Crawford v. Air Line Pilots Ass'n Intern.
| Decision Date | 28 April 1993 |
| Docket Number | No. 88-2083,88-2083 |
| Citation | 992 F.2d 1295 |
| Parties | 143 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2185, 61 USLW 2683, 125 Lab.Cas. P 10,658 Peter CRAWFORD; Frederick J. Adam; Robert F. Brauman; Richard L. Brown; William A. Burbage; Robert Erchak; Ron E. Merzlak; Leroy Rogers; Roger F. Seely; Warren Wells; Dale Cross; Richard Pederson; Clyde B. Smith; Ernest Mueller; Ruel Neeley; Robert Buley; Thomas Giefer; Klemens Thomas; Howard L. Jones; Herbert A. Light; Joseph R. Mackensie; Michael T. McQuillen; John R. Yotz; Harold Bagnall; Richard P. Barthelemy; Clinton Davis; Edison L. Denney; George Gawrilow; John J. Lumley; Albert Newton; Eugene Palsson; Dale B. Petty; Deryl Roark; Donald D. Ecker; Karl A. Jadrnicek; Howard S. Morton; Richard W. Rew; Donovan Wholers; Donald K. Brewster; Peter Hayes; Laurence J. Stuppy, III; Roger Veon, Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. AIR LINE PILOTS ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONAL, Defendant-Appellee. Transportation Communications International Union, Amicus Curiae. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Robert Fisher Gore, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Inc., Springfield, VA, argued (Rossie D. Alston, Jr., on brief), for plaintiffs-appellants.
Jerry David Anker, Air Line Pilots Ass'n, Washington, DC, argued (Gary Green, on brief), for defendant-appellee.
Mitchell Kraus, Transportation Communications Intern. Union, Rockville, MD, Marsha S. Berzon, Altshuler & Berzon, San Francisco, CA, for amicus curiae.
Before ERVIN, Chief Judge, RUSSELL, WIDENER, HALL, PHILLIPS, MURNAGHAN, WILKINSON, WILKINS, NIEMEYER, HAMILTON, and LUTTIG, Circuit Judges, and BUTZNER, Senior Circuit Judge.
Appellants are forty-two nonunion airline pilots employed by one of eight airline companies--Eastern, Braniff, Midway, Northwest, Pan American, United, Western, or USAir--operating under the labor scheme of the federal Railway Labor Act (RLA), 45 U.S.C. § 151 et seq. See 45 U.S.C. § 181 (). Each of the airlines had an agreement with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) (appellees), designating it as exclusive bargaining representative for the pilots employed by that airline. Under the authority of § 2, Eleventh, of the RLA, the agreement required pilots employed by the airlines either to join ALPA or to remit to ALPA an agency fee in lieu of dues to compensate it for its services in bargaining and representation. 45 U.S.C. § 152, Eleventh (a). The nonunion pilots contend that ALPA's expenditures of exacted funds violated their rights under the RLA and the First and Fifth Amendments. They also charge that ALPA's methods of collecting and accounting for agency fees exacted under these agreements violated the procedural requirements of Chicago Teachers Union, Local No. 1 v. Hudson, 475 U.S. 292, 106 S.Ct. 1066, 89 L.Ed.2d 232 (1986).
The district court entered judgment for ALPA. A panel of this court affirmed in Crawford v. Air Line Pilots Ass'n Int'l, 870 F.2d 155 (4th Cir.1989). The court subsequently granted rehearing en banc. Thereafter, while the case was pending, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in a public-sector union case involving somewhat similar issues. Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Ass'n, 881 F.2d 1388 (6th Cir.1989), cert. granted, 496 U.S. 924, 110 S.Ct. 2616, 110 L.Ed.2d 637 (1990). This court then held its decision in abeyance pending the Supreme Court's decision in Lehnert. After that decision, Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Ass'n, --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 1950, 114 L.Ed.2d 572 (1991), we requested supplementary briefs. Following receipt of the briefs, the case was argued before the full court, which now affirms the judgment of the district court.
The parties entered into a lengthy stipulation of facts before trial, and the district court augmented these with detailed findings of fact in its opinion. We review these findings for clear error. Lehnert v. Ferris Faculty Ass'n, --- U.S. at ----, 111 S.Ct. at 1965; Anderson v. Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 575, 105 S.Ct. 1504, 1512, 84 L.Ed.2d 518 (1985).
The stipulation discloses that ALPA during the relevant period represented some 37,000 pilots at 43 airline companies, of whom 34,500 were members of ALPA. ALPA charges its members dues of 2.35 percent of their gross pay. The average ALPA member made $80,000 annually and paid $1,880 in union dues. ALPA is a unitary national labor organization that is not composed of local unions like most other labor organizations. Members' dues go to ALPA directly, and collective bargaining and negotiating policy are directed by the national officers and governing bodies of ALPA, with the assistance of the union's 300-member national staff. The pilots employed at each airline with a union contract elect a Master Executive Council for that airline, and negotiations affecting that airline's collective bargaining agreement are conducted by a committee appointed by the Master Executive Council, assisted by the ALPA staff. Negotiating strategy, and any agreement reached, must be approved by ALPA's national president.
Continental Air Lines in 1983 filed for bankruptcy and sought to abrogate its collective bargaining agreement with ALPA. Continental pilots responded by striking. ALPA members in other airlines by secret ballot repeatedly approved a special assessment to their dues to pay a monthly benefit to the striking Continental pilots, and these benefits were paid until February 1986. In 1985, United Air Lines entered negotiations with its pilots seeking a two-tier wage structure or "B-scale" that would pay newly hired pilots less than those already employed. ALPA resisted this demand, and a strike ensued. Eventually the parties signed a contract granting United a temporary B-scale to end in five years, with binding arbitration to determine its form thereafter. After this agreement, ALPA won similar agreements from other airlines, whose pilots it represented, seeking to impose B-scales.
The disputes with Continental and United weakened ALPA financially. In October 1985, ALPA's membership approved an increase in their dues to create a major contingency fund to be used in important labor disputes or for other expenditures that could not be funded adequately out of the normal budget. Funds were used to support the strikes at Continental and United and were used to prepare for a possible strike at Eastern Air Lines. Some funds were also used for the expense of union organizing drives. These organizing expenses, ALPA agrees, are not chargeable to nonunion agency fee payers.
The district court supplemented the stipulation by findings of fact and inferences that it reasonably drew from the facts, all of which are amply supported by the evidence. We quote the findings at some length, because they are essential to an understanding of why ALPA's expenditures are germane to collective bargaining with all the airlines whose pilots it represents.
[C]ollective bargaining negotiations at any one airline are directly affected by, and also directly affect, negotiations at all other airlines. Each airline strives to keep its labor costs no higher than those of its competitors. Thus, when one airline obtains some cost-cutting concession from ALPA, other airlines generally seek to obtain the same or an equivalent concession. On the other hand, when ALPA succeeds in negotiating a wage or benefit increase with one airline, that enhances its ability to negotiate a similar increase with other airlines.
Because of this industry pattern, the court found,
it was important to ALPA, in the interest of all the pilots which it represented, to ensure that what had happened at Continental, namely, a bankruptcy whereby the collective bargaining agreement was abrogated and pilots' salaries were cut in half, not become an industry norm to be sought by other airlines in the bargaining process. For this reason it was in the interest of all pilots, members and non-members alike, that ALPA used its funds to pay the pilots at Continental to make up for their lost wages.
The court further found that
in 1985, United sought in bargaining to impose a concession which American Airlines had achieved [with another union], namely, a B-Scale two-tier payment arrangement under which airline cockpit personnel hired after a certain date would be paid on a lower pay scale (the B-Scale). ALPA supported financially the pilots who struck United, and ultimately, after a twenty-nine day strike, secured from United a six-year parity requirement under the B-Scale arrangement. This accomplishment has been used to benefit all members (and non-members) in all the airlines, not just those employed by United.
In its discussion of the major contingency fund, the court found that
[t]he United and Continental strikes considerably weakened ALPA's financial stability. Since a financially weak ALPA was vulnerable to a prolonged strike, ALPA lost its credibility with management because the other airlines knew it could not financially sustain a long strike. For this reason, the Major Contingency Fund was created.... It was from this fund that some expenditures, beginning in 1985, were made to support the striking pilots at Continental and United. Plaintiffs attack the fund as an improper expenditure of the dues of the objecting plaintiffs. Again the court finds the creation of the fund to be a device reasonably employed to implement the duties of the union as exclusive representative of the employees in the bargaining unit.
The principal complaint of the objecting nonunion pilots concerns ALPA's use of their agency fees to support strikes and other activities of bargaining units at airlines where they are not employed. Closely related is their complaint that ALPA used their agency fees to support the major contingency fund. The nonunion pilots assert that use of agency fees for expenses related to bargaining outside the unit at the airline where a pilot works violates both...
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