United Nurses of Children’s Hosp. v. Rady Children’s Hosp. – San Diego (Summary)

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING/ARBITRATION

United Nurses of Children’s Hosp. v. Rady Children’s Hosp. – San Diego, No. 13-CV-2133-LAB-JMA (S.D. Cal. May 9, 2014)

The United States District Court for the Southern District of California denied an employee union’s motion to compel arbitration of certain issues.  A respiratory therapist (“RT”) was issued a final warning by her hospital employer for multiple instances of misconduct, placed on an improvement plan, and transferred from the neonatal emergency transport team to a clinical position with lower pay.  The union filed a grievance and a demand for arbitration on behalf of the RT.  In the grievance, the union challenged the hospital’s actions against the RT.  The arbitration process, however, never materialized because the parties could not agree on a statement of issues.  Specifically, the parties could not agree on whether the RT’s transfer amounted to discipline under the collective bargaining agreement (“CBA”).  The union argued that the hospital’s refusal to agree to its framing of the statement amounted to the hospital refusing to arbitrate whether the RT’s transfer was for disciplinary reasons and, if so, was for just cause.  The court held that the hospital did not refuse arbitration because it agreed to arbitrate whether the transfer was a violation of the CBA. This would allow the arbitrator to also address whether the transfer was for disciplinary reasons.  According to the court, rather than refusing to arbitrate, the hospital refused to give up an argument about the nature of the transfer and, regardless of the argument’s propriety, the hospital could not be forced to relinquish it.