Planes, Trains, and No Collusion!

It’s a law that most people are unfamiliar with unless they have experience in the airline or railroad industries: The Railway Labor Act (RLA). The law generally governs labor relations in those industries whereas the National Labor Relations Act controls such matters for the vast majority of other private sector employers. A federal court explained in a recent decision that employers covered by the RLA cannot be held liable for unions’ breach of their duties to fairly represent their members under a theory of “collusion.”