Rose v. RTN Federal Credit Union ( 2021 )

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 20-1470
ANDREA ROSE,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
RTN FEDERAL CREDIT UNION,
Defendant, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. William G. Young, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Howard, Chief Judge,
Selya, Circuit Judge,
and Gelpí,* District Judge.
Raven Moeslinger, with whom Law Office of Nicholas F. Ortiz,
P.C. was on brief, for appellant.
Liam Tomas O'Connell, with whom Natalie M. Cappellazzo and
Nutter McClennen & Fish LLP were on brief, for appellee.
June 10, 2021
* Of the District of Puerto Rico, sitting by designation.
SELYA, Circuit Judge. This appeal requires us to examine
the jurisdictional reach of section 301 of the Labor Management
Relations Act (LMRA), 29 U.S.C. § 185(a). Plaintiff-appellant
Andrea Rose argues that the district court applied section 301 too
expansively and asks us to reverse certain of the district court's
rulings favorable to her employer, defendant-appellee RTN Federal
Credit Union (RTN) — rulings that flowed from the district court's
assessment of section 301's broad preemptive effect. Concluding,
as we do, that the district court's application of section 301 was
beyond reproof, we affirm the judgment below.
I
We start by rehearsing the relevant facts and travel of
the case. Rose has been employed by RTN as a member service
representative — an hourly-wage position — since September 2014.
The position falls under the carapace of a collective bargaining
agreement (the CBA) between RTN and the Office and Professional
Employees International Union, AFL-CIO, Local 6 (the Union). Rose
ordinarily works forty to forty-five hours a week at RTN's branch
in Hudson, Massachusetts. She alleges, however, that RTN
periodically requires her to report to its branch in Dedham,
Massachusetts. Working in Dedham extends Rose's usual commute by
roughly an additional hour each way, but she alleges that she is
not compensated for the extra time and expense involved in such a
journey.
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Chafing at this perceived inequity, Rose sued RTN in a
Massachusetts state court. Her complaint asserted four separate
violations of the Commonwealth's labor laws: nonpayment of earned
wages, see Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 149, §§ 148, 150; nonpayment of
minimum fair wages, see id. ch. 151, § 1; nonpayment of overtime,
see id. ch. 151, §§ 1A, 1B; and failure to maintain proper payroll
records and issue suitable pay stubs, see id. ch. 149, § 148; id.
ch. 151, § 15; 454 Mass. Code Regs. 27.07(2).
All four of Rose's claims derive from a common nucleus
of operative fact — her intermittent treks to and from Dedham —
and a particular provision of state labor law. That provision,
454 Mass. Code Regs. 27.04(4)(b), stipulates that an employee who
"regularly works at a fixed location" must be compensated for the
extra time and expense involved in traveling to a location other
than her "regular work site."1 The regulation does not elaborate
on the meaning of several of its component terms (such as "fixed
location").
1 The regulation reads:
If an employee who regularly works at a fixed
location is required to report to a location
other than his or her regular work site, the
employee shall be compensated for all travel
time in excess of his or her ordinary travel
time between home and work and shall be
reimbursed for associated transportation
expenses.
454 Mass. Code Regs. 27.04(4)(b).
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Rose's complaint sought recovery of compensation for
unpaid wages and expenses, as well as unpaid overtime (to the
extent that her added travel time was in excess of a forty-hour
work week). It also sought damages for RTN's alleged failure to
account for her travel time and to maintain required payroll
records.
RTN removed the suit to the federal district court. See
28 U.S.C. § 1441. In its notice of removal, RTN represented that
Rose's claims, although articulated exclusively in state-law
terms, implicated federal interests in a manner sufficient to
trigger federal question jurisdiction. See 28 U.S.C. § 1331(conferring jurisdiction over cases "arising under the
Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States"); see also
Lawless v. Steward Health Care Sys., LLC, 894 F.3d 9, 17 (1st Cir.
2018). Federal question jurisdiction is, of course, a form of
subject matter jurisdiction. See Valentin v. Hosp. Bella Vista,
254 F.3d 358, 362-63 (1st Cir. 2001); see also Prou v. United
States, 199 F.3d 37, 45 (1st Cir. 1999).
To be sure, federal question jurisdiction ordinarily
implies satisfaction of the well-pleaded complaint rule, which
provides that "federal jurisdiction exists only when a federal
question is presented on the face of the plaintiff's properly
pleaded complaint." Caterpillar Inc. v. Williams, 482 U.S. 386,
392 (1987). But this general rule — like most general rules —
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admits of exceptions. A defendant may remove a case to federal
court under federal question jurisdiction by virtue of complete
preemption — a jurisdictional doctrine that operates when "the
pre-emptive force of a [federal] statute is so 'extraordinary'
that it 'converts an ordinary state common-law complaint into one
stating a federal claim.'" Id. at 393 (quoting Metro. Life Ins.
Co. v. Taylor, 481 U.S. 58, 65 (1987)). Here, RTN invoked the
complete preemption doctrine and removed Rose's suit on the theory
that a federal statute (the LMRA) transmogrified Rose's state-law
claims into federal claims.
Rose moved to remand the case, arguing that her claims
"ar[ose] exclusively under state law." RTN opposed the motion and
cross-moved for judgment on the pleadings. Following a hearing,
the district court denied Rose's remand motion. The court
concluded that "[a]djudication of Rose's claims requires
interpretation of the collective bargaining agreement" and, thus,
supported the premise that federal question jurisdiction existed.2
The court reserved decision on RTN's cross-motion.
In a written rescript, the district court subsequently
granted RTN's motion for judgment on the pleadings. See Rose v.
RTN Fed. Credit Union, No. 19-cv-11854, slip op. (D. Mass. Dec. 9,
2The district court did not originally offer an explanation
for its refusal to remand but explicated its reasoning at a later
time.
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2019) (unpublished). The court noted the CBA's directive that
"any differences," if not otherwise settled between RTN and Union
representatives, would have to be resolved by arbitration. Id. at
2. Since the CBA's broadly worded grievance provision encompassed
Rose's claims, Rose was bound to its terms. See id. at 3; see
also Republic Steel Corp. v. Maddox, 379 U.S. 650, 652 (1965)
("[F]ederal labor policy requires that individual employees
wishing to assert contract grievances must [at least] attempt use
of the contract grievance procedure agreed upon by employer and
union as the mode of redress." (emphasis omitted)). And because
Rose had made no attempt to arbitrate her claims, her suit could
not proceed. See Rose, slip op. at 2-3.
The court then administratively closed the case,
presumably to allow Rose an opportunity to grieve and arbitrate
her claims. Rose declined this opportunity. Instead, she later
urged the court to enter judgment in RTN's favor, thus allowing
her to perfect this appeal.
II
We afford de novo review both to the district court's
denial of the motion to remand and to its subsequent entry of
judgment on the pleadings. See Rueli v. Baystate Health, Inc.,
835 F.3d 53, 62 (1st Cir. 2016). In this instance, our review
takes place against the background principle that section 301 of
the LMRA, see 29 U.S.C. § 185(a), completely preempts any state-
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law cause of action "founded directly on rights created by
collective-bargaining agreements" or "substantially dependent on
analysis of a collective-bargaining agreement." Caterpillar, 482
U.S. at 394; see Franchise Tax Bd. of Cal. v. Constr. Laborers
Vacation Tr. for S. Cal., 463 U.S. 1, 23 (1983).
A
Before us, Rose's chief contention is that her state-
law claims can and should be adjudicated independently of the CBA.
In her view, her claims do not "depend on a court interpreting any
of [the CBA's] provisions" and, thus, complete preemption is
inapposite. We do not agree.
It is by now apodictic that the LMRA thoroughly occupies
the field of labor contract disputes. See Allis-Chalmers Corp. v.
Lueck, 471 U.S. 202, 211 (1985) (concluding that any "questions
relating to what the parties to a labor agreement agreed, and what
legal consequences were intended to flow from breaches of that
agreement, must be resolved by reference to uniform federal law").
Even so, the LMRA's reach is not unlimited: "not every dispute
concerning employment, or tangentially involving a provision of a
collective-bargaining agreement, is preempted by [section] 301."
Id. State laws that establish substantive rights, obligations, or
prohibitions independent of any labor contract do not implicate
the same sort of federal questions. See id. at 211-12. In the
last analysis, LMRA preemption of a given state-law claim depends
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upon whether the claim's adjudication appears to be "inextricably
intertwined with consideration of the terms of [a] labor contract."
Id. at 213; see Cavallaro v. UMass Memorial Healthcare, Inc., 678
F.3d 1, 7 (1st Cir. 2012).
When the removal of a case to a federal court is
challenged, the removing party normally "bears the burden of
persuasion vis-à-vis the existence of federal jurisdiction." BIW
Deceived v. Local S6, Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding
Workers, 132 F.3d 824, 831 (1st Cir. 1997). That burden, though,
is not necessarily a heavy one. This is such a case: a state-
law claim may escape LMRA preemption only if it requires no more
than "bare" consultation of a CBA, without dispute as to "the
meaning of [any] contract terms." Livadas v. Bradshaw, 512 U.S.
107, 124 (1994). If a claim plausibly requires interpretation of
one or more provisions of a CBA, it comes within the LMRA's
preemptive sweep. See Adames v. Executive Airlines, Inc., 258
F.3d 7, 11-12 (1st Cir. 2001).
The border between interpretation and bare consultation
can be hazy and, therefore, "difficult to plot." Lawless, 894
F.3d at 18 (citing Livadas, 512 U.S. at 124 n.18). This case,
however, does not closely approach the border: on their face,
Rose's state-law claims require more than bare consultation of the
CBA. They substantially depend on construing the terms of the
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agreement (the CBA) that RTN and the Union negotiated. We explain
briefly.
Importantly, Massachusetts case law is sparse with
respect to the portion of the regulation upon which Rose relies
(subsection 27.04(4)(b)). The only pertinent reported case is
Taggart v. Town of Wakefield, 938 N.E.2d 897 (Mass. App. Ct. 2010).
That decision makes pellucid that applying the regulation is a
fact-sensitive exercise, especially because the regulation itself
leaves critical terms undefined. See id. at 900. For instance,
the Taggart court noted that the term "fixed location," as used in
the regulation, "concerns the nature of the employee's present
work site at the time the employee is required to report to that
site." Id. A site that "change[s] from day to day, or after a
short period of time . . . [cannot] be considered 'fixed.'" Id.
at 900-01. So, too, an employee reports to a "fixed" location to
the extent that her destination is "'stationary' and 'not subject
to change'" for the duration of her reporting period, even if the
assignment itself is a temporary one. Id. at 901. What is more,
"the relevance of the length of the assignment will depend
significantly on the industry to which it is being applied." Id.
at 900.
In the case at hand, the fact-sensitive nature of the
inquiry counsels persuasively in favor of analyzing the terms of
the CBA. It is not clear how often RTN requires Rose to report to
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Dedham, how long her assignments to that site last, or under what
circumstances those assignments arise. The pertinent CBA
provisions, when analyzed, may shed needed light on these subjects.
For example, those assignments may or may not fall within the CBA's
express provision governing "temporary transfers," which states:
When, in the case of a temporary situation,
two (2) weeks or less, management shall have
the right to select the employee to be
transferred from the selected Branch Office.
Without limiting managements' [sic] right to
make the transfer decision, [RTN] agrees that
seniority of employees will be taken into
consideration at the time of transfer.
Temporary transfers of two (2) or more weeks
shall be offered at the appropriate branch
office to volunteers first. If there are no
volunteers, the least senior person the
appropriate classification shall be
transferred.
And Rose's eligibility for benefits under 454 Mass. Code Reg.
27.04(4)(b) may well depend upon how this provision is interpreted.
Cf. Taggart, 938 N.E.2d at 901-02 (concluding that plaintiffs were
ineligible for added travel compensation where CBA anticipated a
temporary assignment).
That Rose's state-law claims require interpretation of
the CBA's temporary transfer provision suffices to ground the
application of LMRA preemption.3 After all, "[f]ederal subject-
3 Although the district court did not specifically mention
the temporary transfer provision, we may affirm the court's
judgment "for any valid reason that finds support in the record."
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matter jurisdiction exists as long as—at the time of removal—there
was a seemingly valid or genuine argument that adjudication of the
plaintiff's claim would require construction of the CBA." Lawless,
894 F.3d at 18. So it is here.
If more were needed — and we do not believe that it is
— we have left no doubt that any claim that entails a court
"determining what (if anything) is owed" to an employee who is
within a bargaining unit will almost always "depend[] at least
arguably on interpretations and applications of the CBA at issue."
Cavallaro, 678 F.3d at 8. In this case, we think it more than
arguable — indeed, plain — that adjudicating Rose's state-law wage
claims will "require construing and applying the various
'peculiarities of industry-specific wage and benefit structures'
embodied in the CBA." Id. (quoting Adames, 258 F.3d at 13). Given
that the CBA adds qualifications to wage rates in light of a
variety of factors and also adds qualifications to when and how
overtime is to be computed, the need for such interpretations seems
unavoidable. Provisions such as those governing "hours of work,"
"premium time," "overtime," and "classification and wages" will
have to be analyzed. And Rose's record-keeping claim exists
downstream of these provisions because "[a]ccurate records
. . . depend on what the CBA provided as wages." Id.Ross-Simons of Warwick, Inc. v. Baccarat, Inc., 217 F.3d 8, 10
(1st Cir. 2000).
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Rose resists this conclusion. She relies upon Livadas,
where the Supreme Court held that an employee's state-law claim,
through which she sought to charge her employer for late payment
of wages owed upon discharge, did not require interpretation of a
CBA. See 512 U.S. at 124-25. But she is comparing cantaloupes
with coconuts. In Livadas, there was no dispute "over the amount
of the penalty to which [the employee] would be entitled," and the
case was susceptible to resolution simply by consulting a calendar
(rather than the CBA). Id. at 125.
This case, by contrast, is more analogous to Adames.
There, the plaintiffs (flight attendants) sought relief under
Puerto Rico law for, among other things, uncompensated work time,
overtime, meal periods, and sick leave. See 258 F.3d at 10. We
held that the merits of the attendants' claims substantially
depended on interpreting the CBA between their union and Executive
Airlines (their employer). See id. at 13-16. The attendants'
suit required the court to go beyond mere reference to the CBA in
order to lend meaning to ambiguous state-law terms (e.g., "company
policy"), to gauge how different CBA provisions impacted the
accrual of work hours and benefits within a fixed period, and to
ascertain the attendants' "regular" pay rate for the purposes of
calculating relief owed. Id.As in Adames, Rose's claims likewise demand that a court
assess what blocs of her time were compensable under the CBA, and
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at what rate. Rose tries to frame these questions as susceptible
to straightforward resolution, suggesting (for example) that
determining the overtime compensation due to her would require no
more than multiplying her extra commuting time by time-and-one-
half at her regular rate of pay.4 But determining Rose's regular
rate of pay and the extent to which the commuting hours are
overtime hours requires interpretation of various provisions of
the CBA. Compare id. at 16 (finding claims preempted when CBA
interpretation was necessary to determine whether a claim's
"factual predicates" give rise to liability), with Lab. Rels. Div.
of Constr. Indus. of Mass., Inc. v. Healey, 844 F.3d 318, 328 (1st
Cir. 2016) (declining to find claim preempted when liability
existed "entirely independent of any CBA terms"). Thus, Rose's
wage claims depend "upon what the CBA provides [with respect to
wages] . . . even if these amounts were in turn altered or enlarged
by state statutory provisions." Cavallaro, 678 F.3d at 5.
B
Rose has a fallback position, which focuses on the CBA's
grievance provision.5 She notes that the district court ruled that
4Rose's very framing of the question sends up a red flag.
The case law is littered with admonitions that artful pleading of
facts cannot be employed as a means of avoiding LMRA preemption.
See, e.g., BIW Deceived, 132 F.3d at 831; Oglesby v. RCA Corp.,
752 F.2d 272, 277-78 (7th Cir. 1985).
5Rose did not advance this line of argument before the
district court. But RTN, though noting that the district court
said that this line of argument had not been raised, has not asked
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this provision bound her to pursue her claims through arbitration.
See Rose, slip op. at 2-3. That ruling was in error, she contends,
because the grievance provision neither encompasses her claims nor
offers her any responsive remedy. This contention lacks force.
We agree that, as a general matter, a plaintiff is not
bound to arbitrate statutory claims that are wholly separate and
apart from CBA-related rights and obligations. See, e.g., O'Brien
v. Town of Agawam, 350 F.3d 279, 284-85 (1st Cir. 2003). Here,
however, Rose's claims engender analysis and interpretation of the
CBA, see text supra, thereby placing them squarely within the maw
of the broadly worded grievance provision.6 See Allis-Chalmers,
471 U.S. at 220-21; Rueli, 835 F.3d at 59-60.
Striking from another angle, Rose describes arbitration
as ill-suited to afford her relief because the process "only
appl[ies] to 'any differences as to the interpretation of the
[CBA]' . . . [and] the CBA does not contain a provision Rose could
invoke in order to recover wages and expenses due under the
us to hold that the line of argument is foreclosed by waiver. See
Teamsters Union, Local No. 59 v. Superline Transp. Co., 953 F.2d
17, 21 (1st Cir. 1992) ("If any principle is settled in this
circuit, it is that, absent the most extraordinary circumstances,
legal theories not raised squarely in the lower court cannot be
broached for the first time on appeal."). Given this curious
procedural posture, we elect to meet the argument head on.
6 The grievance provision is contained in Article XXIX of the
CBA. It applies to any dispute between RTN and an employee within
the bargaining unit that involves "differences as to the
interpretation of the [CBA] . . . ."
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Massachusetts travel time regulations." This boils down to a
plaint that arbitration offers Rose no suitable remedy. Such a
plaint reflects an overly "casuistic reading of the contract [that]
cannot be accepted." Republic Steel, 379 U.S. at 659. Arbitrators
traditionally enjoy wide latitude to fashion solutions to
problems, and that latitude is especially appropriate in cases —
like this one — in which "[t]he draftsmen [of a CBA] may never
have thought of what specific remedy should be awarded to meet a
particular contingency." Steelworkers of Am. v. Enter. Wheel &
Car Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 597 (1960).
That ends this aspect of the matter. We hold that this
case comes within the jurisdictional reach of the LMRA and that
the district court did not err either in denying Rose's motion to
remand or in granting judgment on the pleadings for RTN.
III
We need go no further. For the reasons elucidated above,
the judgment of the district court is
Affirmed.
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