FAIRCHILD, Senior Circuit Judge.
Appellants Chrysler Marine Corporation and Chrysler Corporation (“Chrysler” or “the Company”) appeal from the district court judgment enforcing an arbitrator’s award and awarding attorney’s fees to ap-pellees International Union, Allied Industrial Workers of America and Local 879 (“the Union”). Jurisdiction was based on § 301 of the Labor Management Relations Act (“LMRA”), 29 U.S.C. § 185. For the reasons set forth below, we will Affirm the enforcement of the arbitrator’s award, and Reverse the grant of attorneys’ fees.
FACTS
In May, 1983, Chrysler and the Union began to negotiate a successor agreement to that covering the Company’s Hartford and Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, plants, which was due to expire on June 30, 1983. Because of rumors that. Chrysler was considering closing or selling these plants, the Union twice proposed severance pay plans, both of which Chrysler rejected. In agreeing to a new contract, the Union accepted a company letter of intent stating that “in the event the Company should close all of its Hartford and/or Beaver Dam Plants, the Company will provide the Union six (6) months advance notice of such closing and will negotiate with the Union regarding a Severance Pay Plan.”
In August, 1983, Chrysler began to negotiate with Bayliner Corporation for the sale of the Hartford and Beaver Dam plants. Bayliner agreed to acquire Chrysler’s assets, to operate the Hartford plant for one year, excluding a reasonable transition period, and to operate the Beaver Dam plant for at least two months. The sale was originally scheduled to become effective December 30, 1983. The agreement was reached December 8,1983 and the sale was first made known to the Union and the employees at that time.
On December 12, 1983, the Union filed a grievance alleging that the sale was a closing which violated the June 30 agreement because six months’ notice had not been given. It requested that the closing be delayed for at least six months for negotiation of a severance pay plan. Chrysler denied the grievance, contending that the sale was not a closing, and the issue was ultimately submitted to arbitration.
The Union immediately brought suit to enjoin the sale pending arbitration. The district court granted a preliminary injunction, but on January 9, 1984, this court granted a stay, finding that the risk of irreparable injury weighed most heavily against Chrysler. The preliminary injunction was reversed May 31, 1984, 735 F.2d 1367. Both orders were unpublished.
On January 11, 1984, Chrysler informed all employees at both plants that effective January 13, 1984, they would no longer be employed. Ownership of the Hartford assets was transferred to the buyer on January 13, 1984, but the Beaver Dam assets were never sold, and operations there continued without interruption. Although Bayliner did not guarantee that the Company’s employees would be retained, as of February 6, 1984, 223 of 272 former Chrysler employees were employed at the Hartford plant.
The parties then proceeded with arbitration as provided by their collective bargaining agreement. On May 30, 1984, the arbitrator issued an award. The arbitrator found that the term “close” applied to the sale of the Hartford operation and that Chrysler had therefore obligated itself to give six months’ notice of the sale, and to negotiate a severance pay plan. He ordered several adjustments, affecting groups of employees, consistent with the theory that the sale could not have occurred less than six months after December 8, 1983, the date the employees learned of it. These adjustments are not in issue on this appeal. He also directed the parties to attempt to agree upon a severance pay plan comparable to plans in comparable relationships. He stated his opinion “that had such negotiations occurred prior to the effectuation of the sale in question, the Union would have been in an advantageous bargaining position, since the Company would probably have sought its acquiescence to a waiver of the six months’ notice requirement which would have enabled it to. meet the purchaser’s demands with respect to the timing of the transaction. Based upon these considerations, it is the undersigned’s opinion that the Union would in all likelihood have been able to negotiate a severance pay plan which provided benefits comparable with the more generous of such plans in existence at that time in comparable employee-union relationships.”
The parties were given 90 days in which to negotiate, after which the proceeding would be reconvened at the request of either party. Chrysler brought an action seeking to set aside the award. The parties did not negotiate, and the arbitrator reconvened the proceeding.
A supplemental award was issued on March 15, 1985, including, among other things, a severance pay plan for all former Chrysler employees. The arbitrator reviewed severance pay plans collectively bargained in three plants neighboring Chrysler’s. Based upon them, he termed the plan awarded “a fair and generally comparable severance pay plan.” The arbitrator stated that because it was impossible to determine with any certainty the Union’s and the employees’ damages as a result of Chrysler’s violation of the contract, he had attempted in the first award to provide an incentive for the Company to reach an agreement with the Union. That having failed, imposition of a severance pay plan is “the most viable way of affording the employees whose contractual rights were violated meaningful relief, and of imposing upon the Company obligations which in any way coincide with the obligations it had at the time of the contractual violation.” Supplemental Award at 14. The arbitrator also observed that no lesser or more traditional remedy, such as a cease and desist order or a direction to bargain, could be effective because the parties no longer had a bargaining relationship and Chrysler had no incentive to reach an agreement with the Union. Even employees hired by Bay-liner were to receive severance pay, because when Chrysler ceased operations, its employees had no rights to employment with the buyer. Moreover, while one purpose of severance pay is to provide income between jobs, it also compensates employees for their service and for termination for reasons unrelated to their conduct.
The district court ordered enforcement of both awards. It found that the arbitrator’s construction of the contract did not manifestly ignore the agreement, and that the creation of the severance plan was within the scope of his remedial powers. The court also awarded attorney’s fees incurred by the Union to enforce the award.
ARBITRATION AWARD
This court has repeatedly stressed that review of an arbitration award is extremely limited. See International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, UAW and Local 449 v. Keystone Consolidated Industries, Inc., 782 F.2d 1400, 1402 (7th Cir.1986) and cases cited therein. So long as the arbitrator interpreted the contract in making the award, even if arguably incorrectly, it must be upheld. Ethyl Corp. v. United Steelworkers of America, 768 F.2d 180, 187 (7th Cir.1985).
An award may be overturned only if the arbitrator must have based his. award on his own personal notions of right and wrong, for only then does the award fail “to draw its essence from the collective bargaining agreement” as required by the Supreme Court in United Steelworkers v. Enterprise Wheel,- 363 U.S. 593, 597, 80 S.Ct. 1353, 1361, 4 L.Ed.2d 1424, and by ourselves in Ethyl Corporation, 768 F.2d at 184-85; Jones Dairy Farm v. Local No. P-1236, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, 760 F.2d 173, 176 (7th Cir.1985), certiorari denied, — U.S.-, 106 S.Ct. 136, 88 L.Ed.2d 112; Miller Brewing Co. v. Brewery Workers Local Union No. 9, 739 F.2d 1159, 1162 (7th Cir.1984), certiorari denied, 469 U.S. 1160, 105 S.Ct. 912, 83 L.Ed.2d 926....
This low standard of review is essential to prevent a “judicialization” of the arbitration process. Ethyl Corporation, 768 F.2d at 184. Arbitration is an alternative to the judicial resolution of disputes, and an extremely low standard of review is necessary to prevent arbitration from becoming merely an added preliminary step to judicial resolution rather than a true alternative. Id. The parties have bargained ex ante for arbitration as an alternative means of dispute resolution, and ex post they must abide by this bargain. Camacho [v. Ritz-Carlton Water Tower, 786 F.2d 242, 244 (7th Cir.1986)].
E.I. Dupont de Nemours v. Grasselli Employees Independent Ass’n of East Chicago, Inc., 790 F.2d 611, 614 (7th Cir.1986).
Chrysler does not challenge the arbitrator’s construction of the collective bargaining agreement nor his finding of a breach by failing to give the Union six months’ notice of the sale and failing to negotiate regarding a severance pay plan. Instead, it argues that the remedy awarded exceeds the authority granted to the arbitrator by the contract.
The arbitration clause provides that: [t]he decision of the arbitrator shall be final, and binding on all parties. The arbitrator shall have authority only to decide questions as to the meaning and application of the terms of this Agreement, and such arbitrator shall have no authority to change existing rate ranges, incentive base rates or day work rates, for any labor grade or to add, delete or modify any of the terms of this Agreement.
Chrysler contends that by creating the duty “out of whole cloth” to provide severance pay, the arbitrator modified the terms of the agreement by imposing the obligation to come to terms, where only negotiations had been bargained for. It also argues that the arbitrator’s reasoning was faulty, and that the award to employees who were hired by Bayliner exceeds his remedial powers by creating a windfall and contradicting the parties’ bargaining history-
We disagree.
When an arbitrator is commissioned to interpret and apply the collective bargaining agreement, he is to bring his informed judgment to bear in order to reach a fair solution of a problem. This is especially true when it comes to formulating remedies. There is the need for flexibility in meeting a wide variety of situations. The draftsmen may never have thought of what specific remedy should be awarded to meet the particular contingency.
United Steelworkers of America v. Enterprise Wheel & Car Corp., 363 U.S. 593, 597, 80 S.Ct. 1358, 1361, 4 L.Ed.2d 1424 (1960); see Miller Brewing Co. v. Brewery Workers Local Union No. 9, 739 F.2d 1159, 1163 (7th Cir.1984) (“Collective bargaining agreements often say little or nothing about the arbitrator’s remedial powers; yet it cannot be that he has none; and since he derives all his powers from the agreement, the agreement must implicitly grant him remedial powers when there is no explicit grant.”).
Concerning the breadth of such implication, we have said,
In these circumstances we must consider whether it is at all plausible to suppose that the remedy he devised was within the contemplation of the parties and hence implicitly authorized by the agreement. Only if we think it clearly was not may we reverse.
Id. at 1164. See also United Elec., Radio and Mach. Workers of Am., Local 1139 v. Litton Microwave Cooking Products, 728 F.2d 970, 972 (8th Cir.1984) (en banc); Desert Palace, Inc. v. Local Joint Executive Bd. of Las Vegas, 679 F.2d 789, 793 (9th Cir.1982) (as long as solution is within general framework of agreement, arbitrator may decide what parties would have agreed had they foreseen the dispute).
Of course, if Chrysler had given six months’ notice of its sale and had negotiated in good faith, but unsuccessfully, for a severance pay plan, no plan could have been imposed upon it under the collective bargaining agreement. Here, however, Chrysler has made it impossible to determine with certainty what would have been the result of negotiation either if six months’ notice had been given, or, as seems more likely under the circumstances, Chrysler had also sought a Union waiver of the full six months’ notice period. “We cannot say that the arbitrator clearly exceeded his authority or violated the collective-bargaining agreement, when he resolved doubts as to the remedy against the party that had broken its promise.” United Electric, 728 F.2d at 972.
The arbitrator carried out what appears to be a careful and reasonable determination of a plan which would probably have resulted from negotiation under the latter assumption. Expressly conferring on the arbitrator, as the agreement does, the authority to decide the meaning and application of the agreement, necessarily implies the authority to find that there has been a breach of the agreement as interpreted, and, we think, further implies the authority to prescribe a remedy which can be said reasonably to cure the breach. Thus the award was within the range of remedial authority which can reasonably be said to be implied by the contract.
Other remedies did not appear feasible, and Chrysler proposes none; indeed, its position leads to the conclusion that the arbitrator was helpless to provide redress for the Company’s breach, a conclusion not mandated by the agreement or by common sense. Cf. Grigoleit Co. v. United Rubber, Cork, Linoleum and Plastic Workers of Am., Local No. 270, 769 F.2d 434, 440-41 (7th Cir.1985); United Elec. Radio & Machine Workers of Am. v. Honeywell, Inc., 522 F.2d 1221, 1226 (7th Cir.1975) (arbitrators have flexibility in formulating remedies); Mogge v. District 8 Int’l Ass’n of Machinists, 454 F.2d 510, 514 (7th Cir.1971) (where contract is not explicit concerning the proper remedy, arbitrator has wide latitude in fashioning appropriate remedy).
Chrysler challenges the arbitrator’s assumption that the contractual entitlement to six months’ notice of the sale gave the Union bargaining power by withholding consent to a shortening of the notice period. In this challenge, Chrysler relies on this court’s stay and reversal of a preliminary injunction against proceeding with the sale in January, 1984 after only one month’s notice.
This argument rests on an inapt comparison between the premises of the court’s decision and those of the arbitrator’s. This dispute was whether the “sale” was a “closing” under the collective bargaining agreement. That issue had not been resolved when this court decided that Chrysler’s risk of irreparable hardship if it lost the sale opportunity and ultimately won on the merits was much greater than the Union’s risk if the sale occurred and it ultimately won on the merits. Before the arbitrator prescribed the remedy, however, he had reached the merits and determined the Company’s contractual obligation not to sell without six months’ notice.
This court’s two unpublished orders did not, of course, address the merits of the dispute, nor even assess the probability of success. They were plainly based on this court’s evaluation of the respective risks of irreparable injury. The stay order (incorporated also in the final order) suggests that this court perceived an award of (if not agreement on) a severance pay plan as at least a very probable outcome, for it said, at page 5:
Finally, as we previously stated, if Chrysler is not permitted to complete the sale, there is a substantial likelihood that Chrysler will lose large amounts of money greatly in excess of the $1,000 injunction bond filed by the union in this case. After all, in a large commercial transaction such as this, time is sensitive and of the essence. The union members face no such dilemma. If the sale is completed, the Union still has the opportunity to arbitrate severance pay under the collective bargaining agreement against a solvent Chrysler. If the arbitrator finds an award of severance pay to be proper in this instance, then every union member not hired by Bayliner will be entitled to such pay. The arbitrator’s award of severance pay will be in the form of money damages, easily calculable, and within the power of the panel to award. The Union simply cannot complain of irreparable harm if it is remitted to this remedy. Moreover, arbitration may be avoidable since Chrysler has offered to pay in settlement the severance pay proposed by the Union immediately prior to the time the labor contract was signed.
Chrysler further points out that most of the affected employees were hired by Bay-liner, the purchaser of the Hartford plant. Chrysler seems to contend that even if a severance pay plan is an appropriate remedy, it “must be limited to former hourly Chrysler employees who, despite reasonable efforts, have not secured other employment.”
It relies on two decisions which held that pension administrators’ interpretation of employers’ severance pay policies so as not to afford benefits to persons employed by a successor employer did not violate ERISA. Sly v. P.R. Malloy & Co., Inc., 712 F.2d 1209 (7th Cir.1983) and Jung v. FMC Corp., 755 F.2d 708 (9th Cir.1985). These cases involved different situations and have little pertinence here.
ATTORNEY’S FEES
The district court also awarded the Union attorney’s fees incurred to enforce the award, but without any explanation, or finding of bad faith or frivolous litigation. Some courts have held that although § 301 of the LMRA does not provide for the shifting of costs and fees in suits for enforcement of awards, when a challenger refuses to abide by an arbitrator’s decision “without justification,” attorney’s fees and costs may be awarded. See, e.g., Teamsters Local Union No. 764 v. J.H. Merritt & Co., 770 F.2d 40, 43 n. 2 (3rd Cir.1985); Amalgamated Meat Cutters Local Union 540 v. Great Western Food Co., 712 F.2d 122, 125 (5th Cir.1983); Int'l Union of Petroleum & Indus. Workers v. Western Indus. Maintenance, Inc., 707 F.2d 425, 428-29 (9th Cir.1983).
This court has stated that normally when no statute authorizes the award of attorney’s fees “the prevailing party is entitled to attorney’s fees only if his opponent’s suit or defense was frivolous, which our cases define to mean brought in bad faith — brought to harass rather than to win.” Miller, 739 F.2d at 1167. More recently, since the amendment of Rule 11, F.R.Civ.P., we have held that the test under present Rule 11 is objective, and that a finding of bad faith is not essential. See Brown v. National Bd. of Medical Examiners, 800 F.2d 168, 171 (7th Cir.1986) (standard under revised Rule 11 is objective reasonableness under the circumstances). Here there was no finding of bad faith, nor do we see evidence thereof. We do not deem Chrysler’s position so devoid of arguable merit as to warrant sanctions under Rule 11.
The award of attorney’s fees is Reversed, and the judgment is Affirmed in all other respects. Costs on appeal are allowed to plaintiffs.
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