## Facts

- On July 24, 1997, a collective-bargaining agreement (CBA) between Yokohama Tire Corporation and Local Union No. 1023 became effective for a tire-manufacturing plant in Virginia.
- The CBA provided that disputes involving interpretation of the CBA would be decided through the contractual grievance-and-arbitration process.
- The CBA tied the arbitrator’s authority to whether a grievance was submitted in the manner and within the time limits set out in the agreement.
- Under the grievance procedure, a grievance had to be submitted within five working days after the employee “reasonably should have had knowledge of the occurrence or event” giving rise to the grievance.
- A separate letter, incorporated into the CBA, stated that grievance time limits could be extended only by mutual agreement of the parties.
- An employee was on a leave of absence due to workplace injuries.
- On July 30, 2001, Yokohama terminated the employee, stating it had no jobs available that the employee could perform within the employee’s physical restrictions.
- On August 30, 2001, the union filed a grievance challenging the termination, asserting it was not for just cause and that Yokohama should have continued the employee’s leave of absence rather than discharge the employee.
- Yokohama objected that the grievance was untimely because it was filed well outside the five-working-day limit.
- The union argued the grievance was timely because the discharge amounted to a continuing violation.
- The record did not establish a mutual agreement extending the filing deadline.

## Issues

1. Whether the union’s discharge grievance, filed about one month after the termination, satisfied the CBA’s requirement that grievances be submitted within five working days after the employee reasonably should have known of the event.
2. Whether a discharge may be treated as a continuing violation that keeps a grievance timely beyond the contractual filing period.
3. If the grievance was timely and arbitrable, whether Yokohama terminated the injured employee for just cause under the CBA.

## Decision

- The arbitrator determined the grievance was not filed within the CBA’s five-working-day time limit.
- The arbitrator rejected the union’s argument that the discharge was a continuing violation for purposes of restarting or extending the filing period.
- Because the CBA conditioned arbitral authority on compliance with the contractual grievance procedure, the arbitrator dismissed the grievance as not arbitrable.
- The arbitrator did not reach the merits of whether the termination was for just cause.

## Legal Principles

- When a CBA states that an arbitrator’s authority depends on a grievance being submitted under the agreement’s procedures, contractual filing deadlines may operate as a gateway requirement to arbitration.
- A discharge is typically treated as a single, identifiable event that starts the contractual grievance-filing clock; continuing economic effects of the discharge do not convert it into an ongoing contractual violation for timeliness purposes.
- Where a CBA (or incorporated side letter) permits extensions of grievance time limits only by mutual agreement, a party seeking to excuse a late filing must show that such a mutual extension occurred.

## Conclusion

In *Yokohama Tire Corp.*, the arbitrator enforced the CBA’s five-working-day grievance deadline, treated the discharge as a discrete event rather than a continuing violation, and dismissed the union’s grievance as untimely because no mutually agreed extension was shown, leaving the just-cause question undecided.


Yokohama Tire Corp., 117 Lab. Arb. Rep. 509 (2002)