Chapter 32 - § 32.6 • COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENTS

• Jurisdiction: Colorado

§ 32.6 • COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENTS

In 1975, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co. that an individual does not forfeit his or her private cause of action under Title VII if the individual first pursues his or her grievance to final arbitration under the nondiscrimination clause of a collective bargaining agreement (CBA). The Court explained:

In submitting his grievance to arbitration, an employee seeks to vindicate his contractual right under a collective-bargaining agreement. By contrast, in filing a lawsuit under Title VII, an employee asserts independent statutory rights accorded by Congress. The distinctly separate nature of these contractual and statutory rights is not vitiated merely because both were violated as a result of the same factual occurrence. And certainly no inconsistency results from permitting both rights to be enforced in their respective appropriate forums.

415 U.S. at 49-50 (1974). The Court also emphasized that "there can be no prospective waiver of an employee's rights under Title VII." Id. at 51. See also Harrison v. Eddy Potash, Inc., 112 F.3d 1437 (10th Cir. 1997), vacated on other grounds, 524 U.S. 947 (1998) (holding that a collective bargaining agreement cannot waive an employee's right to a judicial forum for Title VII claims).

The holding in Gardner-Denver would apparently conflict with subsequent Supreme Court decisions, including Gilmer v. Interstate/Johnson Lane Corp., 500 U.S. 20 (1991), which held that claims arising under federal anti-discrimination laws may be subject to mandatory arbitration under the FAA.

This apparent conflict was addressed in Wright v. Universal Maritime Serv. Corp., 525 U.S. 70 (1998). In Wright, the plaintiff was a member of Local 1422 of the International Longshoreman's Association (AFL-CIO) (Union), which supplied workers to several stevedore companies represented by the South Carolina Stevedore's Association (SCSA). The collective bargaining agreement between the Union and the SCSA provided that all employment disputes would be subject to binding arbitration before the Grievance Committee. The plaintiff commenced an action against the SCSA and several individual stevedoring companies based on the ADA after he refused employment because he had previously settled a permanent disability claim with the Union. The district court dismissed the plaintiff's complaint based on his failure to pursue the grievance procedure provided under the collective bargaining...