264
Opinion of the Court
putes is inconsistent with two of our prior cases, Elgin, J. & E. R. Co. v. Burley, 325 U. S. 711 (1945), and Conrail, 491 U. S., at 302. Burley was not a pre-emption case. Rather, it concerned the authority of union officials to settle railroad workers' individual claims for damages for alleged violations of the CBA. The railroad urged that the union representative, who had the authority to negotiate CBA's in major disputes, enjoyed similar authority to settle individual claims in minor disputes. In the course of rejecting this claim, the Court described minor disputes as including the "omitted case," that is, one "founded upon some incident of the employment relation, or asserted one, independent of those covered by the collective agreement, e. g., claims on account of personal injuries." 325 U. S., at 723.
This language is sweeping, but its effect is limited. The conflict in Burley, which the parties agreed was a minor dispute, concerned the terms of a CBA, and not some other "incident of the employment relationship," or any "omitted case." These references, therefore, are dicta. Moreover, even the "omitted case" dictum logically can refer to a norm that the parties have created but have omitted from the CBA's explicit language, rather than to a norm established by a legislature or a court.10 Finally, Burley's one specific example of an "omitted case"—claims for personal injury that do not depend on the contract—was found in Buell to be outside the RLA's exclusive jurisdiction. Nonetheless, to avoid any confusion, we expressly disavow any language in
10 See Detroit & Toledo Shore Line R. Co. v. Transportation Union, 396 U. S. 142, 154-155 (1969) ("Where a condition is satisfactorily tolerable to both sides, it is often omitted from the agreement, and it has been suggested that this practice is more frequent in the railroad industry than in most others") (emphasis added); Consolidated Rail Corporation v. Railway Labor Executives' Assn., 491 U. S. 299, 311-312 (1989) (recognizing that CBA's include implied terms arising from " 'practice, usage and custom' "); see also Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Nav. Co., 363 U. S. 574, 578-579 (1960) (a CBA is "more than a contract; it is a generalized code to govern a myriad of cases which the draft[ers] cannot wholly anticipate").
Page: Index Previous 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007