Airline and its Union Must Merge Acquired Airline's Union Seniority List with Their Own: Seventh Circuit | Practical Law
The Seventh Circuit recently held that where one airline merged with another airline and soon after was dissolved, furloughed union members of the dissolved airline should be intergrated into the seniority lists for the surviving entity rather placed at the bottom of them. In Committee of Concerned Midwest Flight Attendants v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters Airline Division and Teamsters Local 135 the court relied on National Mediation Board (NMB) determinations that the merged airline became part of a single transportation system with the surviving entity under the Railway Labor Act (RLA) and held that the McCaskill-Bond Amendment to the Federal Aviation Act (FAA), which requires merging seniority lists in airline mergers, applies even when the merged entity is quickly dissolved and the surviving entity abandons the dissolved airline's certificate to engage in air transportation.