Lingle v. Norge Division of Magic Chef, Inc.

1 Peabody Galion v. Dollar, 666 F. 2d 1309 (CA10 1981); Herring v. Prince Macaroni of New Jersey, Inc., 799 F. 2d 120 , 124, n. 2 (CA3 1986); Baldracchi v. Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Div., United Technologies Corp., 814 F. 2d 102 (CA2 1987); but see Johnson v. Hussmann Corp., 805 F. 2d 795 (CA8 1986) (retaliatory discharge claim pre-empted by § 301).

2 We later concluded that state courts have concurrent jurisdiction over § 301 claims. Charles Dowd Box Co. v. Courtney, 368 U. S. 502 (1962). State as well as federal courts must apply federal law in deciding these claims. See Teamsters v. Lucas Flour Co., 369 U. S. 95 , 102 (1962).

3 Our discussion of the pre-emptive scope of § 301 bears repeating: “It was apparently the theory of the Washington court that, although Textile Workers Union v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U. S. 448 , requires the federal courts to fashion, from the policy of our national labor laws, a body of federal law for the enforcement of collective-bargaining agreements, nonetheless, the courts of the States remain free to apply individualized local rules when called upon to enforce such agreements. This view cannot be accepted. The dimensions of § 301 require the conclusion that substantive principles of federal labor law must be paramount in the area covered by the statute. Comprehensiveness is inherent in the process by which the law is to be formulated under the mandate of Lincoln Mills, requiring issues raised in suits of a kind covered by § 301 to be decided according to the precepts of federal labor policy. “More important, the subject matter of. § 301(a) ‘is peculiarly one that calls for uniform law.’ . . . The possibility that individual contract terms might have different meanings under state and federal law would inevitably exert a disruptive influence upon both the negotiation and administration of collective agreements. Because neither party could be certain of the rights which it had obtained or conceded, the process of negotiating an agreement would be made immeasurably more difficult by the necessity of trying to formulate contract provisions in such a way as to contain the same meaning under two or more systems of law which might someday be invoked in enforcing the contract. Once the collective bargain was made, the possibility of conflicting substantive interpretation under competing legal systems would tend to stimulate and prolong disputes as to its interpretation. Indeed, the existence of possibly conflicting legal concepts might substantially impede the parties’ willingness to agree to contract terms providing for final arbitral or judicial resolution of disputes. “The importance of the area which would be affected by separate systems of substantive law makes the need for a single body of federal law particularly compelling. The ordering and adjusting of competing interests through a process of free and voluntary collective bargaining is the keystone of the federal scheme to promote industrial peace. State law which frustrates the effort of Congress to stimulate the smooth functioning of that process thus strikes at the very core of federal labor policy. With due regard to the many factors which bear upon competing state and fed *405 eral interests in this area, ... we cannot but conclude that in enacting § 301 Congress intended doctrines of federal labor law uniformly to prevail over inconsistent local rules.” 369 U. S., at 103-104 (citations omitted; footnote omitted).

4 We applied this same principle of §301 pre-emption just last Term to a case in which the plaintiff had conceded that the “ ‘nature and scope of the duty of care owed [her] is determined by reference to the collective bargaining agreement.’” Electrical Workers v. Hechler, 481 U. S. 851 , 863, n. 5 (1987) (citation omitted). Plaintiff had brought a Florida tort law claim alleging that her union had “breached its duty of care to provide a union member with a safe workplace.” Id., at 853 . Our analysis of Florida law revealed that “[t]he threshold inquiry for determining if a cause of action exists is an examination of the contract to ascertain what duties were accepted by each of the parties and the scope of those duties.” Id., at 860 . Thus agreeing with the characterization of Florida law embodied in plaintiff’s concession, we concluded that § 301 pre-empted the state-law *406 claim. See also Republic Steel Corp. v. Maddox, 379 U. S. 650 (1965) (state-law application to suit for severance pay under collective-bargaining agreement pre-empted by § 301).

5 We have twice applied the Lucas Flour §301 pre-emption principle in determining whether a state-law claim brought in state court was properly removed to federal court. In Avco Corp. v. Machinists, 390 U. S. 557 (1968), we determined that a state-law suit brought in state court to enjoin a strike was properly removed to federal court despite the plaintiff’s failure to plead a federal cause of action, because “the pre-emptive force of § 301 is so powerful as to displace entirely any state cause of action ‘for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization.’” Franchise Tax Bd. of California v. Construction Laborers Vacation Trust for Southern California, 463 U. S. 1 , 23 (1983) (quoting § 301). Conversely, in Caterpillar Inc. v. Williams, 482 U. S. 386 (1987), see n. 10, infra, we held that a state-law complaint brought in state court for breach of individual employment contracts was not “completely pre-empted” by §301, 482 U. S., at 394, because § 301 “says nothing about the content or validity of individual employment contracts.” Ibid, (emphasis added). Both Avco and Caterpillar are examples of the Lucas Flour § 301 pre-emption principle: in the former case, plaintiff’s claim required construing the collective-bargaining agreement in question; in the latter case, plaintiffs’ claim did not turn on any collective-bargaining agreement interpretation.

6 Although the cause of action was not based on any specific statutory provision, the following section of the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Act expresses the public policy underlying the common-law development: “It shall be unlawful for any employer, insurance company or service or adjustment company to interfere with, restrain or coerce an employee in any manner whatsoever in the exercise of the rights or remedies granted to him or her by this Act or to discriminate, attempt to discriminate, or *407 threaten to discriminate against an employee in any way because of the exercise of his or her rights granted to him or her by this Act. “It shall be unlawful for any employer, individually or through any insurance company or service or adjustment company, to discharge or threaten to discharge, or to refuse to rehire or recall to active service in a suitable capacity an employee because of the exercise of his or her rights or remedies granted him or her by this Act.” Ill. Rev. Stat., ch. 48, ¶ 138.4(h) (1987).

7 Such independence was not present either in Lucas Flour, Allis-Chalmers Corp. v. Lueck, 471 U. S. 202 (1985), or Electrical Workers *408 v. Hechler, 481 U. S. 851 (1987); see n. 4, supra. In all of those cases, pertinent principles of state law required construing the relevant collective-bargaining agreement. Not so here. Petitioner points to the fact that the Illinois right to be free from retaliatory discharge is nonnegotiable and applies to unionized and nonunionized workers alike. While it may be true that most state laws that are not preempted by § 301 will grant nonnegotiable rights that are shared by all state workers, we note that neither condition ensures nonpre-emption. It is conceivable that a State could create a remedy that, although nonnegotiable, nonetheless turned on the interpretation of a collective-bargaining agreement for its application. Such a remedy would.be pre-empted by § 301. Similarly, if a law applied to all state workers but required, at least in certain instances, collective-bargaining agreement interpretation, the application of the law in those instances would be pre-empted. Conversely, a law could cover only unionized workers but remain unpre-empted if no collective-bargaining agreement interpretation was needed to resolve claims brought thereunder.

8 Although §301 pre-empts state law only insofar as resolution of the state-law claim requires the interpretation of a collective-bargaining agreement, and although § 301 pre-emption is all that is at issue in this case, it is important to remember that other federal labor-law principles may preempt state law. Thus, in San Diego Building Trades Council v. Garmon, 359 U. S. 236 , 244 (1959), we held that “[w]hen it is clear or may fairly be assumed that the activities which a State purports to regulate are protected by § 7 of the National Labor Relations Act [NLRA], or constitute an unfair labor practice under § 8, due regard for the federal enactment requires that state jurisdiction must yield.” We added that “courts are not primary tribunals to adjudicate. . . issues” such as “whether the particular activity regulated by the States [is] governed by § 7 or § 8 or [is], perhaps, outside both these sections.” Ibid. Rather, “[i]t is essential to the administration of the [NLRA] that these determinations be left in the first instance to the National Labor Relations Board.” Id., at 244-245 . “A second pre-emption doctrine protects against state interference with policies implicated by the structure of the [NLRA] itself, by pre-empting state law and state causes of action concerning conduct that Congress intended to be unregulated.” Metropolitan Life Ins. Co. v. Massachusetts, 471 U. S. 724 , 749 (1985). This doctrine “was designed, at least initially, to govern pre-emption questions that arose concerning activity that was neither arguably protected against employer interference by §§ 7 and 8(a)(1) of the NLRA, nor arguably prohibited as an unfair labor practice by § 8(b) of that Act. . . . Such action falls outside the reach of Garmon preemption.” Ibid. We referred to this second pre-emption doctrine in Metropolitan Life as “Machinists pre-emption,” after Machinists v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Comm’n, 427 U. S. 132 (1976), in which we had “ruled that a State may not penalize a concerted refusal to work overtime that was neither prohibited nor protected under the NLRA.” 471 U. S., at 750.

9 Whether a union may waive its members’ individual, nonpre-empted state-law rights, is, likewise, a question distinct from that of whether a claim is pre-empted under § 301, and is another issue we need not resolve today. We note that under Illinois law, the parties to a collective-bargaining agreement may not waive the prohibition against retaliatory discharge nor may they alter a worker’s rights under the state worker’s *410 compensation scheme. Byrd v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 152 Ill. App. 3d 292 , 298, 504 N. E. 2d 216 , 221, app. denied, 115 Ill. 2d 539 , 511 N. E. 2d 426 (1987). Before deciding whether such a state-law bar to waiver could be pre-empted under federal law by the parties to a collective-bargaining agreement, we would require “clear and unmistakable” evidence, see Metropolitan Edison Co. v. NLRB, 460 U. S. 693 , 708 (1983), in order to conclude that such a waiver had been intended. No such evidence is available in this case.

10 Thus, what we said in Caterpillar Inc. v. Williams, 482 U. S., at 394-395 (emphasis in original), see n. 5, supra, is relevant here: “Caterpillar asserts that respondents’ state-law contract claims are in reality completely pre-empted § 301 claims, which therefore arise under federal law. We disagree. Section 301 governs claims founded directly on rights created by collective-bargaining agreements, and also claims ‘substantially dependent on analysis of a collective-bargaining agreement.’ Electrical Workers v. Heckler, 481 U. S. 851 , 859, n. 3 (1987); see also Allis-Chalmers Corp. v. Lueck, 471 U. S., at 220 . Respondents allege that Caterpillar has entered into and breached individual employment contracts with them. Section 301 says nothing about the content or validity of individual employment contracts. It is true that respondents, bargaining unit members at the time of the plant closing, possessed substantial rights under the collective agreement, and could have brought suit under §301. As masters of the complaint, however, they chose not to do so. “Moreover, contrary to Caterpillar’s assertion, . . . respondents’ complaint is not substantially dependent upon interpretation of the collective-bargaining agreement. It does not rely upon the collective agreement indirectly, nor does it address the relationship between the individual contracts and the collective agreement. As the Court has stated, ‘it would be inconsistent with congressional intent under [§ 301] to pre-empt state rules that proscribe conduct, or establish rights and obligations, independent of a labor contract.’ Allis-Chalmers Corp., supra, at 212.”

11 Arbitrators are delegated by nearly all collective-bargaining agreements as the adjudicators of contract disputes. See Paperworkers v. Misco, Inc., 484 U. S. 29 , 36 (1987); Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., Basic Patterns in Union Contracts 37 (11th ed. 1986) (“Arbitration is called for in 99 percent of the sample contracts”).

12 A collective-bargaining agreement may, of course, contain information such as rate of pay and other economic benefits that might be helpful in determining the damages to which a worker prevailing in a state-law suit is entitled. See Baldracchi v. Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Div., United Technologies Corp., 814 F. 2d, at 106 . Although federal law would govern the interpretation of the agreement to determine the proper damages, the underlying state-law claim, not otherwise pre-empted, would stand. Thus, as a general proposition, a state-law claim may depend for its resolution upon both the interpretation of a collective-bargaining agreement and a separate state-law analysis that does not turn on the agreement. In such a case, federal law would govern the interpretation of the agreement, but the separate state-law analysis would not be thereby pre-empted. As we said in Allis-Chalmers Corp. v. Lueck, 471 U. S., at 211 , “not every dispute . . . tangentially involving a provision of a collective-bargaining agreement, is pre-empted by § 301 . . . .”