Court Documents

• ConocoPhillips appeals another arbitration decision.
• Collective Bargaining Agreement at issue.
• Order terminating case.

Summary of Lawsuit

Once again, ConocoPhillips has lost an arbitration decisions and is crowding the federal docket with lawsuits that were supposed to be resolved through private arbitration.

The issue in this lawsuit is that ConocoPhillips unilaterally changed their leave policy in an attempt to cut down on the amount of leave available to employees. As part of this change, ConocoPhillips actaully decided to count taking short term disability as "as occurrences for progressive discipline purposes." That is, when you take an unapproved absense, it counts as a "strike" in the progressive disciplinary process -- more "strikes", the more severe the punishment.

The arbitrator determined that ConocoPhillipps could not unilaterally change the progressive discipinary system to include absenses for Short Term Disability. ConocoPhillips then appealed the decision to the court, again arguing that the only valid decisison that the arbitrator could have was one in ConocoPhillips favor.

The lawsuit settled later on undisclosed terms.