The U.S. Department of Labor has filed a lawsuit in federal court against the nation’s largest regional airline, which provides services to American Airlines, Delta and United Airlines, over a “sham” union for flight attendants controlled by the airline.
Despite efforts by the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) to unionize Skywest Airlines crew members, the Utah-based airline does not have a formal flight attendant union, but instead maintains its own internal representative body called the Skywest Inflight Association.
Founded in 1999 and until recently considered a “local union” rather than a “national union”, the Skywest Inflight Association is the only body authorized to negotiate with Skywest management on a variety of issues, including salaries, working conditions and internal policies.
This distinction is important because, as the DOL alleges in its recently filed lawsuit, the rules governing when a local union must hold elections are different from those governing a national union.
A local union must hold elections every three years, while a national union only needs to hold elections every five years.
The U.S. Department of Labor’s lawsuit alleges that the Skywest Inflight Association failed to hold its elections within the required three-year period, and when warned that it might be violating the law, the airline promptly renamed the “union” the “national” employee organization of Skywest’s 4,100 flight attendants.
However, when the Skywest Inflight Association finally got around to holding its latest elections in August 2023, it was accused of irregularities in the process and that two flight attendants who ran for election were wrongfully disqualified for “disloyalty.”
The “chaotic” election had to be declared invalid after the provider of the third-party voting platform used by Skywest informed the airline that the process may have been “rigged”.
The DOL’s lawsuit alleges that a former union executive and possibly several other members managed to cast votes for at least 300 members. This came to light when members went to the polls and discovered that their votes had already been cast.
And when Skywest re-ran the election, it disqualified two candidates for showing disloyalty to the Skywest Inflight Association because of their support for the Association of Flight Attendants.
The Labor Department is now asking a Utah court to invalidate the re-election and force the airline to hold a new election, with the entire process overseen by the Labor Department.
The lawsuit runs parallel to another lawsuit filed by the Association of Flight Attendants against Skywest, alleging that the airline wrongfully fired two long-serving crew members for exposing serious safety deficiencies during the August 2023 election.
According to the lawsuit, one of the fired crew members discovered that anyone could access the flight attendants’ names and voting credentials on the election website. The allegations came to light after some flight attendants complained that they could not vote because their ballots had already been cast.
The crew member recorded a video showing how fraudulent votes could be cast on the election website and posted it on social media. The following day, Skywest canceled the election and shut down the election website.
However, a month later, the crew member and another flight attendant who had been vocal in his support of AFA’s union initiative were fired for alleged misconduct.
Subscribe to our newsletter
No spam, just a weekly summary of the best aviation news you don’t want to miss
