Click here to view the decision.
62 FLRA No. 34
United States Department of Defense, Defense Logistics Agency And United States Department of the Air Force, Air Force Materiel Command And American Federation of Government Employees, Local 916 (Williams, Arbitrator), 0-AR-4033 (July 17, 2007)
The Arbitrator sustained a grievance over a traffic citation because the Agencies refused to appear at the arbitration hearing.
On exceptions filed by the Agency, the Authority concluded that the award was deficient and set it aside.
The Authority found that the award was based on a nonfact, and the award fails to draw its essence from the agreement in that in was not a plausible interpretation of the master agreement. To establish that an award is based on a nonfact, the appealing party must show that a central fact underlying the award is clearly erroneous, but for which the arbitrator would have reached a different result. Here, the Authority found that the Arbitrator mistakenly found that the relevant memorandum of agreement (MOA) applied to the grievant, even though the Union was not a party to the MOA and the grievant was not a member of the bargaining unit covered by the MOA. The Authority determined that if the Arbitrator had understood that the MOA was not enforceable by the Union, then he would not have sustained the grievance that sought to enforce the MOA. Further, the Authority found that by finding that the MOA was enforceable by the Union, the award is not a plausible interpretation of the MOA, and, as a result, that the award fails to draw its essence from the MOA.