01-4067 International Truck and Engine Corp. v. United Steel Workers of America, Local 3740

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“The arbitrator interpreted the passage we quoted from the collective bargaining agreement to permit the company to require an employee to take a urine or blood test for drugs only if there is reasonable cause to believe him under the influence of drugs at the very moment he is asked to take it; and the company concedes that it had no reason to believe Cox under the influence of drugs at the moment Vandermale asked him to submit to the tests. The arbitrator’s interpretation of the collective bargaining agreement is narrow, literalistic, and quite possibly wrong, especially when one considers how dangerous foundry work is and how dangerous therefore a foundry worker high on cocaine is to himself and his fellow workers. A blood or urine test based on reasonable cause to believe that a worker is an intermittent user of cocaine though not necessarily under its influence at the instant he was asked to take the test-no one is under the influence of drugs all the time-would be a reasonable safety measure, since it would detect recent use, indicating a nontrivial probability that the worker is sometimes high at work.”

“But the fact that the arbitrator chose to interpret the parties’ agreement literally (more precisely, adopted the narrowest possible literal meaning, for it would have done no violence to the text to interpret ‘is under the influence’ as denoting intermittent use over a longer period than the instant at which the worker is asked to take the test), ignoring contextual factors that pointed to the wisdom of a somewhat broader interpretation, hardly shows that he was not really interpreting the agreement but instead was off on a frolic of his own, disregarding the contract in favor of his own views of labor relations or workplace safety. Of this there is no indication in his long and careful opinion.”

Affirmed.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Reynolds, J., Posner, J.