International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, Transportation Division v. Norfolk Southern Railway Company

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
NORTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO
EASTERN DIVISON
International Association of, Sheet Metal, ) CASE NO. 1:25 CV 82
Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, )
Transportation Division, )
)
Petitioner, ) JUDGE PATRICIA A. GAUGHAN
)
vs. )
)
Norfolk Southern Railway Company, )
) Memorandum of Opinion and Order
)
Respondent. )
INTRODUCTION
This matter is before the Court upon respondent Norfolk Southern Railway Company’s
Motion for Summary Judgment or Remand (Doc. 13) and petitioner SMART-TD’s Motion for
Summary Judgment (Doc. 14). This a petition to enforce two public law board arbitration awards
under the Railway Labor Act. For the reasons that follow, Norfolk Southern Railway Company’s
Motion for Summary Judgment or Remand (Doc. 13) is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN
PART. The Court grants the alternative relief of remand, but no other requested relief. SMART-
TD’s Motion for Summary Judgment (Doc. 14) is DENIED.
BACKGROUND
Petitioner, International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers,
Transportation Division (“SMART-TD”) brought this petition against respondent Norfolk Southern
Railway Company (“Norfolk Southern”) to enforce two separate arbitration awards issued by
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Public Law Board No. 7569 (“the Board”), in Case No. 0031 (the “Russell Award”) and Case No.
0027 (the “White Award”) (together, the “Awards”).
Norfolk Southern is a corporation engaged in interstate transportation by rail. Norfolk
Southern is a “carrier” as defined by the Railway Labor Act (“RLA”). SMART-TD is a labor
organization representing Norfolk Southern’s employees in the craft or class of “Conductors and
Trainmen,” which consists of Conductors, Brakemen and Switchmen. SMART-TD is a
“representative” as defined by the RLA.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (“BLET”) is a labor organization
that represents Norfolk Southern employees in the craft or class of Locomotive Engineers. Under
the RLA, while Locomotive Engineers are governed by collective bargaining agreements between
Norfolk Southern and BLET, they have the right to elect to be represented by SMART-TD in
disciplinary proceedings, which both engineers elected to do for the proceedings at issue here.
A. The “Russell Award”
On August 28, 2021, Mr. Russell was evacuating himself and his family, including his
pregnant wife, because of Hurricane Ida’s impending landfall in Louisiana and, accordingly, did not
report to work that day. By letter dated September 7, 2021, Norfolk Southern notified Mr. Russell
of an investigation hearing for allegedly failing to protect his assignment on August 28, 2021, and
dismissed him from service by letter dated October 1, 2021.
A claim was filed on Mr. Russell’s behalf seeking, “restoration to the [sic] service with
seniority unimpaired, payment of all lost time, including holiday and vacation time, and all
notations of the incident removed from his personal service record.” (Doc. 1-2, at 1.) SMART-TD
progressed said claim, including through arbitration before the Board.
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On January 18, 2023, the Board issued its decision, finding that the discipline assessed was
excessive and reduced the discipline to a 10-day deferred suspension. The Board’s “Award” section
read, “[c]laim sustained in accordance with the findings. Claimant is to be reinstated with backpay,
with a 10-day deferred suspension.” (Id. at 3.)
B. The “White Award”
By letter dated September 21, 2021, Norfolk Southern notified Mr. White of an
investigation hearing to be held on September 28, 2021, regarding his alleged failure to maintain an
acceptable work record due to excessive absenteeism. Mr. White was subsequently dismissed from
service by letter dated October 7, 2021.
A claim was filed on Mr. White’s behalf seeking, “restoration to the [sic] service with
seniority unimpaired, payment of all lost time, including holiday and vacation pay, and all notations
of the incident removed from his personal service record.” (Doc. 1-3, at 1.) SMART-TD progressed
said claim, including through arbitration before the Board.
On January 18, 2023, the Board issued its decision, finding that the discipline assessed was
excessive and reducing the discipline to a 30-day suspension. The Board’s “Award” section read,
“[c]laim sustained in accordance with the findings.” (Id. at 3.)
C. The Parties’ Dispute Over the Deduction of Interim Earnings
SMART-TD contends that despite the Awards’ “clear mandates” that Norfolk Southern pay
Mr. White and Mr. Russell “all lost time,” Norfolk Southern has refused and instead sought to
deduct each man’s respective interim earnings from his backpay award. In its motion for summary
judgment, SMART-TD asks this Court to enforce the “unambiguous awards” and prevent
Northfork Southern from deducting any interim earnings.
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In its own motion for summary judgment, Norfolk Southern offers several reasons as to why
it believes that it is entitled to deduct interim earnings from the Awards, or, alternatively, why this
Court is without jurisdiction to find that Norfolk Southern cannot make such deductions. Relevant
to this Court’s disposition of the matter, Norfolk Southern asks the Court to remand this dispute to
the Board to clarify whether Norfolk Southern can deduct interim earnings from the awarded
backpay.1
ANALYSIS
The RLA governs labor relations in the railway industry through a “mandatory arbitral
mechanism for ‘the prompt and orderly settlement’ . . . of disputes.” Emswiler v. CXS Transp., Inc.,
691 F.3d 782, 785 (6th Cir. 2012) (quoting Hawaiian Airlines, Inc. v. Norris, 512 U.S. 246, 252
(1994) (quoting 45 U.S.C. § 151a)). “The RLA divides such disputes into two categories: major and
minor.” Id. “Major disputes concern the formation of collective bargaining agreements, whereas
minor disputes deal with the interpretation of existing CBAs.” Id. (citing Consol. Rail Corp. v. Ry.
Labor Execs.’ Ass’n, 491 U.S. 299, 302–03 (1989)).
The classification of a dispute is important when establishing jurisdiction because
arbitration is the “‘exclusive’ forum for resolving minor disputes.” NetJets Ass’n of Shared Aircraft
1 Norfolk Southern chiefly argues in its motion for summary judgment that the parties agreed
through a settlement in 2023 (the “2023 Settlement Agreement”) that any disputes over the
deduction of interim earnings in cases such as this would be resolved in arbitration pursuant to the
RLA, not through litigation. Alternatively, Norfolk Southern contends that any dispute as to
whether the 2023 Settlement Agreement applies is a “minor dispute” as that term is understood in
the context of the RLA, which must be resolved in arbitration.
It is not clear to this Court whether it has jurisdiction to determine whether the 2023 Settlement
Agreement covers this dispute. Regardless, because the Court finds the Awards to be ambiguous
and requiring remand to the Board, it need not reach the issue.
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Pilots v. NetJets Aviation, Inc., 601 F. App’x 408, 411 (6th Cir. 2015) (quoting Int’l Bhd. of
Teamsters, AFL–CIO, Teamsters Local Union No. 2727 v. United Parcel Serv. Co., 447 F.3d 491,
498 (6th Cir. 2006) (quoting Pa. R.R. Co. v. Day, 360 U.S. 548, 550 (1959))).
RLA section 153 First (m) specifies that awards issued by the Board are “final and binding.”
45 U.S.C. § 153 First (m). Nonetheless, aggrieved parties may petition the district court to intervene
in limited ways. First, a losing party can petition a district court to set the award aside based on, and
only on, a finding that the Board violated the RLA, exceeded the scope of its jurisdiction, or
committed fraud. 45 U.S.C. § 153 First (p). Second, a prevailing party may also ask the court to
enforce an award if the carrier has refused to comply. 45 U.S.C. § 153 First (p). Finally, either party
may ask the court to remand the award and direct further proceedings if the Board’s award is
incomplete or vague. Id. § 153 First (q); see also id. § 153 First (m) (“In case a dispute arises
involving an interpretation of the award, the division of the Board upon request of either party shall
interpret the award in the light of the dispute.”).
A district court’s jurisdiction to enforce an award under the RLA is exceedingly narrow. In
fact, the Supreme Court categorized it as “among the narrowest known to the law.” Union Pac. R.R.
Co. v. Sheehan, 439 U.S. 89, 91 (1978). “[T]he judicial duty to enforce an arbitration award . . . is
neither a duty nor a license to interpret it.” Int’l Ass’n of Sheet, Metal, Air, Rail & Transp. Workers,
Transp. Div. v. Kan. City S. Ry. Co. (“SMART-TD v. KCSR”), 126 F.4th 603, 608 (8th Cir. 2025)
(quoting Bhd. Ry. Carmen Div., Transp. Commc’ns Int’l Union, AFL-CIO v. Atchison, Topeka &
Santa Fe Ry. Co., 956 F.2d 156, 160 (7th Cir. 1992)). “When enforcing an award, a district court
may not implicitly interpret a collective-bargaining agreement.” Id. (quotation marks and citation
omitted). “Instead, a district court should remand to the original arbitration panel ‘[i]f an arbitration
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award is too ambiguous to be enforced, as “when the award fails to address a contingency that later
arises or when the award is susceptible to more than one interpretation.”’” Id. (quoting Bhd. of
Locomotive Eng’rs & Trainmen v. Union Pac. R.R. Co., 500 F.3d 591, 592 (7th Cir. 2007) (quoting
Green v. Ameritech Corp., 200 F.3d 967, 977 (6th Cir. 2000))).
Here, SMART-TD asks this Court to enforce the Awards, alleging that Norfolk Southern
has refused to comply with unambiguous Awards. In response, Norfolk Southern asks this Court to
remand this dispute to the Board to clarify whether Norfolk Southern can deduct interim earnings
from the awarded backpay.2 SMART-TD maintains that the Awards unambiguously require
Norfolk Southern to pay Mr. White and Mr. Russell for “all time lost” without deducting any
interim earnings. The Awards’ plain language, however, is not as clear as SMART-TD would have
this Court believe.
2 SMART-TD faults Norfolk Southern for not seeking clarification of the Awards before the Board
and contends that “failure to raise the offset issue while the matters were pending before the Board
means the argument is now waived.” (Doc. 18, at 15.) This Court is not convinced. First, the cases
cited by SMART-TD addressing waiver concerned issues clearly known to both parties during the
arbitration, such as procedural issues. (Id. (citing among authority Schneider v. S. Ry., 822 F.2d 22,
24 (6th Cir. 1987) (holding that employee’s failure to raise before panel any issues concerning
adequacy of notice he received from railroad and fairness of investigatory process in connection
with his dismissal for filing false injury report waived any procedural defects)).) The record before
this Court does not suggest Norfolk Southern was plainly on notice that there would be a dispute
over this issue during the arbitration proceedings. (See id. (citing Pittsburgh Metro Area Postal
Workers Union, AFL-CIO v. U.S. Postal Serv., 938 F. Supp. 2d 555, 563 n.9 (W.D. Penn. Apr. 2,
2013) (“This Court does not believe that it must decide here whether as a blanket rule, a party that
fails to bring an argument before an arbitrator always has irrevocably waived it for all time. What is
clear is that the USPS had the opportunity to address [the issue], and did not do so. . . [and] USPS
was plainly on notice that it needed to[.]”)).) Second, while it is true Norfolk Southern had not
returned to the Board seeking a clarification, it was SMART-TD who opted to file this suit seeking
enforcement, instead of seeking clarification before the Board. Even so, the RLA allows either party
to ask the court to remand the award and direct further proceedings if the Board’s award is
incomplete or vague. 45 U.S.C. § 153 First (q).
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As an initial matter, neither award makes any reference to the treatment of interim earnings.
The Russell Award concludes “[c]laim sustained in accordance with the findings. Claimant is to be
reinstated with backpay, with a 10-day deferred suspension[,]” while the White Award only
concludes “[c]laim sustained in accordance with the findings.”
SMART-TD seemingly contends that the Awards’ statement of “[c]laim sustained in
accordance with the findings,” demonstrates that the Board intended to adopt the claims, as
requested. But even if the Board did intend to adopt the claims as written—and it is not clear from
the language of the Awards that this is true3—it is not clear whether those claims prevent Norfolk
Southern from deducting interim earnings. Neither claim asks for backpay without the deduction of
interim earnings. Cf. Bhd. of Locomotive Eng’rs & Trainmen v. BNSF Ry. Co. (“BLET v. BNSF”),
549 F. App’x 780, (10th Cir. 2013) (finding that award of “Claim sustained” unambiguously
adopted claim in full and disallowed offsets from backpay where the claim explicitly defined the
claim as seeking backpay “without deduction of outside earnings”). Instead, both awards ask for
“payment of all time lost.” “All lost time” could reasonably be interpreted, as SMART-TD submits,
to mean all backpay, without any deductions. See, e.g., Smith v. BNSF Ry. Co., 2016 WL 11848500,
3 Both Mr. White’s and Mr. Russell’s claims sought “restoration to the service . . . and all notations
of the incident removed from [their] personal service record[s].” (Doc. 1-2, at 1; 1-3, at 1.)
Although the Board concluded that Mr. White’s “[c]laim [is] sustained in accordance with the
findings,” part of its findings noted that Mr. White should be “returned to the fourth step of the
attendance discipline progression, with a 30-day actual suspension.” (Doc. 1-3, at 2.) Similarly, the
Russell Award included a 10-day deferred suspension. It is not clear if these findings affect the
claims as written. See Smith v. BNSF Ry. Co., 2016 WL 11848500, at *4 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 15, 2016)
(finding awards ambiguous as to whether an offset applies to backpay where “there was no
explanation of what parts of the claim were sustained, no specific statement about the remedy, and
no evaluation of the parties’ positions on the backpay issue”).
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at *4 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 15, 2016) (finding the award ambiguous but noting that it was “a close call,
because there is also a sensible textual argument that the Board must have rejected the offset”). Or,
it could reasonably be interpreted, as Norfolk Southern contends, to mean an amount to make the
employee whole (i.e., “lost” income). (Doc. 13-2 ¶ 23 (citing Norfolk Southern Ry. Co and
Brotherhood of Ry. Carmen, PLB No. 6119, Award No. 3 (Dec. 8, 1998)).)
SMART-TD argues that the Awards’ silence on offsets means none are permitted. Contrary
to SMART-TD’s assertion, there is no “longstanding principle . . . consistently applied time and
time again” in RLA cases that “silence on offsets means none are permitted.”4 (Doc. 20, at 3–4.)
While some courts have taken the position that silence in RLA arbitration awards unambiguously
means no offsets were intended, other courts have rejected that position.5 See United Transp.
Union, 2014 WL 1612670, at *5 (enforcing an award of “pay for time lost” as unambiguously
requiring backpay without offsets); but see Int’l Ass’n of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail & Transp. Workers
4 Most of the cases SMART-TD cites as support for this assertion did not involve a dispute under
the RLA, which has an explicit and mandatory remedy for clarifying awards. See 45 U.S.C. § 153
First (m). Of the two RLA cases cited by SMART-TD, one cited case law outside the RLA
framework, without any consideration for the court’s limited jurisdiction to interpret RLA awards
or the RLA’s specific arbitrational remedy for clarifying awards, Int’l Ass’n of Sheet Metal, Air,
Rail & Transp. Workers – Transp. Div. v. Union Pac. R.R. Co., 2022 WL 832640 (N.D. Ill. March
21, 2022) (“SMART-TD v. UP”), and the other stretched RLA caselaw despite an explicit warning
to the contrary. Compare United Transp. Union v. Union R.R. Co., 2014 WL 1612670 (W.D. Pa.
Apr. 22, 2014) (citing BLET v. BNSF, 549 F. App’x at 785), with BLET v. BNSF, 925 F. Supp. 2d
1252, 1256 (D. Wyo. 2013), aff’d 549 F. App’x 780 (10th Cir. 2013) (“The Court’s holding is a
narrow one and should not be misunderstood. The Court holds that if a Board order defines a claim,
the definition precludes offsetting a back pay award, and the award section states only ‘claim
sustained,’ then the order unambiguously prohibits an offset. Had the Board’s order stated in its
award section only that [the employee] was to be ‘made whole’ or compensated for ‘time lost,’ the
result in this case might well have been different.”).
5 The Court is unaware of any Sixth Circuit decision addressing this issue.
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v. Rapid City, Pierre & E.R.R., 2025 WL 392423, at *3–4 (D. Minn. Feb. 4, 2025) (rejecting
SMART-TD’s argument that “silence as to any offsets still allows the Court to enforce the award
according to its terms” (citing Ord. of R. R. Conductors & Brakemen v. Erie Lackawanna R. Co.,
302 F. Supp. 1196, 1197, 1200 (N.D. Ohio 1969) (remanding back to the NRAB for clarification on
offsets when it awarded reinstatement “with payment for time lost”))).
Further underscoring how unsettled this question is—and by virtue of how unclear the plain
language of the Awards actually is—both sides were able to find factually similar cases with
dispositions that support their respective positions. Compare SMART-TD v. UP, 2022 WL 832640,
at *4 (finding award that sustained a claim for “compensation for all lost time” unambiguously did
not allow offsets for interim earnings), with Smith, 2016 WL 11848500, at *5 (remanding case to
the Board for further interpretation of whether the ambiguous awards include backpay offsets).
Ultimately, given this Court’s “exceedingly narrow” jurisdiction to enforce awards under
the RLA,6 it elects to follow the lead of other courts that have been careful to enforce an award only
when it is truly unambiguous. E.g., Smith, 2016 WL 11848500, at *5 (“[C]ourts should be careful to
enforce an award only when it is truly unambiguous. Otherwise, courts would cross the line from
enforcing the award to modifying the award by binding the parties to an interpretation not
contemplated by the Board.”); see also SMART-TD v. KCSR, 126 F.4th at 608 (“Balancing the
tension of the district court’s power to enforce RLA awards and the Board’s power to interpret
those awards, federal courts should generally remand an ambiguous award for clarification.”). Here,
6 SMART-TD recognizes this Court’s “exceedingly narrow” jurisdiction under the RLA. (Doc. 14-
1, at 7 (citing cases).)
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the Court cannot say that either of the Awards is truly unambiguous. For this reason, this matter is
remanded to the Board for further interpretation of the Awards.
CONCLUSION
For all the aforementioned reasons, Norfolk Southern Railway Company’s Motion for
Summary Judgment or Remand (Doc. 13) is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART. The
Court grants the alternative relief of remand, but no other requested relief. SMART-TD’s Motion
for Summary Judgment (Doc. 14) is DENIED. This case is hereby DISMISSED and REMANDED
to the Board for clarification of the Awards.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
PATRICIA A. GAUGHAN
United States District Judge
/s/ Patricia A. Gaughan
Dated: 11/20/25
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