Labor Law – Labor-Management Relations Act – Right of Union to Sue on Collective Agreement Under Section 301

Plaintiff union brought suit in a federal district court under section 301 of the LMRA alleging that defendant employer had breached the collective agreement between them by failing to· pay some four thousand employees covered by the agreement for a day on which they did not work. Section 301(a) permits suits for violation of contracts between an employer and a union without respect to the amount in controversy or the citizenship of the parties. Plaintiff sought a declaratory judgment as to the rights of the parties under the agreement, an accounting to determine the amounts of the wages withheld, and a judgment running to the individual employees entitled to relief. On appeal from an order of the district court dismissing the complaint for failure to state a cause of action, held, order vacated. The complaint should have been dismissed for want of federal jurisdiction, since this suit was upon the “individual contracts of hire” and was not a suit for violation of a contract between an employer and a labor organization within the meaning of section 301(a). Association of Westinghouse Salaried Employees v. Westinghouse Electric Corp., (3d Cir. 1954) 210 F. (2d) 623.