Originally Posted by
Baradium
You lost the whole rest of your argument at bullet point A.
The national mediation board has to declare an impasse before anything else can happen. All they have to do is not declare an impasse and you will never get to a cooling off period. In recent history this has been their response to prevent strikes. Spirit wasn't released until they started to charge for carry on bags and given a strike as a punishment for it.
Yes, an impasse has to be declared before you can move on to further stages of the RLA process. That is a fact.
However, the NMB does not have an unlimited to ability to simply avoid declaring an impasse forever before a union can file a motion in federal court petitioning for a release from mediation. The bar for overcoming the NMB's position that two parties are not at an impasse in federal court is very high. That is why the union has to play the game right during mediation.
The RLA's charter is to avoid an interruption of interstate commerce. That charter, though, is balanced with labor's right to self-determination. Congress never intended the RLA to completely strip labor of that right. But don't believe me, believe what federal judges have said in previous cases involving the RLA (from IAMAW, AFL-CIO vs NMB 425-F.2d-527 (1970)):
The rights of self-help owned by both union and management have been deliberately preserved by Congress, albeit held in temporary abeyance. They survive, available for use when the statutory procedures to promote agreement are exhausted.
They are indeed in a sense symbols of freedom, reminders that even though their occasional exercise and the disorder of industrial warfare may be vexing to the point of distress the underlying freedom is more productive of a healthy 537*537 and vigorous economy and nation than a structure of economic regimentation and dictated order. That at least is the premise of the Railway Labor Act, as Justice Harlan recently pointed out in Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen v. Jacksonville Terminal Co., 394 U.S. 369, 378, 89 S.Ct. 1109, 115, 22 L.Ed.2d 344 (1969):
Implicit in the statutory scheme [of the Railway Labor Act] is the ultimate right of the disputants to resort to self-help — `the inevitable alternative in a statutory scheme which deliberately denies the final power to compel arbitration.' We have consistently so held in a long line of decisions.
Even if the NMB fails to recognize the above, the federal courts do recognize the ultimate rights of workers to EVENTUALLY strike under the RLA. But your union has to be willing to play the RLA game correctly. The courts can compel the NMB to declare an impasse.
In other cases, the courts have hinted at approximately a minimum 2-2.5 year timeframe for being released from mediation if still at an impasse. However, as I said, that requires that your union's conduct be impeccable during mediation. "Impeccable" conduct means bargaining in absolutely good faith, and never stalling or appearing to stall.
It is also a fact, that like it or not, playing the RLA game correctly is the only consistently strong leverage that pilot unions have. If, like an-already defeated Eeyore, you insist on resignedly believing the myth that the NMB can put you on ice forever with no recourse available, you will get results that go along with that belief system.
There are loads of complaints on the Alaska threads about how they don't like this or that about their situation. Unfortunately, your management is unlikely to seriously address any of your concerns without your union having some significant leverage. You dismantle your own leverage before you even begin by holding onto a largely false belief that the NMB is all-powerful.