Captain Tony

Our contract sections on discipline, grievances, and system board of adjustment are fairly industry standard under the RLA. The RLA mandates the "fly now grieve later" policy, which leaves the company free to violate the contract with little immediate penalty. Then the burden is on you (and the union) to bring a grievance, prove the contract was violated, and seek a remedy sometime at t later date. This industry standard process calls for an initial hearing (which the company and their lawyers drag out as long as possible... just because they can) and in this hearing the company says no violation was made 99% of the time. Then it goes to mediation, which takes months to schedule since there's only a handful of mediators in the country. Generally the union and the company meet quarterly to do this. 85% of the time, the company still insists no violation took place. The next step is an arbitration, which is almost exactly like a court session. It takes almost a year to schedule this because there are only about 8 arbitrators in the nation who hear these cases. Sometimes, it gets postponed further because an arbitrator has to cancel or a key witness isn't available.

This is why the process takes so long. It's designed this way because in all but disciplinary grievances, it favors management and the RLA's goal to keep planes flying.