Following are two interesting and recent federal court rulings related to arbitration.
Future Disputes are beyond Arbitral Authority Minnesota Nurses Association v. North Memorial Health Care
After completing 30 years of service, Nurse Lynette Drake asked to be relieved of the obligation to work weekends. When her supervisor required her to report under a “needed-nurses” exception, Drake filed a grievance.
The arbitrator concluded that the exception was properly invoked. However, in order to ensure that Drake not be treated unfairly in the future, the arbitral award required that “from the date of this award, if the Employer invokes the “exception” proviso to compel qualifying nurses to work on weekends, the number of required weekends shall be equally shared (divided) among those qualifying nurses.”
