Airline Workers Challenge Federal Ruling on Sham Transportation Unionization Election Procedures
Appeal contests federal district court ruling that upheld new policy stacking the deck in favor of forced unionization of railway and airline employees
Washington, DC (July 22, 2010) – 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’s decision to uphold a major rule change on how a union is imposed on railway and airline industry workers.
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.
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.
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 “representation” on the whole group rather than having a true majority of all workers deciding for themselves.
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The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in more than 250 cases nationwide per year.
