Yes but the law is applied differently to airline unions than everyone else. Only airline unions are compelled by the courts to continue to provide the debtor their product under terms set solely by the debtor. Like I said, if they can do this to us then why cant they force Exxon, a corporation owned by many shareholders, to provide the debtor fuel set at whatever price the debtor decides they want to pay? Some would say that workers can quit the Union if they dont like it, well a shareholder is free to sell their stock if they dont like it. The owners of the company get the same option the workers get in that case, walk away as an individual.
The question is do the debtors rights supercede the rights of creditors and to what degree? Was it the intent of the government to isolate airline workers from all other workers and creditors in a punaitve way when they added 1113? There is no indication of that in the language, just fanciful extrapolations from some deluded judges looking to score points with other rich powerful people. Does the court really have the right to compell unions to continue to provide labor under terms never agreed to? If so then what differentiates our property rights, and our right to collectively leverage our property to secure maximum returns from that of shareholders of corporations such as Exxon, who have more than quadrupled what they charge for their product and is the main source of financial distress for the industry? It should also be noted that this has been a period of record profitability for the oil business and the oil business enjoys substantail tax breaks from the people of the United States. In other words they have a debt to society, even more so than airline workers.
There is no way such unequal treatment can be Constitutional, if it is then we need a new Constitution, or at least new interpretors. The RLA says that if the company unilaterally changes terms we can strike. To get around that the Judge claimed that in Bankruptcy that the contract never existed, so Airline workers, not Rail workers who are covered under the same Law, have to start negotiations as if there never was a contract. By doing so he skirted the RLA and created his own law and his own set of rules, exclusive to airline workers. Thats legal rubbish, even a layman like me can see that. What the Judge is doing is not contract abrogation, its contract annullment. BK law allows for abrogation not annulment, if all contracts were annulled in BK then there would be no grounds for equity stakes by any of the creditors because no contract ever existed. But there is, even with airline unions. There are standards for annullment, the contracts have to be illegal, how can a Judge say that a contract thats been in place and amended over decades all of a sudden, simply because they filed BK becomes illegal?
All I can say is I hope those Judges choke on their Turkey!!
The point of my post is that all airline workers are faced with this dilemma, and what are the Unions that take our money going to do about it?
I say the AFA has set a strike vote. The whole industry should shut down Christmas week and stay out until the President steps in and guarantees that the whole process, from Section 6 negotiations and the standards to declare an impasse right through ensuring that in bankruptcy we are either treated like rail workers under the RLA or like Hostess workers under the NLRA, not as second class citizens without the rights of either. USAIR and all the other airlines should be prevented from using BK as a means to get what they could not get at the bargaining table. The RLA has a process to deal with such situations that has worked for over 85 years. Airline workers are more productive than ever before but instead of enjoying the benefits of increased productivity they are being penalized by a set of laws that create an unfair advantage for the Airlines.
Remember in order for you to get to your family we have to be away from ours.
