administrative remedies once the union representative instructed Plaintiff Hill to pay the claim personally, the entire ERISA exhaustion requirement would be rendered meaningless. Under such a ruling, Plaintiff Hill could avoid the internal procedures of the program and jump to federal court without Defendant ever having an opportunity to administratively defend its denial of benefits. Defendant, and others like Defendant, would be subject to federal litigation merely because a single local union representative declined, for whatever reason, to administratively pursue a claim. In addition, the local union representative is Plaintiff Hill’s agent, and what the agent did or failed to do is attributable to Plaintiff Hill for ERISA exhaustion purposes. See Brooks, 208 F.Supp.2d at 824-25 (<HOLDING>). Accordingly, administrative remedies have not
recognizing that the involvement of supervisory union members in union affairs conflicts with the need to assure the complete devotion of union negotiating teams to employee interests holding that an employee may sue for breach of a collective bargaining agreement without the union holding an employee accountable for administrative procedures assigned to his union representative holding that an employer is accountable to a discharged employee for unpaid compensation if the employee was terminated in bad faith and the compensation is clearly connected to work already performed holding union members state law claims for defamation against union preempted