Cite as: 512 U. S. 107 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
v. White Motor Corp., 435 U. S. 497, 504 (1978) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted); see also New York Telephone Co. v. New York State Dept. of Labor, 440 U. S. 519, 533 (1979) (plurality opinion).
2
We begin with the most complete of the defenses mounted by the Commissioner, one that seems (or seemed until recently, at least) to be at the heart of her position: that the challenged policy, far from being pre-empted by federal law, is positively compelled by it, and that even if the Commissioner had been so inclined, the LMRA § 301 would have precluded enforcement of Livadas's penalty claim. The non-enforcement policy, she suggests, is a necessary emanation from this Court's § 301 pre-emption jurisprudence, marked as it has been by repeated admonitions that courts should steer clear of collective-bargaining disputes between parties who have provided for arbitration. See, e. g., Allis-Chalmers Corp. v. Lueck, 471 U. S. 202 (1985). Because, this argument runs (and Livadas was told in the DLSE no-action letter), disposition of a union-represented employee's penalty claim entails the "interpretation or application" of a collective-bargaining agreement (since determining the amount owed turns on the contractual rate of pay agreed) resort to a state tribunal would lead it into territory that Congress, in enacting § 301, meant to be covered exclusively by arbitrators.
This reasoning, however, mistakes both the functions § 301 serves in our national labor law and our prior decisions according that provision pre-emptive effect. To be sure, we have read the text of § 301 15 not only to grant federal courts jurisdiction over claims asserting breach of collective-15 Section 301 states that "[s]uits for violation of contracts between an employer and a labor organization representing employees . . . may be brought in any district court of the United States having jurisdiction of the parties . . . ." 29 U. S. C. § 185(a).
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