185 Pa. Super. 284 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1958
Opinion by
Westinghouse Electric Company operates manufacturing plants in various locations throughout the United States, among them a plant, together.with adjunct, administrative offices,- -in - Sharon," Pennsylvania-.Dur-;
About November 1, 1950, Westinghouse and the Federation entered into a written collective bargaining agreement (hereinafter called the Contract) which, as subsequently supplemented and extended, was in full force and effect at the times with which we are concerned. The Contract by its terms governed the pay, the hours and other working conditions of the plaintiffs as salaried employes in the Sharon plant. Section XII of the Contract provided: “1(a) Holidays observed by the Company will be New Year’s Day, Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas . . and in paragraph 2: “Basic hours on an observed holiday will be credited as time worked for salaried employes.”
On September 1, 1954, the plaintiffs and about 139 other salaried employes at the Sharon plant were furloughed because of a shut-down made necessary by a strike of another group of employes at the plant whose pay as wage earners, was measured at an hourly rate. A union, other than the Association, represented these striking workmen. The furlough of the plaintiffs re-
Actually there were no facts in dispute, and on the trial of the consolidated cases by the court without a jury it was held: “1. The holiday pay provisions of the contract involved in this case apply to the plaintiffs notwithstanding they were on emergency furlough when the holiday was observed. 2. The plaintiffs may recover holiday pay from the defendants for Labor Day, 1954.” On these conclusions judgments were ultimately entered for the plaintiffs in varying amounts for the Labor Day holiday, computed on their salary rates for an eight-hour day, This is the appeal of Westinghouse (applicable to all other plaintiffs) from the final judgment so entered in favor of Sidney Greenberger.
As a basis for its conclusions above quoted it was the view of the lower court “that subsection 2 of Section XII [providing that] 'basic hours on an observed holiday will be credited as time worked for salaried employees’ means that holiday pay will be awarded to every salaried employe on the active roll for every observed holiday.” The difficulty with that construction is that §XII when so read wholly ignores §IX. Concededly, the plaintiffs were on emergency furlough, as defined by the Contract, and §IX(b) in unmistakable
“Where the words of a contract in writing are clear and unambiguous, its meaning is to be ascertained in accordance with its plainly expressed intent”: Atlantic Ref. Co. v. Wyoming Nat. Bank, 356 Pa. 226, 233, 51 A. 2d 719. In the application of this familiar principle we are unable to find any ambiguity in the clear and simple language of §IX when read in the light of the contract as a whole or even of §XII in particular. And we cannot agree with the lower court that the unqualified statement of §IX “without pay” can be modified by §XII to mean “with holiday pay, but without regular salary.” The parties had the right to make their own agreement and under the guise of interpretation we, also, are without authority to rewrite the contract by giving it a construction in conflict with the accepted and plain meaning of the language used. Hagarty v. Wm. Akers, Jr. Co., Inc., 342 Pa. 236, 239,
The foregoing conclusion in the Kennedy case, with which we are in complete agreement as the only proper conclusion in this case, also refutes the contention that observed holidays constitute a unique kind of compensated leisure time. Under the provision of §XII a salaried employe is not entitled to an additional day’s pay for an observed holiday. If he takes the day off, such observance nevertheless operates to credit him with a basic eight-hour day as time worked. If he works on an observed holiday, whatever he is entitled to as overtime pay is determined by another section of the contract. But if a designated holiday occurs during a period when he is not working and not entitled to salary, as in the instant case, because of emergency furlough without pay, the holiday provision does not affect his compensation status. Such salaried employe loses nothing by reason of the holiday; likewise he gains nothing by way of credit for time worked because if he is not working nor scheduled to work when the holiday occurs he can hardly be said to “observe” the holiday by taking time off from no work at all. Accordingly we find nothing in the holiday provision of the contract of §XII which in any way limits the unequivocal statement of §IX that “Emergency Furloughs are periods off without pay.”
Judgment reversed.