So, the union has an agreement with the company’s management that only those on their predetermined qualification list can be selected for a job. Would that list, or at least the administrative arm for that list, be considered a labor union for right-to-work purposes? Well, it would have been an interesting question for the Eleventh Circuit in Towns v. Directors Guild of America if the employee-plaintiff had made the right arguments and preserved the issue for appeal.  As it turned out, however, the employee first raised those contentions on appeal, making the Eleventh Circuit’s job easy. But the case is still one of interest when examining Georgia’s right-to-work statute.

Background and Claim

Marvin Towns had worked for decades in the television industry. In 2019, And Action, LLC, hired him as a production manager for the television series The Haves & Have Nots, which is filmed in Georgia. The Directors Guild of America, Inc. (DGA) is the labor union that serves as the collective bargaining agent for production managers; Towns was a DGA member.

The DGA negotiated a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with film and television employers that set out that individuals could only be hired from established “qualification lists.” To be put on the qualification list the individual must apply to the DGA Contract Administration (DGACA), which compiles the lists. The applicant must establish their qualifications via documented evidence.

After Towns had begun working for And Action, the DGA notified the company that he was, in fact, not on the qualification list and his hire violated the CBA. And Action told Towns that he could not continue in his position unless he established that he had the requisite work experience to get on the list. Towns failed to do that, and And Action terminated his employment.

Towns then sued, alleging that the DGA violated Georgia’s right-to-work provision that no individual is required to join a “labor organization” as a condition of employment. Towns also brought a variety of state law tort claims.

District Court’s Dismissal

The DGA moved to dismiss Towns’s complaint. As to the right-to-work count, the DGA contended that Towns did not sufficiently allege that he was required as a condition of employment to maintain membership in a “labor organization” and that the qualification list was not a labor organization. As to the other tort claims, the DGA argued that his state law tort claims were all preempted by federal law because they required interpretation of the CBA.

Towns and his counsel did themselves no favors in the response, which was all of three paragraphs and did not address the right-to-work arguments.

The trial court granted the motion to dismiss, finding that Towns did not sufficiently provide facts to establish that And Action had conditioned employment on his membership “in a labor organization.” Towns had alleged that the qualification list was a labor organization, but he failed to provide enough facts in support of such a claim. The district court acknowledged that although the DGA was a labor organization, Towns was not required to be a DGA member to be on the qualification list. The district court further found that the remaining tort claims were indeed preempted by federal law because they required interpretation of the CBA under the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA).

Affirmed on Appeal

On appeal Towns contended that the DGACA, which administered the qualification lists, was a labor organization for purposes Georgia’s right-to-work statute.

Georgia’s right-to-work statute provides no one “shall be required as a condition of employment … to be or remain a member or an affiliate of a labor organization” and defines a labor organization as an entity that “exists for the purpose, in whole or in part, of dealing with employers concerning grievances, labor disputes, wages, rates of pay, hours of employment, or conditions of work”  (Georgia Code § 34-6-21(a) and -20(6)). The question of whether the DGACA would have potentially been deemed a labor organization and whether the Georgia right-to-work statute was completely preempted by federal law would have been interesting inquiries. A prior ruling had concluded that parts of the Georgia right-to-work statute were preempted by the LMRA (see Georgia State AFL-CIO v. Olens, 194 F.Supp.3d 1322, 1330-31 (N.D. Ga. 2016)). There have been only a few cases addressing the Georgia right-to-work statute, so the Towns matter would have been noteworthy.

That inquiry never happened because Towns did not raise the issues until appeal. His complaint and his response to the motion to dismiss (in the trial court) asserted that the qualification list itself was a labor organization, but he made no similar allegation about the DGACA. On appeal, Towns argued that the district court should have “hunted” through the complaint and inferred that he intended to raise the claim that the DGACA was also a labor organization. The appellate judges, however, noted that “judges are not like pigs, hunting for truffles buried in a party’s filings” and since such a claim was not explicitly raised in the complaint or even in the response to the motion to dismiss, they would not consider it on appeal.

The Court of Appeals went on to affirm that Section 301 of the LMRA completely preempts state tort law claims that require the interpretation or application of a collective bargaining agreement. It also rejected Towns’s contention that the district court should have construed his state law tort claims as a federal claim that the DGA violated the duty of fair representation it owed Towns in enforcing the CBA because, again, Towns never raised that contention until it was appealed.

Takeaways

The case would have presented an interesting inquiry as to LMRA preemption and whether the DGACA, which administered and controlled the qualification lists that dictated who could be hired, was a labor organization. But we will have to wait for another case to “tee up” the Georgia right-to-work challenge for interpretation.

The other obvious lesson is if you ever plan on appealing a ruling, make sure it was actually alleged or raised in the trial court.