Published 14 Jul, 2016
In a huge victory for TWU and our members covered under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit this week affirmed an earlier district court ruling in favor of TWU and dismissed a class action suit brought against the union.
The case, Serna vs. Transport Workers, was brought by a group of employees at Envoy Air and Southwest Airlines who were not members of TWU and objected to paying “fair share” fees, money paid by non-union members to cover the cost of collective bargaining.
TWU’s contracts with Southwest and Envoy (then American Eagle) contain provisions requiring all represented employees, regardless of whether they are members of the union, to pay their share of these costs, which is allowed under the RLA’s union shop provision.
The Department of Justice had also sided with TWU and urged the district court to reject the constitutional challenge to the union shop provision of the RLA, which it did in May 2015.
Affirming the district court’s findings, the Fifth Circuit said that the issues at hand are governed by Supreme Court and Fifth Circuit precedent, citing a 1956 high court ruling and an appeals court case involving the IAM in 1998.
Along with Freidrichs vs California Teachers Association—the right-to-work case argued before the Supreme Court—the Serna case would have ended the practice of “fair share” fees. The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation worked on both cases in an effort to block unions from collecting these fees and impeding workers’ rights to fair representation in the workplace.
The death of Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia earlier this year left the Court with a 4–4 tie in Freidrichs, meaning the precedent allowing unions to collect such fees stood.
TWU will continue to monitor anti-labor, anti-worker cases as they move through the judicial system. The temporary win in the Freidrichs case is just that, temporary, as a full Supreme Court, when seated, could hear the case again. The union has called on the Senate to “Do Your Job” and confirm President Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court.