Holly Hegeman gets it. She always has.
While the Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act had little direct impact on the industry, and Friday's ruling had some impact on the industry, we had another court decision come down late Friday that has direct impact on the seniority negotiations that were scheduled to start Monday between pilots representing American Airlines, and two separate pilot groups representing the two warring factions from the old US Airways operation.
Remember that the two US Airways pilot groups never got past the issue of negotiating a seniority agreement, hence they never negotiated a joint collective bargaining agreement with US Airways.
The Real Men of Genius, aka the old US Airline Pilots Association group that was made up predominately of the original US Airways East pilots, who left the Air Line Pilots Association rather than accept the negotiated seniority agreement that was overseen by ALPA at the time, got smacked down by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
In a 2-1 ruling, the court ruled that USAPA had breached its duty of fair representation on behalf of the America West pilot group. The court then remanded the case back to the district court with an order enjoining USAPA from participating in the McCaskill-Bond seniority integration proceedings, including any seniority-related discussions leading up to those proceedings, except to the extent that USAPA advocates for the Nicolau Award.
In other words, USAPA's role at the seniority negotiations is now pretty much limited to arguing for the implementation of the award the union has fought against since 2005.
The gist of the court's argument? Essentially what we had said all along. Binding arbitration is exactly that. Binding. When the group of US Airways East pilots bolted ALPA and created a new union, for the sole purpose of avoiding the seniority award that was the result of binding arbitration -- which the US Airways East group felt was "unfair" -- the union did not meet the duty of fair representation standard as applied to the America West pilot union members who supported the ruling.
As a result, any and all negotiations involving seniority on behalf of the US Airways pilot group have to now be done using the original Nicolau seniority award -- the award that the US Airways East pilot group has fought against ever since the arbitration was completed.
This is the decision from last week -- though certainly not by any means the most significant in the overall scheme of things -- that made me smile the widest. This situation should never have gone on this long. Congratulations to the America West pilots who were forced to fight this with money out of their own pocket against their own union, to which they were paying dues.
As a result of the court's decision, it looks like the opening round of seniority negotiations will be somewhat delayed at American, while everyone takes a deep breath and figures out how this will change the protocol going forward.
