Empresa Ecuatoriana De Aviacion, S.A. v. District Lodge No. 100, 80-5349
| Decision Date | 01 November 1982 |
| Docket Number | No. 80-5349,80-5349 |
| Citation | 690 F.2d 838 |
| Parties | 111 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2971, 95 Lab.Cas. P 13,866 EMPRESA ECUATORIANA DE AVIACION, S. A., Plaintiff-Appellee, Cross-Appellant, v. DISTRICT LODGE NO. 100, et al., Defendants-Appellants, Cross-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit |
Manners, Amoon, Whatley & Tucker, Jos. P. Manners, Miami, Fla., Plato E. Papps, Gen. Counsel, IAMAW, Washington, D. C., for defendants-appellants, cross-appellees.
Manas & Marcus, Richard I. Manas, Miami, Fla., Alan Greene, Coconut Grove, Fla., for plaintiff-appellee, cross-appellant.
Appeals from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
Before GODBOLD, Chief Judge, RONEY and WOOD *, Circuit Judges.
This appeal arises from an illegal strike by employees of an airline subject to the Railway Labor Act, 45 U.S.C. § 151 et seq. Without seeking an injunction against the strike the carrier replaced some of the striking workers on the ground that this was necessary for it to continue operating. The airline then sought and obtained injunctive relief ending the strike, and those strikers not replaced were reinstated. The district court held that strikers who had been replaced because of necessity to continue operations were not entitled to reinstatement. It found that four strikers had been replaced unnecessarily and ordered them reinstated but denied them backpay.
The union contends that the district court should have ordered reinstatement to their pre-strike jobs of all persons who had been replaced.
We hold the following. This was a minor dispute under the Act. The district court was not required to order reinstatement of all strikers. Rather it was within the court's equitable discretion to determine whether strikers who had been replaced should be given their jobs back. The district court acted within this discretion in deciding that it was necessary for the carrier to replace strikers in order to continue operations and that properly replaced strikers were not entitled to reinstatement. The district court acted within its authority in deciding on an individual basis which strikers it had been necessary for the carrier to replace; this issue was not as a matter of law reserved to the administrative procedures of the Railway Labor Act. Finally, on the issue of necessity to replace, we review the correctness of the court's findings with respect to individual strikers and also the relief granted those unnecessarily replaced.
The facts of the strike, as found by the district court after extensive evidentiary hearings, are largely undisputed. Empresa Ecuatoriana de Aviacion is an international airline headquartered in Quito, Ecuador, with its primary American operations in Miami and New York. The Miami facility handles a modest amount of passenger and cargo business 1 and employs approximately 70 people. The workers are represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, District Lodge No. 100. The collective bargaining agreement contains a no-strike clause.
The airline scheduled for April 9, 1979 computer training sessions for employees in the reservation department, and it planned to use the ticket counter computer in the training. During the first week in April union representatives complained, both orally and in a letter, that the airline intended to cross-utilize personnel from the ticket counter and reservation department during the training 2 in violation of the collective bargaining agreement. The letter, delivered April 4, also alleged that the airline had failed to process two grievances and had used management personnel to perform union employees' functions at the airline's New York facility. The union threatened to strike if the training session was held.
Counsel for the airline responded by letter on April 5, stating that the collective bargaining agreement specifically permitted such training sessions and reminding the union that it could invoke grievance machinery to settle this dispute. The letter also assured the union that there would be no cross-utilization of personnel.
The airline's counsel, Greene, planned to vacation in Scotland beginning April 8. He, therefore, drew up contingency plans for use in the event of a strike, one of which consisted of permanently replacing the number of strikers necessary to continue operations. 3 Greene advised the airline that if the strike materialized it should hire replacements, offering them permanent jobs.
On April 6 the union held a meeting to discuss the upcoming training session. Cargo employees who were working overtime were permitted by the cargo manager to attend the meetings. Although union counsel advised the employees at the meeting that they could not strike legally, the chief shop steward disagreed and successfully urged the cargo workers not to return to work that night. The airline could not get other employees to fill in, so the cargo manager and friends completed unloading cargo.
April 8 the four station agents scheduled to work called in sick. Station agents check in passengers and their luggage, handle the boarding, and generally take care of the needs of the passengers and crew. Management had to service a departing passenger flight because of the agents' absence. Acts of sabotage were encountered: baggage cart tires were flat, a false announcement about the flight's delay was broadcast, harassing phone calls to the airline were received, and ticketing machines malfunctioned.
Later that day management met with union representatives, and it was agreed that there would be no strike the next day, the first day of training. Greene then left on his vacation.
On April 9 employees, including the chief shop steward, showed up for the training session. However, during lunch the steward and other employees urged workers to punch out sick by disseminating a false rumor that three cargo workers had just been fired. Most workers complied.
Although the union did not initiate the walkout it enthusiastically embraced the strike. It rented a hotel room to serve as strike headquarters, applied for picketing permits at the airport, sent a letter to the airline refusing to end the strike until the airline corrected the alleged collective bargaining agreement violations 4 and unsuccessfully encouraged union members in the New York facility to strike, too. At no time did the union tell the carrier when or if the strike would end. On April 9 the airline engaged new counsel, who shared office space with Greene, to begin drawing up a request for a temporary restraining order. The airline began hiring a combination of temporary and permanent replacements the evening of April 9 and continued this on April 10. On April 10 it sent a letter to striking employees telling them that they would be replaced. The same day the carrier fired employee Menoscal on the ground that she had incited other employees to engage in the strike. By April 11 all cargo employees had been replaced.
New workers and the few remaining employees performed under adverse conditions caused by the strikers' conduct. 5 Workers were threatened in person and on the phone with physical violence; one employee avoided assault only by displaying an unloaded gun; one worker's car was covered with acid and its windshield was broken; keys to the company vans, which transport the crew and food, were missing; obscene calls tied up telephone lines; and misinformation that the airline had ceased operations was distributed to travel agencies. These acts of harassment and vandalism caused several replacements to quit and most of the nonstriking employees to join the strike.
In the afternoon of April 11 the airline filed suit asking the court to enjoin the strike and order the employees to return to work. The court conducted an emergency hearing on the evening of April 12 and immediately entered a TRO enjoining the strike, ordering the employees to return to work for their next shifts, and enjoining the carrier from failing to properly process grievances. After this hearing on April 12 the carrier stopped hiring replacements. Striking employees returned to work April 13. Those who had been replaced no longer had jobs. The union then petitioned for relief asking that the court restore the status quo as of the time before replacements were hired, by reinstating all strikers. The court did not grant this relief but scheduled hearings, beginning April 19, to determine whether replaced employees were entitled to reinstatement. The district court refers to 35 employees, and approximately 40% of the work force, as replaced. The union asserts (although it is unclear as of what time) that the percentage replaced was as high as 65%-70% of the work force. We need not resolve these differences in percentages because it is undisputed that a substantial part of the work force had been replaced by the time the carrier filed its suit and sought a TRO.
After several days of hearings the court held that the airline could replace strikers to the extent reasonably necessary to continue operations. It found that employing necessary replacements satisfied the airline's obligation under the Railway Labor Act to sustain operations without destroying the continuity of the employer-employee relationship, another goal of the Act. The court also held that, to protect the goal of employment continuity, it must pass on the necessity of each replacement and it determined that four replacements had been unnecessary. The court ordered that the four affected strikers be reinstated but declined to award them backpay, citing the illegality of the strike. The court considered backpay to be a type of unjust enrichment under the circumstances.
The Railway Labor Act, as amended, groups disputes into two categories, major and minor, 6 and prescribes different procedures for their adjustment. The dichotomy between the two categories is based upon...
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