This appeal raises questions concerning the scope of an award that an arbitrator may fashion when, in arbitration proceedings pursuant to G. L. c. 150E, § 8, he determines that a school committee has violated the terms of its collective bargaining contract with a public school education association by failing to promote a particular teacher to an administrative position because of her sex.
The relevant facts, taken from the record and the arbitrator’s decision, are these. The grievant is Myrtle R. Flight, a tenured teacher at the Blue Hills Regional Vocational-Technical School, who had served as department head of the health services and culinary arts divisions at the school. In the spring of 1977, she and thirty-seven others applied for the posted position of assistant director, vocational subjects. 2 The school’s superintendent-director (superintendent), who had previously worked closely with Flight, interviewed several of the candidates, but did not interview Flight. The superintendent ultimately recommended a male from outside the Blue Hills Regional staff for the job, whom the school committee subsequently appointed.
At the time of the appointment, the association and the committee were parties to a collective bargaining agreement which, by its terms, was effective for the period between September 1, 1976, and August 31, 1978. Flight grieved her failure to receive the promotion on the basis that subsections 13.3 and 13.5 of Art. XIII of the agreement had been violated. Subsection 13.3 provided that in dealing with promotions the school committee would give “due weight” to the professional background and attainments of
Following the committee’s action, Flight’s grievance was submitted to arbitration in accordance with the agreement; the issues before the arbitrator were framed as they are set forth in the margin.
3
After concluding that the grievance
Upon an analysis of the whole case, the arbitrator concluded that Flight had been the victim of sex discrimination. As the primary award, he ordered that she be promoted to the position she sought, retroactively effective as of July 1, 1977, and that she be paid the salary differential between the jobs, with nine per cent interest from July 1, 1977, to the date of her appointment. As an alternative award, in the event that a court should determine that he lacked the power to order the promotion, the arbitrator ordered the school committee and the superintendent to conduct a de novo review of the grievant’s and appointee’s qualifications, and, if Flight’s qualifications were found to be substantially equal to the appointee’s, to promote her retroactively to the position and to pay the salary differential with interest.
Pursuant to opposing motions to vacate and to confirm the arbitral award,
4
a judge of the Superior Court entered a
1. The school committee’s brief does not directly challenge the arbitrability of the grievance.
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Rather, the committee contends that enforcement of the award would intrude into an area that is reserved to its judgment. The
The nondelegation doctrine is rooted in the statutory authority conferred by the Legislature on local school committees to manage the public schools. G. L. c. 71, §§37 and 38. General Laws c. 71 § 16, extends the same prerogatives to the school committees for regional school districts. “By long established legislative policy school committees are given general management of the public schools including the election and dismissal of teachers . . . The success of a school system depends largely on the character and ability of the teachers. Unless a school committee has authority to employ and discharge teachers it would be difficult to perform properly its duty of managing a school system.”
Davis
v.
School Comm. of Somerville,
Although a school committee cannot be compelled without its explicit consent to delegate its power to select for a management position the person it deems best qualified to serve the needs of the school system, “there is no reason why . . . [it] may not bind itself to follow certain procedures precedent to the making of any such decision.”
Id.
at 113. Accord,
Dennis-Yarmouth Regional Sch. Comm.
v.
Dennis Teachers Assn.,
However, that a grievance involving an antidiscrimination clause is arbitrable does not insulate the arbitrator’s award from judicial scrutiny. An established distinction exists between the power of a court to examine the merits of
Whether an arbitrator’s remedy should be enforced is open to a broader inquiry. See Gorman, Labor Law c. 25 (1976). The authority for a court to refuse to enforce an award because its performance would contravene the law derives in part from statute, in particular G. L. c. 150C, § 11(a)(3), which requires vacation of an award if an arbitrator has “rendered [an order] . . . requiring a person to commit an act or engage in conduct prohibited by state or federal law,” and in part from the doctrine that the resolution of statutory, constitutional, and policy issues is a primary responsibility of the courts which often requires for its proper discharge a judicial forum capable of balancing various competing interests. Cf.
Alexander
v.
Gardner-Denver Co.,
In the instant case, literal enforcement of the substantive relief given in either branch of the award would contravene the nondelegability doctrine by compelling or virtually compelling
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the school committee to appoint the grievant to the position. As such the award is unlawful and cannot be enforced. At the same time, we must recognize that a blanket refusal to permit arbitrators to fashion meaningful remedies for the violation of nondiscrimination clauses in public employment contracts would seriously undercut the effectiveness of arbitration as a means to enforce an individual’s rights to equal employment opportunities (cf.
Trustees of Tufts College
v.
Volpe Constr. Co.,
In drafting the remedy, the arbitrator may, if he deems it appropriate, declare the position to be vacant and require the school committee and superintendent to begin the selection process anew.
10
The award must respect the superintendent’s statutory right to nominate candidates for election by the school committee (G. L. c. 71, § 38), and the committee’s contractual and statutory rights to establish current qualifications for the position, to weigh the applicants’ qualifications, to determine whether in-house candidates have credentials substantially equal to those of individuals from outside the system and to make the appointment based on its assessment of the best interests of the school system. It is within the arbitrator’s authority, however, to take such steps as he deems necessary to assure that the process is fair and nondiscriminatory. In this regard, he may establish procedures to increase the flow of accurate job-related information, to eliminate the use of biased material, and to insure that the superintendent and the committee refrain from labeling certain areas of the vocational curriculum as “traditionally male” or as comprising “bona fide” vocational subjects while downgrading others on the view that they are “traditionally female.”*
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The arbitrator may
2. The remaining issues concern the compensation component of the award. The arbitrator interpreted the agreement to require that the grievant be compensated for not having been paid as an assistant director from July 1, 1977, until the time the appointment is made. He therefore ordered the committee to pay the grievant the pay differential for that period. The payment of the salary differential from July 1,1977, until the date of the award (June 20, 1978) was within his powers, and is separable from his unauthorized determination that the grievant be promoted. See
School Comm. of Braintree
v.
Raymond,
We think it was also within the arbitrator’s power to commence the accumulation of interest as of July 1, 1977,
3. Coming to disposition, we have found that the award of retroactive salary with nine per cent interest from the date the wrong occurred (July 1, 1977) until the date of the arbitrator’s award (June 20, 1978) was proper. We have also concluded that the balance of the award should be vacated. The judgment entered in the case is not susceptible of modification in part and reversal in part. Accordingly, the judgment must be reversed and the entire case remanded to the Superior Court for remand by that court to the arbitrator so that he may fashion a new remedy consistent with this opinion. The Superior Court will retain jurisdiction of the case for such further proceedings under G L. c. 150C as may be necessary, and for the entry of a new final judgment consistent with this opinion.
So ordered.
Notes
The requirements for the position were:
“ 1. Candidate must have a Bachelor’s Degree from an accredited college or university.
“2. Candidate must be an approved Vocational or Technical instructor.
“3. Candidate must have FIVE years of full-time experience as an instructor in Vocational Education.
“4. Candidate must pass a written and oral examination conducted by the Division of Occupational Education.”
“(1) Did the School Committee violate the collective bargaining agreement by failing to promote the grievant, Myrtle R. Flight, to the position of Assistant Director, Vocational Subjects? If so, what shall be the remedy?
“(2) Is the grievance arbitrable?”
Under General Laws c. 150E, § 8, the final and binding arbitration of labor disputes involving public employees is enforceable under the provisions of G. L. c. 150C. Accordingly, the party prevailing in the arbitration may commence an action in the Superior Court to confirm the award under G. L. c. 150C, § 10, while at the same time, a losing party may seek in the same forum to vacate the award on any of the grounds set forth
We have not discussed the parties’ considerable procedural skirmishing over the contents of the judgment as originally entered on June 15, 1979. The postjudgment proceedings were terminated by the entry of a modified judgment on July 18,1979. We treat the appeals as being taken from this judgment since all of the issues raised by the parties can be disposed of under its terms.
The committee’s brief asserts that the “conclusions reached by the arbitrator concerning discrimination against Ms. Flight on the basis of her sex do not conform to the standards required by Massachusetts law, ” with citations to the decisions in
Wheelock College
v.
Massachusetts Commn. Against Discrimination,
Although the collective bargaining agreement from which this grievance arose expired in 1978, we do not consider the issues to be moot. The parties indicated that the subject is a continuing source of contention. The facts and circumstances of this case suggest that there is a substantial probability of mootness prior to the completion of any future litigation of the same issues,
First Natl. Bank
v.
Haufler,
In the
Alexander
case the United States Supreme Court described some of the advantages of the arbitral remedy for this type of grievance: “Where the collective-bargaining agreement contains a non-discrimination clause . . ., and where arbitral procedures are fair and regular, arbitration may well produce a settlement satisfactory to both employer and employee. An employer thus has an incentive to make available the conciliatory and therapeutic processes of arbitration which may satisfy an employee’s perceived need to resort to the judicial forum, thus saving the employer the expense and aggravation associated with a lawsuit. For similar reasons, the employee also has a strong incentive to arbitrate grievances, and arbitration may often eliminate those misunderstandings or discriminatory practices that might otherwise precipitate resort to the judicial forum.”
We view the arbitrator’s alternative award, which orders the school committee to conduct a de novo review of the qualifications of the grievant and the appointee, as falling in the category of awards that mandate appointment. This is so because out of thirty-eight original applicants, the grievant was ranked in the middle of the ten finalists for the position; others in this group were also already employed by the school committee; impermissible standards were used by the superintendent in evaluating the entire panel of applicants; and the arbitrator had before him the qualifications of only the grievant and the appointee. In these circumstances, an order requiring reconsideration of these two finalists would intrude on the superintendent’s statutory duty to make a recommendation after he has fairly evaluated all the applicants, and on the committee’s duty to determine what qualifications are substantially equal, assuming the superintendent has nominated an outside candidate.
This may be required because of the passage of time, the probability that other candidates have secured other positions, and the fact that the grievant was ranked in the middle of the ten finalists (albeit perhaps by reason of the application of specious criteria). Intervening events may also pose other difficulties that have not been brought to our attention and which may be best resolved in the first instance by the arbitrator.
At the proper juncture, he may remind the committee that Massachusetts adheres to statutory policy which encourages sex-neutral
A useful guide for the arbitrator, the superintendent, and the school committee can be found in the guidelines of the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that implement the protections of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 41 U.S.C. § 2000E-2(a) (1) (1976). These guidelines recite in part:
“Sex as a bona fide occupational qualification.
“(a) The commission believes that the bona fide occupational qualification exception as to sex should be interpreted narrowly. Label — “Men’s jobs” and “Women’s jobs” — tend to deny employment opportunities unnecessarily to one sex or the other.
“(1) The Commission will find that the following situations do not warrant the application of the bona fide occupational qualification exception:
“(i) The refusal to hire a woman because of her sex based on assumptions of the comparative employment characteristics of women in general. For example, the assumption that the turnover rate among women is higher than among men.
“(ii) The refusal to hire an individual based on stereotyped characterizations of the sexes. Such stereotypes include, for example, that men are less capable of assembling intricate equipment: that women are less capable of aggressive salesmanship. The principle of nondiscrimination requires that individuals be considered on the basis of individual capacities and not on the basis of any characteristics generally attributed to the group.
“(iii) The refusal to hire an individual because of the preferences of coworkers, the employer, clients or customers except as covered specifically in paragraph (a) (2) of this section.
“(2) Where it is necessary for the purpose of authenticity or genuineness, the Commission will consider sex to be a bona fide occupational qualification, e.g., an actor or actress.” 29 C.F.R. 1604.2 (1979). See also “Discrimination defined: Relationship between use of selection procedures and discrimination,” 29 C.F.R. 1607.3 (1979).
For this reason a judgment confirming or modifying an arbitrator’s award is usually set forth in a form of judgment which makes no reference to the textual material concerning damages and interest contained in official Form 32 adopted as a model for judgments in a nonjury case by the reporters of the civil rules pursuant to Mass.R.Civ.P. 84,
