Originally Posted by
PCL_128
You've got some things mixed up here. The judge never issued an injunction against a strike at Mesaba. That precedent didn't happen until later against the NWA flight attendants. The judge in the Mesaba case balked at making a ruling on that issue.
As far as the scope, you're misinterpreting the ruling. As you know, the Mesaba contract had a separate Holding Company Letter, which bound MAIR Holdings to the scope language in the Mesaba contract. MAIR never went into bankruptcy. Only its wholly owned subsidiary, Mesaba Aviation, went into bankruptcy. Therefore, the judge ruled that the Mesaba contract could be abrogated, but the Holding Company Letter, and therefore your scope, could not be, because that agreement was with MAIR, and MAIR was not in bankruptcy. The ruling had absolutely nothing to do with whether scope is off the table for concessions in bankruptcy. To the contrary, it seems pretty clear under current law that everything in a contract is subject to abrogation in an 1113(c) situation. Assuming that scope is safe is a very dangerous assumption.
Judge blocks strike threat at Mesaba - Business - US business - Aviation - msnbc.com
I have the pdf file of the actual injunction ruling, I can post it here if you want.
Management had asked to treat the MAIR letter as part of the contract. The judge refused and left that between the union and MAIR. When that failed, management then asked to make the necessary section 1 modifications to permit MAIR to fly the larger aircraft. Once again the Judge refused. I have that ruling on pdf. as well.
Edit: Also in the filing is Mesaba's attempt to make modifications to the AMFA section 1 scope clause, that failed as well.(judge kept scope intact)