The Enforceability of Interest Arbitration Agreements Under Section 301(a) of the Labor Management Relations Act

When labor and management representatives enter into negotiations over a dispute, it is with the understanding that the process may not result in agreement between the parties. When the negotiations break down, the dispute often takes the form of economic warfare: a strike against the employer or an employer's lockout of the union's members. But the economic battlefield need not be the final site of the collective-bargaining process if the parties agree to submit their unresolved dispute to binding arbitration. If the dispute concerns the rights or obligations of one of the parties under the present collective-bargaining agreement, the arbitration is termed "grievance," "rights," or "quasi-judicial" arbitration. If the disagreement pertains to the terms of a future collective-bargaining agreement between the parties, the ensuing arbitration is termed "interest," "prospective," or "quasi-legislative" arbitration.The resolution of the conflict over the enforceability of interest arbitration agreements gained added importance with the adoption, in 1973, of the "Experimental Negotiating Agreement" (ENA) between the United Steelworkers of America and the IO-company "Basic Steel Group."This Note will analyze the conflict within lower federal court decisions on this question, and will examine the rationale for a decision by the Supreme Court with regard to enforceability. In particular, the status of interest arbitration in light of federal labor policy-the source of the substantive federal law prescribed by Lincoln Mills for section 301(a) actions38-will be analyzed. This analysis will demonstrate that section 301(a) may provide no substantive federal law which is applicable to interest arbitration agreements, and that doubts as to the jurisdiction of federal courts to enforce such agreements should be resolved against enforcement. Further, federal labor policy is at best unclear on the question of enforcement, and may support a refusal to compel the arbitration of interest disputes as a matter of federal substantive law