## Facts

- United Steelworkers of America represented maintenance and repair employees at Warrior & Gulf Navigation Company’s terminal in Chickasaw, Alabama.
- Warrior & Gulf transported steel products by barge and operated a maintenance and repair facility for its barges at the terminal.
- From 1956 to 1958, Warrior & Gulf reduced the bargaining unit from 42 to 23 employees by contracting out maintenance work previously performed by bargaining-unit employees.
- Contractors sometimes performed work under Warrior & Gulf supervisors and hired some laid-off employees at lower wages, including for work on Warrior & Gulf’s barges.
- The collective-bargaining agreement (CBA) contained a no-strike clause, a no-lockout clause, and a grievance procedure culminating in arbitration.
- The CBA broadly covered disputes about the “meaning and application” of the agreement and provided that “any local trouble of any kind” would be processed through the grievance procedure.
- The CBA also stated that “matters which are strictly a function of management shall not be subject to arbitration.”
- Employees filed a grievance protesting the company’s allegedly unreasonable contracting out and claiming it effectively induced a partial lockout in violation of the CBA.
- Warrior & Gulf refused arbitration, asserting contracting out was a management function excluded from arbitration.
- The union sued under § 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act to compel arbitration; the district court dismissed and the Fifth Circuit affirmed.

## Issues

1. Whether, under § 301(a) of the LMRA, a grievance challenging contracting out is arbitrable when the CBA contains a broad arbitration clause but also excludes “matters which are strictly a function of management.”
2. What limits apply to judicial decisionmaking in a § 301 suit seeking to compel arbitration of a labor grievance.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the Fifth Circuit and directed that arbitration be compelled.
- The Court held the grievance was arbitrable because it could not be said with positive assurance that the broad arbitration clause was not susceptible to an interpretation covering the dispute.
- The Court ruled that doubts about coverage must be resolved in favor of arbitration.
- The Court concluded the vague management-function exclusion did not supply sufficiently forceful evidence that contracting-out grievances were excluded.
- The Court emphasized that it was for the arbitrator, not the courts, to decide whether the contracting out violated the CBA once the dispute was found arbitrable.

## Legal Principles

- Arbitration under a CBA is a matter of contract; a party cannot be compelled to arbitrate a dispute it did not agree to arbitrate.
- In a § 301(a) action, judicial inquiry is limited to whether the parties agreed to arbitrate the grievance; courts do not decide the merits of the grievance.
- A grievance should be ordered to arbitration unless the court can say with positive assurance that the arbitration clause is not susceptible to an interpretation covering the dispute; doubts are resolved in favor of arbitration.
- Absent an express exclusion, only the most forceful evidence of an intent to exclude a claim from arbitration will prevail, especially where the arbitration clause is broad and the exclusion clause is vague.
- Management decisions may be regulated by collective bargaining agreements; whether a particular management action violates the agreement is generally a question of contract meaning and application for the arbitrator when the parties have agreed to arbitrate such questions.

## Conclusion

The Court held that a broad labor-arbitration clause creates a strong presumption that disputes are arbitrable, and a general “management function” exclusion does not bar arbitration without clear, forceful evidence of exclusion; courts in § 301 actions must confine themselves to the gateway question of agreement to arbitrate and leave contract-interpretation merits to the arbitrator.


United Steelworkers of Am. v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 574 (1960)