78
Opinion of the Court
Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U. S. 593 (1960); Steelworkers v. American Mfg. Co., 363 U. S. 564 (1960); Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Nav. Co., 363 U. S. 574 (1960). In collective-bargaining agreements, we have said, "there is a presumption of arbitrability in the sense that '[a]n order to arbitrate the particular grievance should not be denied unless it may be said with positive assurance that the arbitration clause is not susceptible of an interpretation that covers the asserted dispute.' " AT&T Technologies, Inc. v. Communications Workers, 475 U. S. 643, 650 (1986) (quoting Warrior & Gulf, supra, at 582-583).
That presumption, however, does not extend beyond the reach of the principal rationale that justifies it, which is that arbitrators are in a better position than courts to interpret the terms of a CBA. See AT&T Technologies, supra, at 650; Warrior & Gulf, supra, at 581-582. This rationale finds support in the very text of the LMRA, which announces that "[f]inal adjustment by a method agreed upon by the parties is declared to be the desirable method for settlement of grievance disputes arising over the application or interpretation of an existing collective-bargaining agreement." 29 U. S. C. § 173(d) (emphasis added). The dispute in the present case, however, ultimately concerns not the application or
does not apply to this case, see Brief for Petitioner 43-44, and asserted that respondents "have not argued at any stage of this case that the F. A. A. applies," id., at 43. Respondents did not dispute the latter assertion, nor did they argue the applicability of the FAA before us; rather, they contended that it makes no difference whether the FAA applies, since the FAA presumption and the LMRA presumption are the same, see Brief for Respondents 12; Tr. of Oral Arg. 42-43. Finally, the Fourth Circuit, while it cited an FAA case, Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U. S. 1, 24-25 (1983), did not explicitly rely upon the FAA—presumably because it has held elsewhere that the FAA does not apply to CBAs, see Austin v. Owens-Brockway Glass Container, Inc., 78 F. 3d 875, 879 (CA4), cert. denied, 519 U. S. 980 (1996). In these circumstances, we decline to consider the applicability of the FAA to the present case.
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007