Doyle v. Division No. 1127 of Amalgamated Ass'n of Street, Electric Ry. & Motor Coach Employees of America

76 F. Supp. 655, 20 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2391, 1947 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3075
CourtDistrict Court, W.D. Louisiana
DecidedApril 29, 1947
DocketCivil A. Nos. 1947, 2059
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 76 F. Supp. 655 (Doyle v. Division No. 1127 of Amalgamated Ass'n of Street, Electric Ry. & Motor Coach Employees of America) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Doyle v. Division No. 1127 of Amalgamated Ass'n of Street, Electric Ry. & Motor Coach Employees of America, 76 F. Supp. 655, 20 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2391, 1947 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3075 (W.D. La. 1947).

Opinion

PORTERIE, District Judge.

The applicable statute in this case is 50 U.S.C-A.Appendix, § 308(b) (B). We shall quote the dominant parts of the statute to this case. What we might term the preamble in (b) the phrase “other than a temporary position”, and then all of (B) : “If such position was in the employ of a private employer, such employer shall restore such person to such position or to a position of like seniority, status, and pay unless the employer’s circumstances have so changed as to make it impossible or unreasonable to do so.”

The defendant company was before the war, and has been since the war, primarily engaged in inter-city transportation of passengers by bus, is the holder of certificate of public convenience and is authorized to handle freight and express. Beginning in December 1940 and continuing through the .early part of 1946,. it engaged in camp-shuttle operations, in addition to the above-named function. Its certificate of public convenience covered, in the main,' the area where in Louisiana army camps were first built and then occupied by tens of thousands of troops.

It has been proved clearly that the camp-shuttle operations were apart, separate and distinct, from the more exacting inter-city transportation. However, since there was great need for drivers for either purpose during the war, it is very clear that the camp-shuttle operations were used as a means of preparatory training to qualify drivers for inter-city transportation. It is preponderantly clear that the requirements for inter-city driving were much more, exacting and called for more competent personnel than for those engaged in camp-shuttle operations. The Company, the Union, and the employees considered the two functions as separate and apart and it was only after a camp-shuttle driver had shown his competency as such that he was placed on the Board for inter-city transportation and had engaged in such competently and satisfactorily to the company for sometime and had been placed on the Extra Board before the Company would automatically declare this apprenticed driver an intercity driver.

Seniority as an inter-city driver never began except from the date of employment as an inter-city driver; in no instance would seniority begin in favor of a man as an inter-city driver from the date of his employment as a camp-shuttle driver. As we have just said, this was accepted by the three interests in this case, the employees, the union and the company.-

Doyle and, his companion plaintiffs have made no proof that any one of them was ever an acknowledged formally declared inter-city driver. All of them have admitted that, though in some cases there were but a few months lacking, they were not such.

There appears in the case the fact that the Tri-State and the Interurban merged as of July 1, 1945, and it appears that seniority in the Tri-State was based retroactively from the date of employment, after capacity established, whilst in the Interurban the seniority was predicated as above explained, to wit: That an inter-city driver began his seniority from the date that he became such and not on the date that he was employed by the corporation in the other function.

We have considered that Tri-State and Interurban merged as of July 1, 1945, and that Locals Nos. 1216 and 1127 merged on September 1, 1945.

Contracts between the employer and its employees are well known. They form the handy basis of all relations between the employer and its employees and those contracts are always signed not only by the employer and the heads of the local, but must be approved, according to the constitution of the labor organization .which is [657]*657well known to the employer, by the authorized representatives of the International. These contracts go into specific details, are read by and well known to the individual laborer.

See Section 2 of Article 3 and Section 2 of Article 17, of agreement of February 9, 1944, between Interurban and Division 1216.

There is of record a supplemental contract dated December 1, 1944, by the Interurban and the Union, whereby there was a binding agreement, anticipatory, to the effect that from the date of merger seniority would be established under the Tri-State method. However, it was agreed as to those employees of the Interurban who had not yet qualified as inter-city drivers that their seniority would be the date of merger, July 1, 1945.

The Court believes that the statute, the Act of Congress, dominates the power of the company, the employees and the union. Contracts made by the latter in violation of the statute’s provisions are not good and must be modified to submit to the statute. We hold that the contract of December 1, 1944 was never put into actual operation; it was never put into effect. When the official roster under it was posted, numerous objections from the employees immediately arose and shortly thereafter this suit was filed.

The record discloses that when the agreement of December 1, 1944, was sent for the necessary signature of the labor official (which is disclosed by the blank without signature appearing on the document), regular process was had thereon. Officers of the International directed Mr. McBrayer (who has fully testified in this case) to make an open investigation. The decision of Mr. McBrayer is filed. This decision was affirmed by the Board of Appeals and then finally by the National Convention, so the contract of December 1, 1944, was never completed between the Interurban and the latter organization. This contract has no force in this case.

But when the supplemental contract of December 1, 1944, falls, the situation is that the former contract of February 9, 1944 between the Interurban and the drivers, represented by their duly selected bargaining agency, is in force. The former contract as to establishment of date of seniority in the interurban as previously described had several years of obedience by both con-tractants and for the good of the public service.

Moreover, a comparison of the two methods of dating seniority, Interurban and TriState, will disclose very little difference. The Tri-State did not engage in camp-shuttle operations, so it could not use such function as a proving ground, but it always took six months before the most apt driver became classified as an inter-city driver.

There are numerous veterans (thirty-one) who have intervened under the style of Allen M. Duckett et al., Intervener-de-fendants, claiming that when they went into the service they were already inter-city drivers and that upon their return all were employed by the company. They assert that to give former veterans classifications as inter-city drivers, when they were never such, and especially to declare them intercity drivers and date their seniority from their date of employment as camp-shuttle drivers, is discrimination against them under the warranty of the statute.

If we were to rule with Doyle and his companion litigants, seniority would be granted on the bare experience of a camp-shuttle driver and the veteran thus re-employed on the basis of seniority established on his date of employment as a camp-shuttle driver would make of this veteran an inter-city driver without this veteran ever having had a day or an hour of driving experience as an inter-city driver.

No one appearing in this litigation has thought of the quasi-public service that this company and its employees has to furnish.

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Bluebook (online)
76 F. Supp. 655, 20 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2391, 1947 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3075, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/doyle-v-division-no-1127-of-amalgamated-assn-of-street-electric-ry-lawd-1947.