BARRENTINE v. ARKANSAS-BEST FREIGHT SYSTEM

JUSTICE BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court.

The issue in this case is whether an employee may bring an action in federal district court, alleging a violation of the minimum wage provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 52 Stat. 1060, as amended, 29 U. S. C. § 201 et seq., after having unsuccessfully submitted a wage claim based on the same underlying facts to a joint grievance committee pursuant to the provisions of his union's collective-bargaining agreement.

I

Petitioner truckdrivers are employed at the Little Rock terminal of respondent Arkansas-Best Freight Systems, Inc., an interstate motor carrier of freight. In accordance with federal regulations and Arkansas-Best's employment practices, petitioners are required to conduct a safety inspection of their trucks before commencing any trip, and to transport any truck failing such inspection to Arkansas-Best's on-premises repair facility. See 49 CFR §§ 392.7, 392.8 (1980). Petitioners are not compensated by their employer for the time spent complying with these requirements.1

Pursuant to the collective-bargaining agreement between Arkansas-Best and petitioners' union, respondent Local 878 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers, petitioner Barrentine and another driver filed a series of grievances against Arkansas-Best.2 They alleged that Art. 50 of the collective-bargaining agreement, which requires Arkansas-Best to compensate its drivers "for all time spent in [its] service,"3 entitled them to compensation for the pretrip inspection and transportation time.4 Petitioners' union presented these grievances to a joint grievance committee for final and binding decision pursuant to Art. 44 of the collective-bargaining agreement.5 The joint committee, composed of three representatives of the union and three representatives of the employer, rejected the grievances without explanation. App. 22.

In March 1977, petitioners filed this action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas.6 In the first count of their complaint, petitioners alleged that the pretrip safety inspection and transportation time was compensable under the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U. S. C. § 201 et seq.,7 and that they were accordingly entitled to the statutory remedy of actual and liquidated damages, costs, and reasonable attorney's fees.8 In the second count, petitioners alleged that the union and its president had breached the union's duty of fair representation, apparently by entering into a "side deal" with Arkansas-Best regarding compensation of the pretrip inspection and transportation time. With respect to this claim, petitioners sought to have the decision of the joint grievance committee set aside and to have proper compensation awarded under the collective-bargaining agreement.

The District Court addressed only the fair representation claim. While it conceded that "the evidence seems . . . rather to predominate in favor of the finding that there was a side agreement" as petitioners alleged, it found that the existence of such an agreement did not in itself give rise to a breach of the union's duty of fair representation, because the labor laws permit "parties by their own actions . . . [to] fill in the gaps that always arise with a written instrument when you apply that instrument to a multiplicity of situations and practices." App. to Pet. for Cert. 8a, 9a. This ruling was affirmed by a unanimous panel of the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, 615 F.2d 1194, 1202 (1980), and is not challenged here.9

With one judge dissenting, the Court of Appeals also held that the District Court was correct in not addressing the merits of petitioners' FLSA claim. Emphasizing that national labor policy encourages arbitration of labor disputes, the court stated that "wage disputes arising under the FLSA . . . may be the subject of binding arbitration where the collective bargaining agreement so provides . . . at least in situations in which employees knowingly and voluntarily submit their grievances to arbitration under the terms of the agreement." Id., at 1199. Finding that petitioners had voluntarily submitted their grievances to arbitration, the court concluded that they were barred from asserting their statutory wage claim in the subsequently filed federal-court action. Id., at 1199-1200. We granted certiorari, 449 U.S. 819 (1980), and reverse.

II

Two aspects of national labor policy are in tension in this case. The first, reflected in statutes governing relationships between employers and unions, encourages the negotiation of terms and conditions of employment through the collective-bargaining process. The second, reflected in statutes governing relationships between employers and their individual employees, guarantees covered employees specific substantive rights. A tension arises between these policies when the parties to a collective-bargaining agreement make an employee's entitlement to substantive statutory rights subject to contractual dispute-resolution procedures.

The national policy favoring collective bargaining and industrial self-government was first expressed in the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, 29 U. S. C. § 151 et seq. (the Wagner Act). It received further expression and definition in the Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, 29 U. S. C. § 141 et seq. (the Taft-Hartley Act). Predicated on the assumption that individual workers have little, if any, bargaining power, and that "by pooling their economic strength and acting through a labor organization freely chosen by the majority, the employees of an appropriate unit have the most effective means of bargaining for improvements in wages, hours, and working conditions," NLRB v. Allis-Chalmers Mfg. Co., 388 U.S. 175, 180 (1967), these statutes reflect Congress' determination that to improve the economic well-being of workers, and thus to promote industrial peace, the interests of some employees in a bargaining unit may have to be subordinated to the collective interests of a majority of their co-workers. See Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171, 182 (1967); 29 U. S. C. § 159 (a). The rights established through this system of majority rule are thus

To further this policy. Congress has declared that

Thus, courts ordinarily defer to collectively bargained dispute-resolution procedures when the parties' dispute arises out of the collective-bargaining process. See, e. g., Hines v. Anchor Motor Freight, Inc., 424 U.S. 554, 562-563 (1976); Gateway Coal Co. v. Mine Workers, 414 U.S. 368, 377-380 (1974); Republic Steel Corp. v. Maddox, 379 U.S. 650, 652-653 (1965); Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 596 (1960); Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 574, 577-578, 582-583 (1960); Steelworkers v. American Manufacturing Co., 363 U.S. 564, 566, 568 (1960); Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U.S. 448, 458-459 (1957).10

Respondents contend that the aspect of national labor policy encouraging collective bargaining and industrial self-government requires affirmance of the Court of Appeals. They note that the collective-bargaining agreement between Arkansas-Best and petitioners' union requires that "any controversy" between the parties to the agreement be resolved through the binding contractual grievance procedures. See n. 5, supra. They further note that Local 878 processed petitioners' grievances in accordance with those procedures, and that the District Court made an unchallenged finding that the union did not breach its duty of fair representation in doing so. Accordingly, they conclude that petitioners should be barred from bringing the statutory component of their wage claim in federal court.11

We reject this argument. Not all disputes between an employee and his employer are suited for binding resolution in accordance with the procedures established by collective bargaining. While courts should defer to an arbitral decision where the employee's claim is based on rights arising out of the collective-bargaining agreement, different considerations apply where the employee's claim is based on rights arising out of a statute designed to provide minimum substantive guarantees to individual workers.

These considerations were the basis for our decision in Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U.S. 36 (1974). In that case, petitioner, a black employee, had been discharged by respondent employer, allegedly for producing too many defective parts. Claiming that his discharge was racially motivated, petitioner asked his union to pursue the grievance and arbitration procedure set forth in the collective-bargaining agreement. The union did so, relying on the nondiscrimination clause in the collective-bargaining agreement, but the arbitrator found that petitioner had been discharged for just cause. Petitioner then brought an action under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in Federal District Court based on the same facts that were before the arbitrator. The District Court granted summary judgment for the employer, holding that petitioner was bound by the prior adverse arbitral decision. The Court of Appeals affirmed.

This Court reversed, concluding that an employee's statutory right to a trial de novo under Title VII is not foreclosed by the prior submission of his discrimination claim to final arbitration under a collective-bargaining agreement. The Court found that in enacting Title VII. Congress had granted individual employees a nonwaivable, public law right to equal employment opportunities that was separate and distinct from the rights created through the "majoritarian processes" of collective bargaining. Id., at 51. Moreover, because Congress had granted aggrieved employees access to the courts, and because contractual grievance and arbitration procedures provided an inadequate forum for enforcement of Title VII rights, the Court concluded that Title VII claims should be resolved by the courts de novo.12

Respondents would distinguish Gardner-Denver on the ground that because petitioners' FLSA claim is based on a dispute over wages and hours, subjects at the heart of the collective-bargaining process, their claim is particularly well suited to resolution through collectively bargained grievance and arbitration procedures. But this contention misperceives the nature of petitioners' FLSA claim.13

The principal congressional purpose in enacting the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was to protect all covered workers from substandard wages and oppressive working hours, "labor conditions [that are] detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency, and general well-being of workers." 29 U. S. C. § 202 (a).14 In contrast to the Labor Management Relations Act, which was designed to minimize industrial strife and to improve working conditions by encouraging employees to promote their interests collectively, the FLSA was designed to give specific minimum protections to individual workers and to ensure that each employee covered by the Act would receive "`[a] fair day's pay for a fair day's work'" and would be protected from "the evil of `overwork' as well as `underpay.'" Overnight Motor Transportation Co. v. Missel, 316 U.S. 572, 578 (1942), quoting 81 Cong. Rec. 4983 (1937) (message of President Roosevelt).15

The statutory enforcement scheme grants individual employees broad access to the courts. Section 16 (b) of the Act, 29 U. S. C. § 216 (b), which contains the principal enforcement provisions, permits an aggrieved employee to bring his statutory wage and hour claim "in any Federal or State court of competent jurisdiction." No exhaustion requirement or other procedural barriers are set up, and no other forum for enforcement of statutory rights is referred to or created by the statute.16

This Court's decisions interpreting the FLSA have frequently emphasized the nonwaivable nature of an individual employee's right to a minimum wage and to overtime pay under the Act. Thus, we have held that FLSA rights cannot be abridged by contract or otherwise waived because this would "nullify the purposes" of the statute and thwart the legislative policies it was designed to effectuate. Brooklyn Savings Bank v. O'Neil, 324 U.S. 697, 707 (1945); see D. A. Schulte, Inc. v. Gangi, 328 U.S. 108, 114-116 (1946); Walling v. Helmerich & Payne, Inc., 323 U.S. 37, 42 (1944); Overnight Motor Transportation Co. v. Missel, supra, at 577; see 29 CFR § 785.8 (1974).17 Moreover, we have held that congressionally granted FLSA rights take precedence over conflicting provisions in a collectively bargained compensation arrangement. See, e. g., Martino v. Michigan Window Cleaning Co., 327 U.S. 173, 177-178 (1946); Walling v. Harnischfeger Corp., 325 U.S. 427, 430-432 (1945); Jewell Ridge Coal Corp. v. Mine Workers, 325 U.S. 161, 166-167, 170 (1945).18 As we stated in Tennessee Coal, Iron & R. Co. v. Muscoda Local No. 123, 321 U.S. 590, 602-603 (1944) (footnote omitted):

There are two reasons why an employee's right to a minimum wage and overtime pay under the FLSA might be lost if submission of his wage claim to arbitration precluded him from later bringing an FLSA suit in federal court. First, even if the employee's claim were meritorious, his union might, without breaching its duty of fair representation, reasonably and in good faith decide not to support the claim vigorously in arbitration. Wage and hour disputes that are subject to arbitration under a collective-bargaining agreement are invariably processed by unions rather than by individual employees. Since a union's objective is to maximize overall compensation of its members, not to ensure that each employee receives the best compensation deal available, cf. Gardner-Denver, 415 U. S., at 58, n. 19, a union balancing individual and collective interests might validly permit some employees' statutorily granted wage and hour benefits to be sacrificed if an alternative expenditure of resources would result in increased benefits for workers in the bargaining unit as a whole.20

Second, even when the union has fairly and fully presented the employee's wage claim, the employee's statutory rights might still not be adequately protected. Because the "specialized competence of arbitrators pertains primarily to the law of the shop, not the law of the land," id., at 57; see Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U. S., at 581-582, many arbitrators may not be conversant with the public law considerations underlying the FLSA.21 FLSA claims typically involve complex mixed questions of fact and law—e. g., what constitutes the "regular rate," the "work-week," or "principal" rather than "preliminary or postliminary" activities. These statutory questions must be resolved in light of volumes of legislative history and over four decades of legal interpretation and administrative rulings. Although an arbitrator may be competent to resolve many preliminary factual questions, such as whether the employee "punched in" when he said he did, he may lack the competence to decide the ultimate legal issue whether an employee's right to a minimum wage or to overtime pay under the statute has been violated.22

Moreover, even though a particular arbitrator may be competent to interpret and apply statutory law, he may not have the contractual authority to do so. An arbitrator's power is both derived from, and limited by, the collective-bargaining agreement. Gardner-Denver, 415 U. S., at 53. He "has no general authority to invoke public laws that conflict with the bargain between the parties." Ibid. His task is limited to construing the meaning of the collective-bargaining agreement so as to effectuate the collective intent of the parties. Accordingly,

Because the arbitrator is required to effectuate the intent of the parties, rather than to enforce the statute, he may issue a ruling that is inimical to the public policies underlying the FLSA, thus depriving an employee of protected statutory rights.23

Finally, not only are arbitral procedures less protective of individual statutory rights than are judicial procedures, see Gardner-Denver, supra, at 57-58, but arbitrators very often are powerless to grant the aggrieved employees as broad a range of relief. Under the FLSA, courts can award actual and liquidated damages, reasonable attorney's fees, and costs. 29 U. S. C. § 216 (b). An arbitrator, by contrast, can award only that compensation authorized by the wage provision of the collective-bargaining agreement. He "is confined to interpretation and application of the collective bargaining agreement" and his "award is legitimate only so long as it draws its essence from the collective bargaining agreement." Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., supra, at 597. It is most unlikely that he will be authorized to award liquidated damages, costs, or attorney's fees.

III

In sum, the FLSA rights petitioners seek to assert in this action are independent of the collective-bargaining process. They devolve on petitioners as individual workers, not as members of a collective organization. They are not waivable. Because Congress intended to give individual employees the right to bring their minimum-wage claims under the FLSA in court, and because these congressionally granted FLSA rights are best protected in a judicial rather than in an arbitral forum, we hold that petitioners' claim is not barred by the prior submission of their grievances to the contractual dispute-resolution procedures. As we stated in Gardner-Denver:

Reversed.

CHIEF JUSTICE BURGER, with whom JUSTICE REHNQUIST joins, dissenting.

The Court today moves—rather blithely, so it seems to me, and unnecessarily—in a direction counter to the needs and interests of workers and employers and contrary to the interests of the judicial system. It does so on the theory that this result advances congressional policy, but careful analysis reveals that Congress, if anything, has mandated the contrary. With funds appropriated by Congress, the Executive Branch, through the Department of Justice, and the Judicial Branch have undertaken studies and pilot programs to remove just such routine and relatively modest-sized claims as this from the courts. Today, the Court moves in precisely the opposite direction, ignoring the objectives of Congress, the agreement of the parties, and the common sense of the situation. It moves toward making federal courts small claims courts contrary to the constitutional concept of these courts as having special and limited jurisdiction.

I

I agree, of course, that the congressionally created right of individual workers to a minimum wage under § 6 of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 U. S. C. § 206, may not be waived through a collective-bargaining agreement between an employer and the worker's union or through a direct agreement between an individual worker and the employer. Brooklyn Savings Bank v. O'Neil, 324 U.S. 697, 707 (1945). I also agree that the Act creates a private cause of action to vindicate the right to a minimum wage. Fair Labor Standards Act § 16, 29 U. S. C. § 216. But it is a different—indeed, a totally different—proposition to say that employees and employers may not agree to a means of enforcing the employees' routine wage claims outside the costly, cumbersome judicial process of the federal courts and, specifically, that employees, acting through their union in an arm's-length negotiation with the employer, may not bind themselves—as the petitioners did here—to submit to final and binding arbitration "any controversy that might arise," App. 24, rather than resolve it through litigation in the federal courts. The existence of a right and the provision of a judicial forum do not necessarily make either nonwaivable; if that were so, all the holdings of this Court and countless decisions of federal and state courts that parties are bound by contracts to arbitrate are placed in doubt. "[T]he question of whether the statutory right may be waived depends upon the intention of Congress as manifested in the particular statute." Brooklyn Saving Bank v. O'Neil, supra, at 705.

Unfortunately, neither the parties nor the United States as amicus curiae can point to a clear answer to this question in the legislative history of the Fair Labor Standards Act. It is hornbook law, however, that there is a strong congressional policy favoring grievance procedures and arbitration as a method of resolving labor disputes. See Labor Management Relations Act, §§ 201 (b), 203 (d), 29 U. S. C. §§ 171 (b), 173 (d); Norris-LaGuardia Act, § 8, 29 U. S. C. § 108. This Court has acknowledged that policy in the past. See, e. g., Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., 363 U.S. 574, 578, and n. 4 (1960); Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 596 (1960); Textile Workers v. Lincoln Mills, 353 U.S. 448, 458-459 (1957). The Court today pays lipservice to that congressional policy, ante, at 734-736, but then—paradoxically—ignores it.

The reasons for favoring arbitration are as wise as they are obvious: litigation is costly and time consuming, and, more to the point in this case, judges are less adapted to the nuances of the disputes that typically arise in shops and factories than shop stewards, business agents, managerial supervisors, and the traditional ad hoc panels of factfinders. See, e. g., Steelworkers v. Warrior & Gulf Navigation Co., supra, at 581-582. By bringing together persons actually involved in the workplace, often assisted by a neutral arbitrator experienced in such matters, disputes are resolved more swiftly and cheaply. This mechanism promotes industrial harmony and avoids strikes and conflicts; it provides a swift, fair, and inexpensive remedy.

The policy of favoring extrajudicial methods of resolving disputes is reflected in other areas as well. With federal courts flooded by litigation increasing in volume, in length, and in a variety of novel forms,1 the National Institute of Justice, under the leadership of Attorney General Griffin Bell, in 1979 launched a multimillion-dollar program of field studies to test whether mediation at a neighborhood level could resolve small disputes out of courts in a fashion satisfactory to the parties. Neighborhood Justice Centers Field Test: Final Evaluation Report 7-8 (1980). The results of this study—and other similar studies financed by private sources2—confirmed what many had long suspected: small disputes may be resolved more swiftly and to the satisfaction of the parties without employing the cumbersome, time-consuming, and expensive processes of litigation.3 The National Institute of Justice recommended further study and implementation of similar procedures. Neighborhood Justice Centers Field Test, supra, at 108-109. Congress itself has recognized this problem and authorized such studies. Dispute Resolution Act, 94 Stat. 17.

II

By rejecting binding arbitration for resolution of this relatively simple wage claim arising under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Court thereby rejects as well a policy Congress has followed for at least half a century throughout the field of labor relations and now being applied in other areas as well. To reach that strange result, the Court relies on our holding in Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U.S. 36 (1974). But that case in no sense compels today's holding. The congressionally created right under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. § 2000e et seq., was aimed at guaranteeing a workplace free from discrimination, racial and otherwise. That fundamental right is not and should not be subject to waiver by a collective-bargaining agreement negotiated by a union. But there obviously is a vast difference between resolving allegations of discrimination under the Civil Rights Act and settling a relatively typical and simple wage dispute such as we have here when the parties have expressly agreed to resolve such grievances by arbitration.

The long history of union discrimination against minorities and women, now happily receding,4 led Congress to forbid discrimination by unions as well as employers. See 42 U. S. C. § 2003e-2 (c). Against a background of union discrimination, Congress was aware that, in the context of claims under the Civil Rights Act, unions sometimes had been the adversary of workers. Plainly, it would not comport with the congressional objectives behind a statute seeking to enforce civil rights protected by Title VII to allow the very forces that had practiced discrimination to contract away the right to enforce civil rights in the courts. For federal courts to defer to arbitral decisions reached by the same combination of forces that had long perpetuated invidious discrimination would have made the foxes guardians of the chickens. But this case is not a discrimination case.

Even beyond the historical fact of union discrimination, we observed in Gardner-Denver that arbitrators are not likely to have the needed experience to deal with the special issues arising under the Civil Rights Act, a statute "whose broad language frequently can be given meaning only by reference to public law concepts." 415 U. S., at 57. Leaving resolution of discrimination claims to persons unfamiliar with the congressional policies behind that statute could have undermined enforcement of fundamental rights Congress intended to protect. But the "tension" seen by the Court in Gardner-Denver, ante, at 734, is simply not present here.

A dispute over wages under the Fair Labor Standards Act arises in an entirely different historical and legal context. In that setting, the union and the employee are the traditional allies, united in enforcing wage claims of employees individually as well as collectively. The Court distorts the possibility that union leadership might fail to protect members' interests in a wage dispute. Ante, at 742. If this rare exception arose, protection of the employee is abundantly available by way of the cause of action for breach of the union's duty of fair representation. See Vaca v. Sipes, 386 U.S. 171 (1967).5

Despite the Court's contrary view, ante, at 743-744, whether the time spent in the driver's inspection of a vehicle before taking to the road, as required by federal law, and in transportation of the vehicle to a repair facility when necessary constituted "compensable time" under "Federal Wage Laws," App. 21 (petitioner Barrentine's grievance), is a factual question well suited for disposition by grievance processes and arbitration. The following factors are relevant:

This elementary wage dispute falls well within the scope of traditional arbitration as it exists under countless collective-bargaining agreements, which the Court now channels into the federal courts. For years the labor movement has developed panels of persons acceptable to both sides who are familiar with "the law of the shop . . . [and] the demands and norms of industrial relations." Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., supra, at 57. The Court's generalizations about the powers of arbitrators, ante, at 744-745, are irrelevant; arbitrators have whatever power the parties confer upon them. Here, that power extends to "any controversy that might arise." App. 24 (emphasis added). Surely a wage claim is covered.

Allowing one party to such an elementary industrial dispute unilaterally to resort to the federal courts when an established, simplified, less costly procedure is available—and desired, as here, by the employer and the employee's union— can only increase costs and consume judicial time unnecessarily. It makes neither good sense nor sound law to read the broad language of Gardner-Denver—written in a civil rights discrimination case—to govern a routine wage dispute over a matter traditionally entrusted by the parties' arm's-length bargaining to binding arbitration.

III

The Court seems unaware that people's patience with the judicial process is wearing thin. Its holding runs counter to every study and every exhortation of the Judiciary, the Executive, and the Congress urging the establishment of reasonable mechanisms to keep matters of this kind out of the courts. See The Pound Conference: Perspectives on Justice in the Future passim (West Pub. Co. 1979); American Bar Assn., Report on the National Conference on Minor Disputes Resolution passim (1978). The Federal Government, as I noted earlier, has spent millions of dollars in pilot programs experimenting in extrajudicial procedures for simpler mechanisms to resolve disputes. Approving an extrajudicial resolution procedure "is not a question of first-class or second-class . . . means. It is a matter of tailoring the means to the problem that is involved." Resolution of Minor Disputes, Joint Hearings before the Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties, and the Administration of Justice, House Committee on the Judiciary, and Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Finance, House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 96th Cong., 1st Sess., 28 (1979) (testimony of Assistant Attorney General Meador). This Court ought not be oblivious to desperately needed changes to keep the federal courts from being inundated with disputes of a kind that can be handled more swiftly and more cheaply by other methods.