TWC, IBEW Clash Before 2nd Circuit Over No-Strike Arbitration Language

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO, Local Union No. 3 violated its contract with its 2014 work stoppage and "has been attempting to avoid the consequences of its mischief" by focusing on a technicality, Time Warner Cable said in a brief (in Pacer) Monday in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That technicality is the ostensible retroactive nullification by the National Labor Relations Board of Local 3's collective bargaining agreement with TWC to arbitrate disputes, the company said. The NLRB didn't invalidate the entire contract, but instead decided the parties failed to agree on a tangential issue, TWC said. Federal appellate precedent is that when a party repeatedly acknowledges its collective bargaining arbitration obligations and submits a dispute to arbitration without objection, that party is bound by the results of that arbitration, TWC said. Local 3 is appealing a U.S. District Court in Brooklyn ruling upholding an arbitrator's award of damages to TWC, and the company is cross-appealing the portion of the Brooklyn court's judgment that denied confirmation of part of a 2015 final arbitration award ordering the union to refrain from further violations. TWC said Brooklyn court was entitled to adjudicate the case and it should have confirmed the NLRB arbitrator's award in full or at the least confirmed the monetary portion. A union brief (in Pacer) earlier this month said there was no valid collective bargaining agreement when the arbitrator used that agreement as the basis for ruling Local 3 had violated it.