Independent Union of Flight Attendants v. Pan American World Airways, Inc., and Pan American Corporation

923 F.2d 678 136 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2217 , 59 USLW 2433 , 117 Lab.Cas. P 10,480 INDEPENDENT UNION OF FLIGHT ATTENDANTS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. PAN AMERICAN WORLD AIRWAYS, INC., and Pan American Corporation, Defendants-Appellees. No. 89-15577. United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit. Argued and Submitted June 7, 1990. Decided Jan. 10, 1991. 1 Peter O. Shinevar, Bredhoff & Kaiser, Wash., D.C., for plaintiff-appellant. 2 Gilmore F. Dickmann, Jr., Bronson, Bronson & McKinnon, San Francisco, Cal., for defendants-appellees. 3 Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. 4 Before D.W. NELSON and TROTT, Circuit Judges, and TASHIMA, * District Judge. TASHIMA, District Judge: 5 Appellant (plaintiff) Independent Union of Flight Attendants (IUFA) brought this action to enforce an arbitration provision in its collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with appellees (defendants) Pan American World Airways, Inc. (Pan Am), and Pan Am Corporation. That agreement, effective June 4, 1986, provided that Pan Am would use IUFA flight attendants on the Pan Am Flight Service System Seniority List for all present or future flying. By a letter agreement, this…

Appellant (plaintiff) Independent Union of Flight Attendants (IUFA) brought this action to enforce an arbitration provision in its collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with appellees (defendants) Pan American World Airways, Inc. (Pan Am), and Pan Am Corporation. That agreement, effective June 4, 1986, provided that Pan Am would use IUFA flight attendants on the Pan Am Flight Service System Seniority List for all present or future flying. By a letter agreement, this scope clause was made equally applicable to the operations of the parent, Pan Am Corp. Pan Am has used IUFA flight attendants on intra-Euro-pean routes for at least 13 years and has entered into other agreements under the Railway Labor Act (RLA) for such all-foreign routes with pilots and other flight attendants’ unions.

In November 1987, Pan American Express, Inc., a subsidiary of Pan Am Corp., began offering intra-European service from a base in Berlin (“Berlin Express”). None of these flights take off from or land in, or overfly, any state, territory, or possession of the United States. Berlin Express chose to operate with foreign national flight attendants represented by a German union. On January 6, 1988, IUFA…

dissenting:

I respectfully dissent.

My disagreement with my colleagues is not about the interpretation of our jurisprudence regarding extraterritorial jurisdiction, or, even, about the extraterritorial scope of the RLA. Rather, it is about whether extraterritoriality has anything to do with this case in the first place.

Reduced to its core, the dispute can be summarized as follows:

(1) In April 1985 the IUFA, certified representative of Pan Am’s flight attendants, and Pan Am entered an agreement in the United States concerning Pan Am’s flights within German territory. The agreement provides protection for IUFA flight attendants serving such routes (for example, limiting the number of foreign national flight attendants or subjecting all disputes involving the interpretation of the agreement to binding arbitration);

(2) The IUFA alleges that Pan Am violated that agreement by refusing

(3) The Railway Labor Act, as amended to cover air carriers, imposes upon employers and employees “the duty ... to exert every reasonable effort to make and maintain agreements concerning rates of pay, rules, and working conditions.” 45 U.S.C. § 152 . The Act further specifies the manner in which…