Merger Law Signed
From an ALPA fast-read
Law Signed on Seniority Integration
ALPA-backed Seniority Integration Legislation Protects Pilots, Contracts, and ALPA Merger Policy
ALPA, along with the Association of Flight Attendants and the AFL-CIO’s Transportation Trades Department, worked closely with labor’s allies on Capitol Hill to enact seniority integration legislation that protects U.S. ALPA pilots’ career interests, the Association’s merger policies, and ALPA labor agreements in future merger integrations.
Signed by the president into law in late December 2007, this legislation ensures that if two ALPA pilot groups merge, the Association’s internal Merger Policy and the pilots’ collectively bargained merger-integration protections will continue to govern as before. If an ALPA pilot group merges with a non-ALPA pilot group, the ALPA pilots involved will also retain the hard-won labor protective merger provisions of their collective bargaining agreements.
However, the legislation goes further and also guarantees ALPA pilots involved in a non-ALPA merger, and all unionized employees under the Railway Labor Act, at least a minimum standard of protection in future transactions with merging employee groups outside of their union by ensuring a “fair and equitable” seniority integration process under the Allegheny-Mohawk merger provisions, which are incorporated in this law.
These provisions, like ALPA Merger Policy, provide a process that includes negotiation, and if necessary, arbitration concerning seniority integration. The required integration procedures of the new law, like ALPA Merger Policy, do not provide for, or guarantee, any specific standard of integration in seniority integration arbitrations, which in the absence of an agreement would be decided by an arbitrator. The standards applied by arbitrators under both ALPA Merger Policy and the seniority integration procedures included in this legislation have typically included consideration of career expectations for the pilots at the two airlines at the time of the merger, and have been implemented through various methodologies.
This legislation, which applies to covered mergers that occur after Dec. 26, 2007, was originally proposed by AFA and supported by ALPA. It stems from the inequities that arose when the independent unions that represent the flight attendants and pilots of American Airlines forced the flight attendants and pilots of the former TWA to forgo a merger seniority arbitration process and suffer imposed seniority terms that disfavored these groups. This legislation corrects that situation and will prevent outside groups from simply dictating seniority terms to ALPA pilots.
In addition to securing this important new protection for ALPA pilots in the law, ALPA insisted upon legislative provisions for protection of ALPA Merger Policy in an ALPA-ALPA merger and for retention of any additional protections for ALPA pilots beyond Allegheny-Mohawk procedures that may exist in ALPA labor agreements. The ALPA-drafted language on these key provisions accomplishes all of these goals and was adopted by Congress and signed by the president. This important legislative success demonstrates ALPA’s leadership role on Capitol Hill.