Slight et al v. Local 12, International Union United Automobile, Areospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America et al

Filing 102

Memorandum Opinion and Order: I conclude Plaintiffs have not exhausted their internal union remedies and that they have not established there is a basis to excuse their failure to exhaust. Therefore, I conclude Plaintiffs' hybrid § 301 / fair representation claim is barred, and I dismiss Plaintiffs' claims against the Union Defendants and FCA. re 95 97 Judge Jeffrey J. Helmick on 3/29/2021. (S,AL)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO
WESTERN DIVISION
Jerry Slight, et al.,

Case No. 3:15-cv-664
Plaintiffs,

v.

MEMORANDUM OPINION
AND ORDER

International Union, United
Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural
Implement Workers of America
(UAW), et al.,
Defendants.
I. INTRODUCTION
Defendants International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural
Implement Workers of America (“UAW”) and UAW Local 12 (collectively, the “Union
Defendants”), and Defendant FCA US, LLC, have filed motions to dismiss this case due to
Plaintiffs’ failure to exhaust their internal union remedies. (Docs. No. 95 and 97). Plaintiffs filed a
brief in response to both motions. (Doc. No. 99). The Union Defendants and FCA filed briefs in
reply. (Doc. No. 100 and 101). For the reasons stated below, I convert Defendants’ motions to
motions for summary judgment and grant those motions.
II.

BACKGROUND

The Plaintiffs are 34 current or former FCA employees. They filed suit alleging they were
improperly denied appropriate pay and benefits and passed over for permanent positions. Plaintiffs
filed grievances with the UAW Local 12, which considered the grievances after several internal levels

before withdrawing those grievances rather than pursuing them with FCA. (See Doc. No. 59).
Plaintiffs claimed the conduct of FCA and the Union Defendants violated the collective bargaining
agreement (“CBA”). I granted motions for summary judgment filed by FCA and the Union
Defendants because Plaintiffs did not exhaust their internal union remedies before filing suit. (Id.).
I also denied Plaintiffs’ request for a stay so they could pursue those union remedies. (Id. at 8-9).
Plaintiffs appealed. The Sixth Circuit agreed that Plaintiffs had failed to exhaust but noted
the UAW Constitution provided a possible avenue for reinstatement of Plaintiffs’ grievances. Slight
v. Loc. 12, Int'l Union United Auto., Aerospace & Agric. Implement Workers of Am., 726 F. App’x 469, 472
(6th Cir. 2018). The Sixth Circuit remanded the case “with instructions to hold the case in abeyance
while the employees pursue[d] their internal union remedies.” Id. at 470.
On April 25, 2018, Plaintiffs submitted a notice of appeal to the UAW. (Doc. No. 99-6 at 14). Plaintiffs argued the merits of their grievances and requested an evidentiary hearing. (Id.). They
also requested that the Office of the UAW International President “waive any timeliness issue and . .
. allow the appeal to move forward on its merits, pursuant to the Sixth Circuit’s recent ruling.” (Id.
at 4).
The UAW President held a hearing on October 8, 2018, during which nine of the Plaintiffs
gave statements on the record. (Id. at 35). Following the hearing, the UAW President denied
Plaintiffs’ request to waive the time limit for filing an internal appeal concerning the withdrawal of
their grievances, concluding Plaintiffs had not been misled about their appeal rights and that the
circumstances did not warrant waiver of the time limit for appeal.. (Id. at 34-41). The UAW
President specifically concluded that contemporaneous evidence showed Plaintiffs had been told
they could appeal the withdrawal of their grievances and that the time to appeal began to run on
November 7, 2014, when they were informed the grievances had been withdrawn. (Id. at 39-40).

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Plaintiffs then appealed to the International Executive Board (“IEB”). The IEB concluded
Plaintiffs failed to prove union officials had misrepresented their right to appeal the withdrawal of
their grievances and had not identified an evidentiary basis for overturning the UAW President’s
denial of a waiver of the time limits. (Doc. No. 99-7 at 11-22).
Finally, Plaintiffs appealed to the Public Review Board (“PRB”). The PRB denied the
appeal, concluding the UAW President did not abuse his discretion in deciding not to waive the time
limit for filing an internal appeal. (Doc. No. 93 at 29-30).
III.

STANDARD

A defendant may seek to dismiss a plaintiff’s complaint on the ground the complaint fails to
state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6). When ruling on a motion
to dismiss, a court construes the complaint in the light most favorable to the plaintiff and accepts as
true well-pleaded factual allegations. Daily Servs., LLC v. Valentino, 756 F.3d 893, 896 (6th Cir. 2014)
(citing Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 679 (2009)). Factual allegations must be sufficient to state a
plausible claim for relief. Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678. Legal conclusions and unwarranted factual
inferences are not entitled to a presumption of truth. Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555
(2007).
The court “may consider the Complaint and any exhibits attached thereto, public records,
items appearing in the record of the case[,] and exhibits attached to defendant’s motion to dismiss so
long as they are referred to in the Complaint and are central to the claims contained therein.” Bassett
v. Nat'l Collegiate Athletic Ass'n, 528 F.3d 426, 430 (6th Cir. 2008). A court “may not consider matters
outside the pleadings in reviewing a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss unless the motion is treated as a
motion for summary judgment under . . . [Rule] 56.” Stein v. HHGREGG, Inc., 873 F.3d 523, 528
(6th Cir. 2017) (citation omitted).

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Summary judgment is appropriate if the movant demonstrates there is no genuine dispute of
material fact and that the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a).
All evidence must be viewed in the light most favorable to the nonmovant, White v. Baxter Healthcare
Corp., 533 F.3d 381, 390 (6th Cir. 2008), and all reasonable inferences are drawn in the nonmovant’s
favor. Rose v. State Farm Fire & Cas. Co., 766 F.3d 532, 535 (6th Cir. 2014). A factual dispute is
genuine if a reasonable jury could resolve the dispute and return a verdict in the nonmovant’s favor.
Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986). A disputed fact is material only if its
resolution might affect the outcome of the case under the governing substantive law. Rogers v.
O’Donnell, 737 F.3d 1026, 1030 (6th Cir. 2013).
IV.

ANALYSIS

Defendants move to dismiss Plaintiffs’ claims based upon Plaintiffs’ failure to exhaust their
internal union remedies. (See, e.g., Doc. No. 96 at 3).
Plaintiffs first contend Defendants’ motions should be converted to motions for summary
judgment because the motions refer to documents (namely, the written record of Plaintiffs’ efforts
to obtain a waiver of the time limits for filing an internal appeal with the union) which are outside of
the pleadings but which also are relevant to the resolution of Defendants’ motion. (Doc. No. 99 at
6-7). I agree and convert Defendants’ motions to dismiss to motions for summary judgment. See
Stein, 873 F.3d at 528.
I also conclude no additional briefing is necessary on the motions. Neither Plaintiffs nor
Defendants requested leave to file additional briefs if I converted the motions, and none of the
parties have identified any facts which currently are not part of the record which might inform the
appropriate resolution of this case.
A plaintiff asserting a hybrid § 301 / fair representation claim must exhaust internal union
remedies before filing suit against a union and an employer. Chapman v. United Auto Workers Local
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1005, 670 F.3d 677, 683 (6th Cir. 2012) (citing Clayton v. Int’l Union, 451 U.S. 679 (1981)). A court
may excuse the plaintiff’s failure to exhaust “if (1) the internal union appeals procedure offers no
hope of reinstating a claimant’s grievance; (2) union hostility toward the claimant leaves no prospect
of a fair hearing; or (3) the internal procedures would unreasonably delay a judicial hearing on the
merits.” Slight, 726 F. App’x at 471 (citing Clayton, 451 U.S. at 689).
Having reviewed the parties’ arguments and the administrative record developed in response
to Plaintiffs’ request for a waiver of the time limits, I conclude Defendants are entitled to summary
judgment because Plaintiffs did not exhaust their internal union remedies and have not
demonstrated there is a basis to excuse their failure to exhaust.
Plaintiffs primarily argue that the administrative decision to refuse to waive the time limits
was in contradiction of the Sixth Circuit’s prior decision in this case, and that they “have, in fact,
exhausted, by leave of the Sixth Circuit.” (Doc. No. 99 at 8).
Plaintiffs stretch the Sixth Circuit’s decision too far. It’s true the Court of Appeals wrote
“[t]here’s good reason for the [UAW] President to waive the time requirements here, since the
employees failed to file an appeal because union officials told them (erroneously) that ‘it’s too late to
file an appeal’ and to ‘get a lawyer’ instead.” Slight, 726 F. App’x at 472 (citations omitted). That
observation, however, was based up statements provided by two of the individual Plaintiffs and
came in the context of an appeal from my summary judgment ruling, in which all evidence was
viewed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party. The union held an evidentiary hearing
to address that precise issue and determined the contemporaneous evidence pointed in the other
direction – that Plaintiffs were on notice of their right to appeal to the union to attempt to get the
grievances reinstated and of the time limits for doing so. (Doc. No. 99-6 at 39-40).
A fair reading of the Sixth Circuit’s decision demonstrates the Court of Appeals did not
order the UAW President to waive the time limits for Plaintiffs’ internal union remedies, whether or
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not such a reading “trigger[s] another appeal to the Sixth Circuit for that Court to interpret its own
prior ruling.” (Doc. No. 99 at 10).
Moreover, Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that their appeals of the waiver denial, first to
the IEB and then to the PRB, constitute exhaustion of the union’s internal remedies. (Id. at 14-15).
The time limits are a procedural gatekeeper, and Plaintiffs fail to identify a legal basis for the
proposition that they can satisfy the exhaustion requirement when their untimeliness prevented their
claims from being reviewed on their merits. Cf. Woodford v. Ngo, 548 U.S. 81, 90-91 (2006) (“Proper
exhaustion demands compliance with an agency’s deadlines and other critical procedural rules
because no adjudicative system can function effectively without imposing some orderly structure on
the course of its proceedings.”).
Further, Plaintiffs’ contention that they “should be excused from exhaustion pursuant to the
first Clayton exception, because the exhaustion procedure offers no hope of reinstating the plaintiffs’
grievance,” (Doc. No. 99 at 18), would turn that exception into a nullity. A plaintiff cannot avoid
the exhaustion requirement simply by failing to pursue internal remedies where the plaintiff “could
and should have initiated the appeal procedures” provided by the union. Chapman, 670 F.3d at 685.
Finally, Plaintiffs do not provide a basis for their suggestion that I “go through the record
presented to the PRB and make an independent determination” of whether the UAW President, the
IEA, and the PRB made the correct decision. (Doc. No. 99 at 15). As Defendants note, federal law
provides room “to allow unions to govern their own affairs.” Int'l Bhd. of Boilermakers, Iron
Shipbuilders, Blacksmiths, Forgers & Helpers, AFL-CIO v. Hardeman, 401 U.S. 233, 246 (1971). Plaintiffs
fail to demonstrate it would be appropriate for me to disregard the union’s factual determinations,
made after an evidentiary hearing at which some of the Plaintiffs testified, and substitute my own
judgment.

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V.

CONCLUSION

For the reasons stated above, I conclude Plaintiffs have not exhausted their internal union
remedies and that they have not established there is a basis to excuse their failure to exhaust.
Therefore, I conclude Plaintiffs’ hybrid § 301 / fair representation claim is barred, and I dismiss
Plaintiffs’ claims against the Union Defendants and FCA.
So Ordered.
s/ Jeffrey J. Helmick
United States District Judge

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