Arbitration provisions in a collective bargaining agreement (CBA); Action to compel arbitration; Threshold issues of whether arbitration was timely & correctly invoked; Amtower v William C Roney & Co; BG Group, PLC v Republic of Argentina; MCL 691.1686(3)

The court affirmed the trial court’s order granting plaintiffs-unions’ motion for summary disposition in this action to compel arbitration and for breach of the parties’ CBA by failing to arbitrate. There was no dispute that the nature of the grievance was “such as could properly be submitted to arbitration under the CBA.” But defendants maintained “that plaintiffs did not properly or timely request arbitration under the CBA, and that the matter was therefore withdrawn and no longer arbitrable.” Defendants argued the CBA’s language provided “that the threshold issue of whether plaintiffs’ request for arbitration was timely (and correctly) submitted was one for the trial court, rather than the arbitrator, to decide.” The court disagreed, but noted “that the threshold issues of whether plaintiffs timely and correctly invoked arbitration under the CBA remain to be decided by the arbitrator before the arbitrator becomes empowered to reach the merits of” the employee’s (nonparty-G) grievance. The court held that when considered in light of the presumption favoring arbitrability, “the CBA’s provisions granting the arbitrator the authority to resolve matters related to the application and interpretation of the CBA, indicate that the arbitrator must decide the timeliness and procedural issues.” Also, although defendants argued that the CBA’s language indicated “that an arbitrator cannot even be selected unless a timely request for arbitration has been made, the actual language of the CBA is not so explicit.” The court similarly concluded “that the issue of whether procedural preconditions for arbitration of a grievance were correctly followed is a question for the arbitrator.” However, it noted that the issue of whether the “grievance was correctly considered ‘withdrawn’ under the CBA is still to be decided; that is, the trial court’s order may not be read as directing that arbitration proceed on the merits of [G’s] grievance without first analyzing the timeliness and other procedural issues raised by defendants and without a finding that the procedural prerequisites to arbitration were satisfied. In other words, the trial court’s order did not establish that [the] grievance was timely and correctly filed; it only determined that those procedural issues should be decided by an arbitrator.”