There’s been a rash of lawsuits by flight attendants against airlines for paying them exactly what their union contract proscribes. Airlines negotiate with their unions over wages nationwide (most of Delta is non-union, though). But flight attendants travel to states with different rules, and they’re even ‘based’ in states like California, Illinois or New Jersey even if they don’t work there.
The cases have been using state laws on overtime to sue, arguing that time that’s unpaid in their contracts (or paid at lower wages) like time ‘at work’ at the airport should count as hours worked and they should be getting time and a half on their regular wages for it, even though their union negotiated pay agreements with higher wages that work differently.
Last week American Airlines failed to get one of these cases dismissed in Illinois, Nicholas Greve and Jeffrey Nissen v. American Airlines, Inc. (No. 1:26-cv-00626, in the Northern District of Illinois).
- Illinois makes overtime mandatory and non-waivable. An employer cannot employ an employee for more than 40 hours in a work week without overtime “at a rate not less than 1 1/2 times the regular rate.”
- The federal Fair Labor Standards Act has an overtime exemption for airlines but it does not bar state law claims for overtime.
- Illinois law allows an employee to recover treble the underpayment plus 5% of the underpayment for each month after the payment date during which the underpayment remains unpaid, and they can go back three years.
Under Illinois law, maybe even American’s new boarding for flight attendants pay might be illegal? Time over 40 hours in a week must be paid at 1.5 times the regular rate. But boarding pay is at 50% of ‘regular rate’.
It seems like even calculating what “hours worked” means and what “regular rate” is (since there are multiple rates of pay for different kinds of work in the contract), in order to determine unpaid overtime, would require interpreting the terms of the union contract, rather than just looking at pay stubs.
And if that is the case, the suit is likely to be dismissed, with arguments having to follow a Railway Labor Act process rather than Illinois state law. That’s not a guarantee in the initial stages of the suit, but seems probabilistically the most likely outcome to. Pursuing the suit still makes sense because if it survives long enough the likelihood of extracting a settlement rises.
- A state law claim isn’t preempted just because a collective bargaining agreement is relevant or needs to be consulted, just when the court has to actually interpret disputed terms of the union contract to resolve the claim. So if they can just look at information on a pay stub – how many hours were worked, what was paid, and whether state law required more – the case can proceed.
- However Adames v. Executive Airlines was pre-empted because Puerto Rico flight attendant overtime claims required interpreting the things like flight time, on-duty time, guarantees, base pay, overtime pay, and industry practices.
- And flight attendant compensation at a large network airline isn’t just an hourly wage system. The negotiated package has flight hour rates, duty periods, report times, release times, reserve rules, trip rigs, minimum guarantees, premium pay, boarding pay, deadhead rules, reassignment rules, and monthly guarantees.
- Deciding whether a flight attendant was underpaid for work means figuring out which hours would go into a base 40 and which would constitute overtime since boarding pay in the contract is at 50% of flight pay.
And even counting report time and boarding time and deplaning as work, flight hour rates, guarantees, duty rigs, trip minimums, and negotiated premiums take that time into account in their rates. The real relevant question in wage laws is was an employee paid enough for the work that they did?
It’ll also be tough to ultimately defend ‘all Chicago based flight attendants’ (for instance) as a class, because flight attendants are traveling all sorts of different schedules, a duty starts in one state, and ends in another, and involves international travel and that’s mostly paid flight hours and domestic short hops that involves a lot more boarding time or long sits. Some are lineholders and others sit reserve.
Nonetheless I’ve written about a case like this against United and against Southwest.
It’s become a cottage industry to take on union contracts for offering insufficient pay. That’s a weird place to find ourselves in 2026.
Cool. Good for them. Use our legal system to get money. Pay workers more. Protect consumers from greedy corporations. Fund healthcare, retirement, housing, education. And, most importantly, stay human. (Or… keep fluffing for oligarchs, who want you ‘gone’ once they have AI robots capable of doing all ‘labor’ instead.)
SCOTUS should end this craziness. You can’t cherry pick state laws when a union has negotiated a national contract. Federal transportation law should also prevail. This is why people hate peoplr always looking for an angle and to have their hand out.
Other option is cut this hours or fire them and only hire employees in more friendly states. Would serve them right!
@Retired Gambler — Act fast, 6-3 can decide anything you’d like, so long as you continue to bribe them, legally. Totally unrelated, it is not a bus or an RV… it is a motor coach!!
My father was a founding member of the United Auto Workers and a sit-downer in 1937. My brother was on the negotiating team for the UAW in the 1960’s. Both were obviously very pro-union and pro-workers’ rights, yet both said the dynamics shifted in the later years as lawyers started taking over. While they viewed contracts as something that both sides could accept and was beneficial to the overall well-being of the company and employees, the lawyers took a scorched earth philosophy. It became about getting everything and screw the company’s well-being and future survivability. This reeks of such a move – get mine and screw everyone else. But the Lawyers will get their paycheck, and that is all that matters.
@Ron — So, abolish unions because lawyers-bad? Naw… that sounds like astroturfing for management/corporate.
Subject them to state and local taxes wherever they fly to.
@Coffee Please — Do religious organizations next! No reason they shouldn’t pay, too, especially as many are acting partisan anyway. Fair is fair.
I am all in on religious organizations paying taxes.
@Coffee Please — Deal. The First Amendment isn’t a tax exemption, and it certainly isn’t a license to mandate theocracy. It protects your right to practice a faith, and your equal right to reject it entirely. Anyone using it to force their beliefs on the public is either constitutionally illiterate, or a bad-faith actor using freedom as a mask for control.