Don’t people have a right to strike or work to rule in the US unless they’re in the armed forces? The company has the option to fire the pilots if they don’t like what they’re doing but getting a judge to order them to work seems somehow dictatorial, akin to compulsory labor, ie slavery.
Can somebody explain this to me?
The pilot’s union is negotiating a new contract with the airline, but they’re still working under their current contract. The court is ordering the pilots to work under the terms of that contract.
Of course, the pilots could choose to resign en masse if they wanted. The court couldn’t stop that. Or, the company can fire them at the end of the contract, and the court wouldn’t intervene in that, either.
And in many states, government employees have no right to strike at all, whether they’re under a specific contract, or just working under the civil service rules of that state.
I think the context is that the pilots are protected from firing under normal circumstances if they’re engaging in “protected, concerted activity.” The judge’s order is (as I understand it) not so much, “Return to work, period,” but rather, “If you don’t return to work, the airline can fire you.”
One of the principles of the federal Wagner Act governing labour relations was to end wildcat strikes and lockouts. While the collective bargaining agreement is in force, employees can’t strike and the employer can’t lock out.
The goal was to foster industrial peace and save work stoppages or slowdowns for the truly serious case when negotiations on a new CBA have broken down. Anything short of that, and employees are expected to carry on their duties.
If they don’t like it, they can quit. They can’t be forced to work, but they are required to comply with the restrictions on job action.
No, it’s more than just a declaration. It’s a Temporary Restraining Order compelling the pilots to stop their work slowdown, pending full hearing on the airline’s application for a Preliminary Injunction:
Airline labor relations are governed by the Railway Labor Act - Wikipedia. Which was originally passed to regulate, guess what, labor in the railways. And still does.
Labor relations in all other parts of the US economy are regulated by completely different laws.
One of the driving concepts behind RLA is that the industry is too vital to the rest of the economy to permit lockouts and strikes to freely occur as they may under the other labor regulations applicable to other industries.
So the ability of both labor and management to engage in those behaviors, called “self-help” in the argot, are very tightly circumscribed.
A lot of procedural and negotiating hoops must be jumped through first and the parties end up effectively needing government approval to either lockout or to strike. That approval comes from an entity called the National Mediation Board (NMB) which is also unique to the RLA industries. It is similar in concept, but totally different in details, to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) which governs all other unionized industries.
In recent years the NMB has occasionally approved lockouts but has declined to approve any and all strikes. As well, the courts have all but universally sided with management and against labor when either side tries pushing on the other using lesser tactics than a true lockout or strike.
The current news is an example of this last event. The union has (allegedly) asked their pilots to misbehave a bit to pressure management. Management has complained to the court that this is an example of illegal self-help. The court has agreed with management and has told the union: “We’re not sure whether you’re causing this or not. But make your pilots quit doing it right now. Or else.”
As a former airline union official I could go on for hours about this.
Thanks for the info, LSL Guy. Not a surprise that there are special provisions for the major transportation systems. The article linked in the OP shows how dramatic an effect even a work slowdown can have on the travelling public.
That is most interesting. In effect if you work in public transport in the US you’re under pretty much the same restraints vis-a-vis strikes as you would be if you were in the armed forces. I do see the necessity for such laws considering the devastating impact such strikes could have on the public.
BTW has there ever been a national strike in the US such as the one that almost paralyzed the UK in 1926?
No, that’s not correct. Transportation workers can strike, but there are statutory limits on doing so. The armed forces have zero protection for striking, and in fact certain types of “strikes” (e.g., deserting a post/forcing a safeguard) could leave a service member subject to the death penalty.
That’s what a judge would normally do when ordering employees back to work, but the judge can actually order the employees back to the job in this case because the industry is subject to greater-than-usual regulation of labor relations. Similar state laws apply to first responder union activity in many states; for example, a Maryland judge enjoined the Baltimore police from striking in 1974.
What happens if one of the pilots is truly ill, and calls off work?
Likewise, what happens if a significant percentage of pilots are ill and call off work?
Not really. Instead:
This. The union rights of transportation workers are fairly analogous to the rights of public sector “first responder” groups like police and fire.
Because there are limited alternative suppliers and no way to stockpile the product ahead of a service disruption the legislature and courts have determined that the public interest is best served with extra limits on the rights of unions (and employers) to attack each other via industrial action.
Pilot’s who are ill are required by law not to work. And companies are required by law to prevent them from working. Statistical experience indicates what a normal level of illness is for any time of year and day of week. Likewise statistical experience shows what constitutes “normal” for rate of on-time departure, on-time arrival, maintenance discrepancies noted by pilots, etc.
When any of those things spikes significantly, management is able to take that to court as at least circumstantial evidence of a job action by the union. As I said earlier, courts since about the early 1980s are very, very, agreeable to this line of argument and often issue injunctions against the union without an actual finding that union caused it in any way. In fact often in the face of obvious evidence the union has been trying to restrain what’s effectively wildcat action by individuals or minority factions.
As to individual sick pilots, this situation leaves the company in a quandry. If sick calls are normally about 10 a day and suddenly they’re 40, it’s a good bet there’s still 10 legit sick cases in amongst the other 30 “sick” cases. So meting out individual sanctions (warnings, counseling, docked pay, etc.) may not be practical or desirable.
Obviously if a bunch of dumb-asses are then bragging on Facebook about stickin’ it to the Man their story falls apart pretty quickly.
Smart companies play a long game and find the couple of smoking guns & deal with them firmly but sensibly. Stupid companies go hard over and start firing or suspending their way into a scorched earth scenario that has driven small operators on a scale like Spirit right out of business.
There was the airline controllers strike in August, 1981. However, it wasn’t a strike against a corporation, as the controllers were hired by the FAA, and therefore were federal employees. They were all promptly fired and were replaced with new hirees.
I remember when Reagan fired all of the air traffic controllers for striking, but I see that they are a government agency apparently? So Trump can’t do the same thing with striking pilots?
Those folks were, and still are today, under yet another separate set of Federal labor law.
I seem to recall that in 1966 there was a fairly large strike that affected at least five or six of the major American carriers at the same time. Can’t recall who was striking, and I suspect LSLGuy can fill in the details better than I can through research. 
Apparently it was mechanics and other ground crew types.
Hypothetically…what if the pilots were deliberately actually getting sick? Licking dog asses or eating raw chicken so that they contract legitimate illnesses? They can get a doctor’s note that confirms yep, they really are truly ill, but if suddenly your pilots are getting legitimately sick at 4X the normal rate, how might an employer handle something like that?
Spirit needs to remember what happened to the Allied Pilots Association after a 1999 sickout.
Union’s can be held liable for job actions, even if the action is supposedly out of the union’s control. In the 1990’s, the Allied Pilots Association (which represents the pilots at American Airlines) was in contract talks with American after the purchase of Reno Air.
Pilots began to call in sick resulting in the cancellation of thousands of flights. On average, American saw a couple hundred pilots call sick per day, now they were seeing a thousand sick calls per day.
American filed suit against the union requesting an injunction against the job action and the pilots were ordered back to work by a federal judge. In defiance of the order, organized or not, some 2300 pilots called in sick, up from the 2000 sick calls the day before the order was issued. In response, the judge slapped the APA with an immediate $10-million fine as well as personal fines against its officers.
At a later hearing on damage awards, the APA argued the sick-out was a grass roots effort they had no control over and that the problems still occurring were just a result of scheduling by AA. The judge didn’t buy it and set damages at $45-million That was more than the union had in assets.
Not sure how the fines and damages eventually played out but the pilots went back to work and the contract issues were settled. I imagine AA got a huge concession somewhere along the line to drop the damage settlement. I only remember this as I was working at DFW at the time and there was a lot of tension between the pilots and the ground side work groups. The ground side folks felt the pilots were about to blow-up the company over scope and seniority and yet when the other groups were struggling with the same issues the pilots didn’t seem to care at all.
Details pulled from:
Bureau of Labor Statistics: Profile of the American Airlines’ Pilot Sickout