80
Opinion of the Court
union could waive its officers' statutory right under § 8(a)(3) of the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U. S. C. § 158(a)(3), to be free of antiunion discrimination, but we held that such a waiver must be clear and unmistakable. "[W]e will not infer from a general contractual provision that the parties intended to waive a statutorily protected right unless the undertaking is 'explicitly stated.' More succinctly, the waiver must be clear and unmistakable." 460 U. S., at 708; see also Livadas v. Bradshaw, 512 U. S. 107, 125 (1994) (dictum); Lingle v. Norge Div. of Magic Chef, Inc., 486 U. S. 399, 409, n. 9 (1988) (dictum); cf. Mastro Plastics Corp. v. NLRB, 350 U. S. 270, 283 (1956).
We think the same standard applicable to a union-negotiated waiver of employees' statutory right to a judicial forum for claims of employment discrimination. Although that is not a substantive right, see Gilmer, 500 U. S., at 26, and whether or not Gardner-Denver's seemingly absolute prohibition of union waiver of employees' federal forum rights survives Gilmer, Gardner-Denver at least stands for the proposition that the right to a federal judicial forum is of sufficient importance to be protected against less-than-explicit union waiver in a CBA. The CBA in this case does not meet that standard. Its arbitration clause is very general, providing for arbitration of "[m]atters under dispute," App. 43a—which could be understood to mean matters in dispute under the contract. And the remainder of the contract contains no explicit incorporation of statutory antidiscrimination requirements. (Indeed, it does not even contain, as did the CBAs in Austin and Gardner-Denver, its own specific antidiscrimination provision.) The Fourth Circuit relied upon the fact that the equivalently broad arbitration clause in Gilmer—applying to "any dispute, claim or controversy"—was held to embrace federal statutory claims. But Gilmer involved an individual's waiver of his own rights, rather than a union's waiver of the rights of represented em-
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007