44
Opinion of the Court
duty of fair representation merely by negotiating a union security clause that uses the statutory language without expressly explaining, in the agreement, the refinements introduced by our decisions in General Motors and Beck. To rephrase the question slightly, petitioner's claim is that even if the union has an exemplary notification procedure and even if the union enforces the union security clause in perfect conformity with federal law, the mere negotiation of a union security clause that tracks the language of the NLRA breaches the duty of fair representation. We hold that it does not.
B
When a labor organization has been selected as the exclusive representative of the employees in a bargaining unit, it has a duty, implied from its status under § 9(a) of the NLRA as the exclusive representative of the employees in the unit, to represent all members fairly. See, e. g., Ford Motor Co. v. Huffman, 345 U. S. 330, 337 (1953); Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U. S. 171, 177 (1967). As we described this duty in Vaca v. Sipes, the duty of fair representation requires a union "to serve the interests of all members without hostility or discrimination toward any, to exercise its discretion with complete good faith and honesty, and to avoid arbitrary conduct." Ibid. In other words, a union breaches the duty of fair representation when its conduct toward a member of the bargaining unit is arbitrary, discriminatory, or in bad faith. Id., at 190. See also Air Line Pilots v. O'Neill, 499 U. S. 65, 67 (1991) (reaffirming this tripartite standard). In this case, petitioner does not argue that SAG's negotiation of the union security clause was discriminatory, so we only consider whether SAG's conduct was arbitrary or in bad faith.
Petitioner argues that in Beck, we redefined the standard for evaluating when a union's conduct is "arbitrary." Petitioner reads our decision in Beck to hold that the union's conduct was arbitrary merely because its actions violated the statute. According to petitioner, because we did not
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