d at 2. Under the Union’s
proposed reading of the CBA, such a dispute could be submitted to the Court as soon as the liability
determination is decided, subverting the express will of the arbitrator and disrupting the bargained-
for grievance process at its most critical juncture—an outcome that courts have unsurprisingly
resisted. See id. at 3–4 (“An arbitration award that postpones the determination of a remedy is not
final and binding.”); cf. Am. Postal Workers Union, 422 F. Supp. 2d at 246–47 (holding that “the
mere fact that [the parties] later wrote” to the arbitrator to repeat a request made to him prior to
issuance of the arbitral award “[did] not negate the finality of the award”). The Court will not
assign dispositive weight to the CBA’s “final and binding” clause because doing so would
eviscerate the complete arbitration rule, which exists precisely to “ensure[] that courts will not
become incessantly dragooned into deciding narrow questions that form only a small part of a
wider dispute otherwise entrusted to arbitration.” Peabody Holding Co., LLC v. United Mine
Workers of Am., Int’l Union, 815 F.3d 154, 160 (4th Cir. 2016).
13 To reiterate, instead of boilerplate language contained either in the CBA or the award itself,
the measure of a complete arbitration is, first, whether the award resolves all issues submitted to
the arbitrator, and second, whether it appears that the arbitrator understood his or her job to be
done. See Am. Postal Workers Union, 422 F. Supp. 2d at 246. On its face, the Reeves Award
appears to have been final and binding when it was rendered, insofar as it resolved all questions
of liability (by holding that USPS was not in compliance with the prior arbitration awards) and
remedy (by ordering USPS to permit TTOs to perform spotting instead of private contractors).
However, the Union disturbed the finality of the award by invoking Arbitrator Reeves’s
jurisdiction and requesting a remedy hearing. As discussed above, USPS agreed to the hearing
and communicated the request to Arbitrator Reeves, who evidently assented to hearing the dispute
by providing his dates of availability. At that time, then, Arbitrator Reeves would have
subjectively understood that some “outstanding issues remained to be resolved” by him. Am.
Postal Workers Union, 422 F. Supp. 2d at 246. Indeed, Arbitrator Reeves’s statement of retaining
jurisdiction, though not legally significant in isolation, suggests he foresaw that the issue of
USPS’s noncompliance might again rear its head; when the Union invoked his jurisdiction to deal
with that very issue, Arbitrator Reeves would have understood that it was again his turn at the
helm. That being the case, his prior award—now the basis for yet another round of liability and
remedy determinations—is no longer final. Having voluntarily sought and secured the agreement
of all relevant stakeholders to proceed with arbitration, the Union cannot now claim that it has
exhausted its arbitral remedies with respect to the subject matter of that arbitration.5
5 The Union points out that “Article 15 is silent on non-compliance with arbitration awards,” and argues that “[a]lthough the Union often addresses the Postal Service’s non-compliance with awards through arbitration, it does so at its discretion.” Mot. for Summ. J. at 11. The Union may be correct that it was not required to invoke Arbitrator Reeves’s jurisdiction and initiate a remedy hearing in the first place. But that is beside the point; what matters is that the Union did set the remedy hearing in motion, and get the agreement of both the Postal Service and the arbitrator himself to proceed with arbitration. Having done so, the Union must follow that procedure to its conclusion.
14 C. The Union Failed to Exhaust Arbitral Processes at Step Four
The Union’s procedural default at Step Four is somewhat more straightforward. As
discussed above, a Step Four dispute requires submission to an arbitrator before the case may be
referred to the federal courts. It is undisputed that, unlike the prior Step Three dispute that
culminated in the Reeves Award, no arbitration ever took place to resolve the Union’s Step Four
dispute, let alone a final and binding one. It appears, therefore, that the Union may not litigate the
content of its Step Four dispute in federal court until such an arbitration has run its course. The
Union raises two arguments as to why its case should nevertheless be allowed to proceed in federal
court, both of which are unavailing.
First, the Union argues that its Step Four dispute is now wholly irrelevant because, as noted
above, it has been withdrawn. Pl.’s Reply at 2. But the Court has already explained that failure to
exhaust contractual dispute resolution procedures goes to the Court’s subject-matter jurisdiction,
and “[i]t is a firmly established rule that subject matter jurisdiction is tested as of the time of the
filing of the complaint.” Delfani v. U.S. Capitol Guide Bd., No. 03-cv-949-RWR, 2005 WL
736644, at *2 (D.D.C. Mar. 31, 2005) (citing Rosa v. Resol. Tr. Corp., 938 F.2d 383, 392 n.12 (3d
Cir. 1991) (collecting cases)). “Further, if subject matter jurisdiction does not exist at the outset
of the litigation, it cannot automatically be created by factual events that occur after the complaint
is filed.” Landmark Health Sols., LLC v. Not for Profit Hosp. Corp., 950 F. Supp. 2d 130, 135
(D.D.C. 2013) (citing Prasco, LLC v. Medicis Pharm. Corp., 537 F.3d 1329, 1337 (Fed. Cir.
2008)). Just as it is “well settled” that a party cannot manufacture diversity jurisdiction by
changing its domicile after the filing of a complaint, see Saadeh v. Farouki, 107 F.3d 52, 57 (D.C.
Cir. 1997), a party cannot undo the jurisdiction-vitiating effects of a parallel arbitral proceeding
simply by terminating that arbitration midway through the litigation. To hold otherwise would
15 encourage wasteful litigation and forum-shopping: a grievant subject to the CBA would have every
incentive to pursue Step Four and federal judicial proceedings simultaneously, only to eventually
back out of whichever forum is the latter to act on his or her dispute. In sum, the Union’s late-
breaking withdrawal of its Step Four dispute has no legal significance; it was pending when the
Complaint was filed, which is all that matters for jurisdictional purposes.
Second, the Union correctly reiterates that Step Four is an independent dispute mechanism,
not an appellate stage that follows after a Step Three dispute. The Union further insists that its
Step Four proceeding had nothing to do with its Step Three dispute: It was framed as an interpretive
dispute about whether arbitral awards are final and binding, rather than about the specific matter
of the Postal Service’s noncompliance with the Reeves Award. Pl.’s Reply at 2. USPS’s
representatives appear to agree, and indeed have taken the position that Step Four is an
inappropriate forum for adjudicating compliance with arbitral awards. See Richardson Email at 2
(“To be clear, this allegedly national interpretive issue is not about the Denver, CO NDC.”).
Therefore, the pendency of the Step Four interpretive dispute should not inhibit judicial review of
the supposedly separate issue at the heart of the Complaint and the abandoned Step Three
dispute—to wit, whether USPS is complying with the Reeves Award. Pl.’s Reply at 2.
This argument fares no better. Notwithstanding the parties’ seeming agreement that the
two disputes are unrelated, the Union’s own representations confirm that the opposite is true: the
Step Four dispute was expressly intended to draw attention to USPS’s noncompliance with the
Reeves Award at the Denver NDC, and to afford the Union an additional opportunity to discuss
the Reeves Award with USPS decisionmakers. 1st Cash Decl. ¶¶ 18–19. Consistent with this
narrative, USPS’s Director of Contract Administration, Shannon Richardson, avers that the parties
have been unable to reach a settlement of the Step Four dispute “in part because the APWU
16 interprets Arbitrator Zane[] [Reeves’s] award as giving it the exclusive right to ‘spot’ every tractor
trailer that enters the Denver NDC every day, and has taken the position that the Postal Service
will not be in compliance with the award until it . . . requires Union TTOs to ‘spot’ every trailer.”
2d Richardson Decl. ¶ 9. It is abundantly clear that USPS’s alleged noncompliance with the
Reeves Award is the central issue in the abandoned Step Three dispute, the now-withdrawn Step
Four dispute, and the Complaint alike. Therefore, the Union’s failure to exhaust its Step Four
remedial procedures, like its failure to exhaust its Step Three remedial procedures, divests this
Court of subject-matter jurisdiction to consider the merits of its Complaint.6
IV. USPS’S ALLEGED HISTORY OF NONCOMPLIANCE DOES NOT EXCUSE THE EXHAUSTION REQUIREMENT
The Union raises one final argument against dismissal: USPS’s long-running pattern of
non-compliance with arbitral awards has rendered the contractual dispute-resolution mechanisms
“unsatisfactory” and “unworkable,” thus excusing their obligation to pursue those remedies to
completion. See Mot. for Summ. J. at 14 (first citing Am. Postal Workers’ Union, 646 F. Supp. 2d
at 3, and then citing Nat’l Post Off. Mail Handlers, 594 F.2d at 991–92).
6 In Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO v. Verizon Services, Inc., an arbitrator rendered an award in a dispute between the plaintiff union and the defendant. 404 F. Supp. 2d 62, 64–65 (D.D.C. 2005). After the award had been issued, the plaintiff submitted and then withdrew a separate grievance. Id. at 70. The defendant argued that the plaintiff’s decision to file this separate grievance after the award had come down “amount[ed] to a concession by the Union” that the subject matter of the withdrawn grievance “was not part of the . . . arbitration.” Id. The Court rejected this argument, holding that “[t]he Union’s strategic decisions based on a possible reading of the award do not have any bearing on this Court’s reading of the award.” Id. The Union cites this case in its Reply brief, though it is not entirely clear why. See Pl.’s Reply at 2. The Union may be arguing that its own “strategic decision” to initiate its Step Four dispute has no bearing on the Court’s subject- matter jurisdiction to entertain its Complaint. But if so, that would be a misinterpretation of this passage from Communication Workers of America, which counsels only that a plaintiff’s subsequent decision to initiate a grievance should not affect the Court’s interpretation of the scope of the underlying award. The scope of the Reeves Award, of course, is not in issue in this case. The operative question instead is whether the scope of the Step Four dispute and the scope of the Complaint overlap, such that the Union’s failure to exhaust arbitral procedures at Step Four divests the Court of jurisdiction to consider the Complaint. For the reasons discussed above, the Court concludes that they do overlap, and nothing in Communication Workers of America suggests otherwise.
17 Though it is true in principle that a sufficiently egregious pattern of repetitive
noncompliance rising to the level of “unworkab[ility]” may excuse the requirement of exhaustion,
the Court is not persuaded that this dispute presents such a case. The Reeves Award details that,
over the years, USPS has made some efforts, however inadequate they may be, to comply with the
arbitrators’ awards. See Reeves Arbitration Award at 7 (describing the building of a “Guard
Shack” at the entrance to the Denver NDC yard and creation of a procedure requiring private
drivers to swipe a badge to gain entry); id. at 9 (stating that USPS had upgraded its security cameras
in response to the arbitration awards). More importantly, the Reeves Award was the first to
specifically require USPS to use Union TTOs for all truck spotting, and the dispute has not returned
to arbitration since that order was entered. Therefore, as in American Postal Workers’ Union,
“APWU has not shown that the exhaustion of remedies is unworkable,” and the exhaustion
requirement is therefore not excused. 646 F. Supp. 2d at 4.
V. CONCLUSION
The Union may be frustrated that it must exhaust arbitral remedies before bringing suit in
federal court, despite USPS’s alleged pattern of recalcitrance toward arbitrators. Indeed, the Union
is at pains to emphasize that dismissing this case will only result in it “chas[ing] its tail in never-
ending circles of arbitrations.” Mot. for Summ. J. at 15. But this decision is necessary to effectuate
the parties’ mutually bargained-for dispute resolution procedures contained in the CBA, which are
buttressed by a strong federal policy favoring arbitration of labor disputes. Dismissal is also
necessary to discourage future gamesmanship by parties to a collective bargaining agreement, who
might otherwise be tempted to try to evade their duties to arbitrate by strategically initiating and
withdrawing from arbitral channels when it suits them. To the extent that this Opinion prolongs
the Union’s efforts to achieve relief for USPS’s alleged contumacy, that is a problem of the
Union’s own making, and one that, in any event, the Court is without jurisdiction to fix.