## Facts

- Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company (Goodyear) (defendant) and a union (plaintiff) were parties to a labor agreement with shift-based pay premiums.
- The agreement provided slight pay increases for employees assigned to the second shift (3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.) and the third shift (11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.).
- The agreement also gave Goodyear authority to change daily start times if it gave the union sufficient notice.
- The premium language differed from an earlier version of the parties’ agreement, which paid premiums for all work performed between 7:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. (a time-window approach rather than a shift-label approach).
- After the parties negotiated the revised premium provisions, layoffs eliminated the second shift.
- To improve efficiency after the layoffs, Goodyear implemented a “split shift,” scheduling some employees to start during the first shift (for example, 11:00 a.m.) and finish during hours that overlapped the former second shift (for example, 7:00 p.m.).
- Goodyear did not pay split-shift employees the second-shift premium for the portion of their workday after 3:00 p.m.
- The union filed a grievance asserting that split-shift employees should receive the pay increase for time worked past 3:00 p.m.
- Goodyear argued that, under the agreement’s language, only employees who began work at 3:00 p.m. qualified for the second-shift premium, and it relied as well on its negotiated authority to adjust starting times.
- The union argued that Goodyear’s reading would defeat the point of the premium and would allow easy avoidance by small schedule adjustments (for example, moving a second-shift start time to 3:15 p.m.).

## Issues

1. Under the labor agreement’s shift-premium provisions, are employees assigned to a split shift that continues past 3:00 p.m. entitled to the second-shift pay increase for time worked after 3:00 p.m., even though their shift does not begin at 3:00 p.m.?
2. What effect does Goodyear’s contractual authority to change daily start times (with notice to the union) have on whether split-shift employees qualify for the agreement’s shift premium?

## Decision

- The grievance was submitted to final and binding labor arbitration under the parties’ labor agreement.
- Arbitrator Knight issued the award, which is reported as *Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.*, 80-2 ARB ¶ 8468 (1980).
- Publicly available materials provide a factual summary and describe the parties’ competing contract-interpretation arguments, but they do not reproduce the award’s full text.
- Because the award text is not available from open sources, the specific disposition (for example, sustained or denied) and any remedy cannot be stated with certainty based solely on publicly accessible information.

## Legal Principles

- Shift-premium entitlement in a labor agreement depends on the specific wording the parties chose, including whether the premium is tied to named shifts and start times or to a time-of-day window.
- A management clause authorizing schedule or start-time changes must be read together with wage and premium provisions; scheduling authority does not automatically resolve whether premium pay is owed for work performed during premium hours.
- When parties revise premium language from a time-window formula (for example, “work performed between 7:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m.”) to a shift-defined formula (for example, “second shift is 3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.”), disputes may focus on whether premiums attach to the employee’s assigned shift label, the shift’s start time, or the actual hours worked.
- When the underlying arbitration award is not publicly available, a case brief should separate verifiable facts and party arguments from the arbitrator’s holding and remedy, which should not be stated beyond what the source materials support.

## Conclusion

*Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.*, 80-2 ARB ¶ 8468 (1980), is a labor-arbitration dispute decided by Arbitrator Knight arising from Goodyear’s use of split shifts after layoffs eliminated the second shift; the union grieved Goodyear’s refusal to pay the contract’s second-shift premium for hours worked after 3:00 p.m., while Goodyear contended the premium applied only to employees who started at 3:00 p.m. and pointed to its contractual right to change start times, but the precise arbitral disposition and any remedy are not confirmable from open sources without the award text.


Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., 80-2 ARB ¶ 8468 (1980)