Originally Posted by Lewbronski

And also, don’t forget that a mediator “ices” a dispute as a tactic to create pressure. A mediator can also threaten to put a dispute on ice and can lie about how long they’re going to put a dispute on ice. A mediator CANNOT, however, despite what TSMITR claims, ice a dispute forever.

Why do airline pilots believe the mediator is telling us the truth during mediation when a mediator's job is to get a deal, any deal, done as quickly as possible and when it's no secret that mediators are empowered to lie, cheat, or steal in their pursuit of clearing out their docket?




The National Mediation Board (NMB) cannot permanently keep the parties involved in a labor dispute in mediation. The mediator cannot put a dispute on ice forever. This is rooted in the fact that labor has a right to strike under the RLA. Though many pilots claim that labor does not have the right to strike, the Supreme Court of the United States has stated the opposite. In a 1969 Supreme Court case involving an RLA dispute, Trainmen v. Jacksonville Terminal Company, the Supreme Court’s Justice Harlan, delivering the Court’s opinion, explained:



If the RLA granted to the mediator the power to forever freeze a dispute in mediation, that means the mediator would thereby also own the ability to strip labor of what the Supreme Court described above as “the cherished right to strike.” Since the Court characterized “the right to strike” as “integral” to the RLA, if the law imbued the mediator with license to permanently hold the parties in mediation, then the RLA would also transitively hand the mediator ability to disrupt the entire integrity of the RLA. Does that make any sense at all?

No, it does not.

Congress never accorded the mediator the ability to unravel the complex fabric of the RLA. That is what would happen if the mediator could put us on ice forever.

The mediator may threaten to put us on ice, may actually put us on ice for a time, and may threaten to put us on ice “forever,” but the truth is all of the above are simply tactics to attempt to get one side or the other to capitulate. The mediator only has a limited ability to temporarily control the clock of negotiations.