See Morris, 2010 WL 3291810, at *5 (finding that plaintiff, who was discharged in 2006, "had to rely on the Union to arbitrate her grievances"); Kravar, 2009 WL 1392595, at *2 (noting that plaintiff, who filed suit in 2006, was covered by a CBA under which "grievances that have not been resolved through the grievance procedure . . . may only be taken to arbitration at the request of either Local 32BJ or the affected employer") (cleaned up). The court in Canales v. ACP Facility Servs., Inc., 2019 WL 1171479, at *5 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 13, 2019), also appeared to be under the impression that the relevant version of the CBA "prevented the employee from arbitrating discrimination claims without union representation." However, as Judge Ramos explained in Hamzaraj, the Union and the RAB entered into a new Agreement and Protocol in 2010 (subsequently incorporated into the CBA itself), expressly providing that "if the Union declines to arbitrate a particular employment discrimination claim," the "individual employee" can "arbitrate the claim on his own."

This Court and other courts in this Circuit have previously found that gaps of five-and-a-half months and longer were sufficient to demonstrate causation. See Arroyo-Horne v. City of New York, No. 16-CV-3857, 2018 WL 4259866, at *20 (E.D.N.Y. Sept. 5, 2018) (six-month gap was “sufficient to establish temporal proximity”); see also Canales v. ACP Facility Servs., Inc., No. 17-CV-6937, 2019 WL 1171479, at *5 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 13, 2019) (finding that a plaintiff who alleged that she was written up five-and-a-half months after the alleged protected activity and terminated four months thereafter had sufficiently alleged causation since she protected activity occurred “less than six months before the date of the first retaliatory action”).

See Borrero v. Ruppert Housing Co., Inc., No. 08-CV-5869 (HB), 2009 WL 1748060, at *2 (S.D.N.Y. Jun. 19, 2009) ("Should Borrero's attempts to arbitrate his claims be thwarted by the Union, the CBA will have operated as a 'substantive waiver' of his statutorily created rights and he will have the right to re-file his claims in federal court"); Morris v. Temco Service Industries, Inc., No. 09-CV-6194 (WHP), 2010 WL 3291810, at *5-*6 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 12, 2010) (addressing facts similar to Kravar and adopting its reasoning); Canales v. ACP Facility Services, Inc., No. 17-CV-6937 (DRH) (AYS), 2019 WL 1171479, at *5 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 13, 2019) (following Kravar and Morris and denying motion to compel arbitration, but dismissing plaintiff's claims on the grounds that she did not "giv[e] the Union an opportunity to pursue" her claim in the first place). More generally, courts have held that, "where the submission of a statutory claim to arbitration is exclusively within the province of the union and the union declines to pursue the matter, the waiver of an employee's right to a judicial forum is unenforceable."

Although Plaintiff's allegations are sparse, and despite the possibility that the evidence will show otherwise, the Court finds that the allegations plausibly allege that Local 804's conduct in failing to process Plaintiff's seemingly meritorious grievance was more than mere negligence, and was potentially arbitrary. See Canales v. ACP Facility Serv.'s, Inc., No. 17-CV-6937, 2019 WL 1171479, at *4 (E.D.N.Y. Mar. 13, 2019) (finding that the plaintiff sufficiently alleged that the union acted arbitrarily where it failed "to contact [the plaintiff] before outright declining to take her case to arbitration without any personalized explanation as to the basis for its decision"); Thomas, 793 F. Supp. 2d at 549 (denying the union's motion to dismiss where the plaintiff alleged that "she contacted [the union] on numerous occasions and the union representatives falsely represented that her grievance was being processed or that a settlement was being negotiated" because, "[i]nsofar as a 'minimal investigation' can constitute a breach of the duty of fair representation," the allegation was sufficient to plausibly allege that the union failed to investigate the grievance); see also Passante v. New York State Nurses Ass'n, No. 10-CV-087, 2010 WL 2425953, at *3 (N.D.N.Y. June 11, 2010) ("It is enough at this juncture that [the union] allegedly failed to meet the minimum requirements in handling [the plaintiff's] g