United Mechanics Say Their Union Helped The Airline Short Them On Raises — Judge Tosses Most Of The Case

United Airlines mechanics said their own union helped the carrier short them on raises. A judge has tossed out most of their case.

The airline’s mechanics argued they were denied raises that were supposed to keep their pay ahead of American and Delta – that United turned the pay-reset formula into a black box, and that the Teamsters went along with it instead of fighting for the mechanics they represented. Most of the case has been tossed, but the judge held that the mechanics can pursue the grievance themselves under the Railway Labor Act.

The pay provision at the center of the case was LOA #29, meant to reset compensation every two years so mechanics stayed at 102% of the combined American and Delta average pay. If American and Delta mechanic wage costs rose, the formula was supposed to push their pay up above what was being earned at those carriers.

The mechanics claimed this never operated the way it was supposed to. Instead of a transparent formula everyone could verify, United and the union relied on a secretive “Cost Model” whose details were withheld, and the value assigned to non-pay items in the formula were manipulated to make their deal appear richer than it was – in order to deliver smaller raises.

• They alleged that the 2020 reset was announced as 7.6% without enough detail for mechanics to verify the calculation.

• And their suit contended that the 2022 adjustment was announced as just 2.6%, about $1.20 an hour, when the proper result should have been about 15.7%, or roughly $7.35 an hour on average.

So why did the union allow this? The mechanics asserted a theory of corruption.

• United paid the Teamsters $1.5 million in June 2017, shortly after the agreement was ratified, and they characterized that as ‘impermissible carrier financial assistance’ to a union under the Railway Labor Act.

• They alleged that the “breadth and depth” of the unions’ betrayal of members could be exposed by United, leading to a heavy financial penalty, and the union feared exposure. Basically, that it was compromised.

• And the union’s duties were split because of internal legacy Continental Airlines and legacy United mechanics factions.

The union would not pursue the wage reset grievance, or even help the complainants get the underlying numbers. It was, the employees alleged, compromised and acting on behalf of the company.

Various claims have been dismissed along the way, finally leaving employees with a narrow path merely to go forward with a grievance on their own.

• The judge held that the supposed secret conspiracy between United and the Teamsters was not plausibly alleged, explaining why the union would agree to such a scheme, or that there was legally actionable bad faith or irrational conduct. This was a serious allegation but it was too thin.

• The duty of fair representation claim was then dismissed with prejudice, because the collusion theory was simply unsupported.

Under the Railway Labor Act, employees have an individual right to pursue a grievance, even if the union doesn’t do it for them. So they couldn’t proceed on the theory that United and the union were conspiring to deny them raises, but they could still seek declaratory or injunctive relief to pursue their complaints about the pay reset process themselves. There’s no damages available for that, but they could keep going if they wished.

It seems irrational that the union was working with the airline to suppress wages. What’s more likely is that the union wasn’t fighting aggressively, and wasn’t transparent about it, because the major focus has been internal factional politics.

This may be one more way that the airline has benefited from lower wages than they might have otherwise, but it’s not about nefarious payoffs, just about employees fighting amongst themselves rather than doing the laborious work of forensic accounting to fight for the best outcome possible from their contract – which may in the end even be the one they got, but it’s hard to say if the union itself is primarily dealing with infighting.