Washington, DC (July 22, 2010)<\/b> \u2013 With free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, five Delta Air Lines employees have appealed a U.S. District Court judge\u2019s decision to uphold a major rule change on how a union is imposed on railway and airline industry workers.<\/p>\n
In June, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Paul Friedman refused to impose an injunction halting the new unionization election procedures, which were hastily instituted over the objections of National Mediation Board Chair Elizabeth Dougherty. <\/p>\n
The two NMB members who approved the new rule, Harry Hoglander and Linda Puchala, are former union officials with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) unions, respectively. Both unions are a major part of an American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) union-led coalition that urged the NMB to discard its election policy of 75 years.<\/p>\n
The new procedure stacks the deck in favor of unionization by granting a union monopoly bargaining power over railway or airline industry workers if the union acquires support from just a bare majority of eligible workers in an election, no matter how few actually vote. This means that a small bloc of workers could force union boss \u201crepresentation\u201d on the whole group rather than having a true majority of all workers deciding for themselves. <\/p>\n
The five Delta workers and similarly situated employees in the railway and airline industries could soon find themselves forced into fees-paying ranks against their will. There are ongoing unionization efforts at Delta by the International Association of Machinists (IAM) and AFA unions.<\/p>\n
Foundation attorneys contend that the new rule is unconstitutional because it violates the workers\u2019 rights of freedom of association and due process, especially when the union can only demonstrate support from a minority of workers in a class or craft. <\/p>\n
Unlike private sector workers covered by the National Labor Relations Act, nonmember employees in the railway and airline industries are not protected by the Right to Work laws in Georgia, where Delta is headquartered, and 21 other states. Furthermore, the rule change is especially troubling given the complicated bureaucratic hoops these workers must jump through to remove an unwanted union.<\/p>\n
\u201cLegal disputes over terms of employment are too often depicted as battles between union bosses and management,\u201d said Patrick Semmens, National Right to Work Foundation Legal Information Director. \u201cWe believe the district court erred in ignoring the impact of these new election procedures on individual employees, whose right to bargain individually with their employers could now be tossed aside by a stealth organizing campaign undertaken by professional union organizers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington, DC (July 22, 2010)<\/b> \u2013 With free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, five Delta Air Lines employees have appealed a U.S. District Court judge\u2019s decision to uphold a major rule change on how a union is imposed on railway and airline industry workers.<\/p>\n
In June, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Paul Friedman refused to impose an injunction halting the new unionization election procedures, which were hastily instituted over the objections of National Mediation Board Chair Elizabeth Dougherty.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[888],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n