Originally Posted by
Banzai
Where the RLA works most aggressively against us is where the company can drag feet for long enough that “retro” becomes such a prohibitive cost item that it moves beyond the “zone of reasonableness”. Never mind how it got there, but if the company were to drag this along for, say, three more years, they could then make the claim that six years of retro is simply too much of a financial burden…unless, of course, the pilots are willing to give up a lot of things to get it.
In this, the RLA gives all the power to the company. We have zero power to secure timely contracts. We may insist on full retro, but the company merely has to drag it out long enough to place it beyond reach.
Not necessarily true.
You all have already been in mediation since Jan 2020. That’s nearly three years. If you were to continue in mediation for, as you ponder, another three years, the argument could be made well before that point that the NMB was exhibiting “patent official bad faith” by keeping the dispute in mediation, as a 1970 federal appeals court explained, “on a basis that is completely and patently arbitrary and for a period that is completely and patently unreasonable.” That same court explained that if the NMB exceeded its authority in the manner described, the courts have the right to intervene and force the NMB to terminate mediation.
How is “a period that is completely and patently unreasonable” determined? It’s determined, as more than one other federal court ruling has stated by comparison to “the norm” or “customary” amount of time that the NMB holds other disputes before it in mediation.
Therefore, it’s helpful to have a familiarity with how long the NMB has held other cases before it in mediation. The recent case of the block of twelve rail unions representing 115,000 rail workers was released from mediation in June of this year after spending four and a half months in mediation. It wrapped up its PEB in September and the unions are currently in a self-imposed status quo period as they each vote on their respective TA’s produced by the PEB. Some of the unions are also now resuming negotiations after voting down their TA’s.
The second most recent case that went to a PEB occurred in 2015 and spent about 15 months in mediation before being released. The most recent airline dispute to go to a PEB were the mechanics at United Airlines in 2001. They spent about 14 months in mediation before being released. In 2010, the NMB-commissioned Dunlop II Report stated that the average length of mediation between fiscal years 2004 and 2008 was 758 calendar days. All of those figures are well short of the approximately six years you contemplate being held in mediation.
You don’t “have zero power to secure timely contracts.” The RLA is NOT slanted against labor. Like almost any other endeavor in life, though, it IS slanted against those who don’t take the time to understand the game they’re trying to play or the system in which they’re trying to achieve victory.
Unions can, if they want to, use the legal advantages afforded to them by the RLA to create leverage for themselves.
A major problem, though, is that I doubt there are more than a handful of pilots at each pilot group that understand or are familiar with information like the above. On the other hand, I bet most of the negotiating team and their paid airline labor law consultants at every major airline are deeply acquainted with all of the above and all of the case law that bears upon RLA negotiations.
The RLA doesn’t “[give] all the power to the company.” The overwhelming majority of pilots never even once in their careers devote a chunk of time and energy to thoroughly understand the law that plays the starring role in their ability to battle the company in the determination of their career compensation and quality of life (days per month spent at work, hours per day, vacation, benefits, etc, etc, etc). THAT is what “gives all the power to the company.”