Also typical at union airlines. Being right about the contract will not keep them from firing you for disobedience/insubordination if you refuse when they tell you to do something. "Fly it and grieve it".

If there are ANY airlines where you can refuse to do something based on your interpretation of the contract and get off the hook I would like to know. I'm talking about a contractual provision allowing you to refuse any assignment which is not in accordance with the contract.

But even having such a provision might be of limited value... you'd have to be pretty darn sure of your contractual knowledge to play that card if the consequence of being wrong is termination.