This month, we discuss Local 348-S, UFCW, AFL-CIO v. Meridian Management Corp.,1 in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed a district court decision holding that a successor employer has an obligation to arbitrate the issue of whether, and to what extent, it is bound by the substantive terms of a predecessor’s collective bargaining agreement (CBA). In the majority’s decision, written by Judge Peter W. Hall and joined by District Judge Colleen McMahon (sitting by designation), the court expanded the circumstances in which a successor employer may be bound by the substantive terms of a pre-existing CBA.
The decision creates a split with the Third Circuit, which had concluded, on analogous facts, in AmeriSteel Corp. v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters2 that a successor employer cannot be bound by the substantive provisions of its predecessor’s CBA without consent. Judge Debra Ann Livingston dissented in a separate opinion, noting that, under the majority’s decision, “all successor employers who hire the bulk of a predecessor’s employees [will] have a duty not only to bargain with and recognize a union but also to arbitrate with it the extent to which it is bound by the previous CBA.”3
Procedural History
