Originally Posted by
fcoolaiddrinker
The lawsuit was filed in the state of Illinois (in hopes for a labor friendly judge) in 2016 or 2017 I believe. Should be ALPA vs indigo. There were a couple of claims. The biggest of which was the company unnecessarily pulling vac (which they had the contractual right to do). The problem became they did so out of seniority order and cost several pilots thousands (damages). We showed that sick was at a 5 year low and reserve usage at the time was sub 40 block so pulling vac was punitive and part of a larger picture to try and gain leverage in negotiations. It was eventually dropped and the pilots made whole as part of a settlement agreement when we reached a contractual agreement. However during proceedings a judge at one point made some comments on record that were eventually used in our request for release.
This was just a small part of a very large argument made for release. I could go on and on about how far apart both sides were at the time. As part of various ALPA committees for years under multiple management groups it’s safe to say I’ve seen tactics from indigo that probably haven’t been used since the 70’s. Maybe you can find the request for release online somewhere? That would paint the big picture a lot better than the lawsuit that was eventually dropped.
The lawsuit was filed in the (federal) Northern District Court of Illinois in July 2018.
Here's a copy of the filing. I couldn't find the request for release from mediation but the NMB typically keeps a pretty tight lid on items like that since they can contain proprietary information and information that, if publicly released, could be used to manipulate other disputes in mediation both now and in the future.
I didn't read the entire pleading. But it's pretty clear, like you described, that Frontier management was engaged in bad faith negotiations, especially given the report from the arbitrator attached as an exhibit to the end of the filing. The lawsuit against Frontier was still in motion when you guys approved your contract in Jan 2019 but was dropped as part of the agreement with the company.
However, like I pointed out previously, the fact that Frontier was negotiating in bad faith does not necessarily mean that the dispute was at an impasse. The mediator either saw some reason to believe that hope for progress, however slight, was still viable and/or believed that the board members of the NMB would not be convinced that the dispute was at an impasse and therefore, would not vote to approve a release.