Int'l Broth. of Teamsters Airline Div. v. Frontier Airlines, Inc.

• Decision Date: 16 February 2011
• Docket Number: No. 10-2291,10-2291
• Parties: INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS AIRLINE DIVISION, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. FRONTIER AIRLINES, INC., and Republic Airways Holding, Inc., Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

628 F.3d 402

INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS AIRLINE DIVISION, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.FRONTIER AIRLINES, INC., and Republic Airways Holding, Inc., Defendants-Appellants.

No. 10-2291.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued Oct. 29, 2010.

Decided Dec. 13, 2010.

Rehearing En Banc Denied Feb. 16, 2011.

Marianne G. Robbins (argued), Attorney, Previant, Goldberg, Uelmen, Gratz, Miller & Brueggeman, Milwaukee, WI, Edward M. Gleason, Jr., Attorney, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, William R. Wilder, Attorney, Baptiste & Wilder, Washington, DC, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

David Lucey, Attorney, Foley & Lardner LLP, Milwaukee, WI, Norman A. Quandt (argued), Attorney, Ford & Harrison, Atlanta, GA, for Defendants-Appellants.

Before POSNER, KANNE, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

This appeal by the defendant airlines from the grant of a preliminary injunction to a labor union presents a novel question under the Railway Labor Act, 45 U.S.C. §§ 151 et seq., which despite its name also governs labor relations in the airline industry.

On October 1 of last year, Republic Airways, a holding company that already owned a number of airlines, added Frontier Airlines to its collection. Soon afterward it announced that it was shifting maintenance work on Frontier's aircraft to Milwaukee—where maintenance is performed by nonunion workers—from Denver, where Frontier's maintenance workers (whom we'll call "mechanics," although some are not) are represented by the Teamsters Union. The lawfulness of Republic's shifting the maintenance work to Milwaukee is not questioned, but the union contends that its collective bargaining agreement with Frontier determines the rights of Frontier mechanics affected by the shift.

Republic denies this. It contends that the airlines that it owns, although separately incorporated, constitute a "single transportation system" or "single carrier," within the meaning of the Railway Labor Act. These are not statutory terms, but rather glosses on the statute that guide delineation of the bargaining unit (the unit of worker representation—a "craft" or "class" in RLA-speak). "Where a railroad system is composed of a number of subsidiary corporations, employees have been in dispute as to whether one vote should be taken of a craft or class on the wholesystem or whether the subsidiary corporations are carriers within the meaning of the Act whose employees are entitled to separate representation. The [National Mediation] Board has ruled generally that where a subsidiary corporation ... keeps its own payroll and seniority rosters, it is a carrier as defined in the Act, and its employees are entitled to representation separate from other carriers who may be connected with the same railroad system. [But] if the operations of a subsidiary are jointly managed with operations of other carriers and the employees have also been merged and are subject to the direction of a single management, then the larger unit of management is taken to be the carrier rather than the individual subsidiary companies." In re Representation of Employees of Donora Southern R.R., 2 N.M.B. 80, 83-84 (1952); see National Mediation Board Representation Manual § 19.501 (updated through Sept. 17, 2010), listing eight nonexclusive factors that are "indicia of a single transportation system," including combined routes, centralized labor and personnel operations, and even standardized uniforms.

Because a single transportation system is treated as a single employer, with the result that all system employees who do the same type of job are deemed members of the same bargaining unit, if Republic's assemblage of airlines constitutes a single transportation system then all the mechanics employed by Frontier and represented by the Teamsters Union are members of a unit composed of all the system's mechanics. In that event the union, because it does not represent a majority of them, is not authorized to represent any of them. See 45 U.S.C. § 152 Fourth; Summit Airlines, Inc. v. Teamsters Local Union No. 295, 628 F.2d 787, 795 (2d Cir.1980). If on the other hand Republic is not a single transportation system, Frontier's mechanics constitute a separate bargaining unit and the union is its lawful representative. 45 U.S.C. § 152 Ninth; see, e.g., In re Applications of International Brotherhood of Teamsters & Association of Flight Attendants, 37 N.M.B. 148, 167-68 (2010).

The National Mediation Board, which the Act makes responsible for resolving representation disputes, had prior to Frontier's acquisition by Republic certified the Teamsters Union to represent Frontier's mechanics. Until that certification is rescinded, Republic is forbidden to alter their pay, work rules, or working conditions unilaterally, as it did, without precipitating a protracted negotiation with the Teamsters Union. 45 U.S.C. §§ 152 Seventh, 156. Republic doesn't want to go that route, which anyway may have been unavailable because, as we'll see, a representation dispute is resolved by a different procedure. So the district court has issued a preliminary injunction forbidding any unilateral alteration in the pay, work rules, or working conditions of the Frontier mechanics unless and until the National Mediation Board, the implementer of that different procedure, rules that the Teamsters Union is not their lawful representative.

Disputes over the meaning of a collective bargaining agreement governed by the Railway Labor Act—"minor disputes" in RLA jargon—are subject to compulsory arbitration. Union Pacific R.R. v. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, --- U.S. ----, 130 S.Ct. 584, 591-93, 175 L.Ed.2d 428 (2009). All other disputes (with one exception—critical to this case, as we're about to see) must be referred to a bargaining and mediation process prescribed by the Act, as in section 6, 45 U.S.C. § 156 (just the kind of process that Republic doesn't want to and might not be allowed to invoke, as we noted). A federal district court can issue an injunction topreserve the status quo (that is, the conditions of employment on the eve of the action that precipitated the dispute) until the process is completed. Consolidated Rail Corp. v. Railway Labor Executives' Ass'n, 491 U.S. 299, 302-04, 109 S.Ct. 2477, 105 L.Ed.2d 250 (1989); Detroit & Toledo Shore Line R.R. v. United Transportation Union, 396 U.S. 142, 148-50, 90 S.Ct. 294, 24 L.Ed.2d 325 (1969); Burlington Northern R.R. v. United Transportation Union, 862 F.2d 1266, 1272 (7th Cir.1988); Association of Flight Attendants v. Mesa Air Group, Inc., 567 F.3d 1043, 1047 (9th Cir.2009). Notwithstanding the Norris-LaGuardia Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 101 et seq., injunctions to compel compliance with the Railway Labor Act are permissible even when they enjoin collective action by workers that could not, consistently with the Norris-LaGuardia Act, be enjoined in industries not subject to the RLA. Burlington Northern R.R. v. Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, 481 U.S. 429, 445, 107 S.Ct. 1841, 95 L.Ed.2d 381 (1987), and cases cited there; ABA Section of Labor & Employment Law, The Railway Labor Act 362-73 (2d ed. 2005 & Supp.2009). Anyway the injunction issued by the district court is directed against the employer, not the union.

The Teamsters Union doesn't claim that its collective bargaining agreement with Frontier contains any provision relating to the union's right to represent Frontier's mechanics if Frontier becomes part of a single transportation system. Republic's insistence that Frontier has become part of such a system, thus enabling Republic to alter the working conditions set forth in the agreement, has therefore precipitated—one might think—a major dispute. But it is a dispute over who (if anyone) is the legitimate representative of a carrier's workers. A representation dispute turns on " whether or by what representative employees are represented for purposes of collective bargaining. In some contexts, representation disputes also include issues concerning the identity of a carrier (e.g., one or more companies functioning as a single carrier) or the scope of a craft or class for bargaining." ABA Section of Labor & Employment Law, supra, at 18. (We have italicized the passage that bears directly on this case.) Section 2 Ninth of the Railway Labor Act, 45 U.S.C. § 152 Ninth, has been interpreted to give the National Mediation Board exclusive jurisdiction to resolve such disputes. General Committee of Adjustment v. Missouri-Kansas-Texas R.R., 320 U.S. 323, 336, 64 S.Ct. 146, 88...