Andrea Dooley Arbitration

San Francisco Bay Area Labor Arbitrator

timeliness

I Digress: “Equitable Estoppel” and Procedural Arbitrability

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An issue that sometimes arises in arbitration is a concept called “equitable estoppel.” I’ll try to keep this short, so you don’t zone out or fall asleep. The quickest way to explain equitable estoppel is, one party cannot lead the other party to believe that they agree or will resolve the issue, and then change course and claim the other side was untimely when they object to the failure to resolve the issue. For example, there’s a case where the employer agreed to pay contractual severance pay for the employees it was laying off and confirmed in writing several times that they would do this. They did not do this. The union tried to contact the employer about it and didn’t hear back until the employer’s bankruptcy attorney told the union that the employer would not pay. The union filed a grievance and the employer claimed the grievance was outside the 3-day window for filing after the employees received their final paychecks. The arbitrator rejected that timeliness argument, saying the union didn’t affirmatively know they wouldn’t get it until the bankruptcy lawyer told them so. It was reasonable to believe, based on the employer’s earlier statements, they’d get the money.

The moral of the story is, arbitrators don’t like it when the parties try to play tricks, and are unlikely to find the grievance is not arbitrable if the side arguing for lack of arbitrability was playing games during the grievance procedure.

If you’re interested, I’ve written about procedural arbitrability HERE and HERE and HERE, but definitely read them in order!

What is Procedural Arbitrability? Part One

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In my last post, I talked a little about the purpose of arbitration, and mentioned that sometimes, one party or the other challenges whether a dispute can be arbitrated. This is a question of “arbitrability,” and there are two types: procedural and substantive. In this post, I will be talking about Procedural Arbitrability.

As the name suggests, procedural arbitrability means that one party believes that there is a procedural error, such as timeliness. Arbitrators and courts have held that it is up to the arbitrator to determine whether there is a procedural arbitrability issue.

The most common procedural arbitrability issue is timeliness. Timeliness concerns whether both parties have met the timeline required in their agreement. For example, the union might be required to file a grievance within 10 days of learning about the incident that causes a dispute, and the employer might be required to respond to the grievance within 7 days of receiving it.  Most arbitrators in most cases strictly enforce the timeline set out in the grievance procedure, where the parties have consistently enforced those requirements. Untimely grievances will not be heard. Time limits are generally treated as jurisdictional; in other words, if the timeline wasn’t met, the arbitrator doesn’t have the authority to hear the merits of the case. This is less straightforward than it sounds.

Timelines must be consistently enforced. If the parties have been lax, or the practice has been inconsistent, the parties should be prepared to present evidence supporting their position about how the parties have treated timelines in the past. For example, the employer might show that every grievance that was filed after ten days had passed was denied, while the union might show that the employer gave them a one-day grace period on many occasions in the past. The arbitrator will consider this evidence in deciding whether the grievance in arbitrable.

Timelines can be waived by mutual agreement. For example, in one case, a union steward was on vacation when a union member was terminated and didn’t return until after the deadline for filing the grievance had passed. He wrote the grievance and brought it to the supervisor, asking that the supervisor agree that the grievance be “deemed timely,” because of his absence. The supervisor agreed, and they proceeded through the grievance procedure. At the arbitration hearing, a human resources manager testified that the supervisor had not authority to agree to waive the timeline and that the grievance was untimely when it was filed a few days late. I found that, if the supervisor had the authority to discipline employees and receive the grievance in the first place, he had the authority to agree to waive the timeline, and in fact, it was good for their labor relations that he did so. The discipline was upheld on the merits and the union steward and supervisor continued to work together harmoniously to resolve disputes.

In my next post, I will continue to discuss procedural arbitrability. Please let me know if you have any questions that I can answer in a future post!