Originally Posted by
Carl Spackler
A PEB and possible follow-on action by the Congress IS settled law. Even though the Congress has never done it before, they could. But that's beside the point of people here trying to frame a strike as an impossibility. It's just not true. The NMB is not a total blocking agent...witness the Spirit strike. PEB's do not stop a strike...it can only delay it a maximum of 60 days. Congress can intervene and impose a contract on a union...but they've never done so in history (that I know of anyway).
Carl
There have been 243 PEB's, most involving railroad unions.
While they've yet to do it to an airline union, Congress has legislated working conditions under the Railway Labor Act a bunch of times, the most recent that I remember being in 1991. They also intervened after a 4 day railroad strike in 1982.
The railroads have also been federalized several times.
You can google the intervention. Congress threatened to intervene in a rail strike last December that prompted a negotiated contract settlement.
Unions Avoid Rail Strike After Congress Prepares to Intervene - Bloomberg