Company can reinstate employee, then immediately fire him.

Faced with what the court itself called a "novel issue," the Third Circuit decided that an employer could pay an employee back wages in lieu of reinstatement and immediately terminate him on other grounds (United Food & Commercial Workers Union Local 1776 v. Excel Corp., 2006 WL 3456611): "We hold that, given the circumstances of this case, the employer's payment of back pay acted as an effective reinstatement, and the employer was free to terminate the employee a second time based on independent grounds, pending a second arbitration."

The company suspended two employees pending an investigation into the charge that they had attempted to steal meat by use of a stolen receipt. It subsequently fired them. When told that he had been fired, one of the employees attacked a company security guard and broke two of his ribs. The employees' union grieved the terminations. The company stated two grounds for terminating the …