John Krakowski, et al. v. Allied Pilots Association, et al.

A labor union operating under the Railway Labor Act, 45 U.S.C. §§ 151, et seq., has the exclusive statutory authority to bargain on behalf of the employees who are members of its collective bargaining unit. This exclusive bargaining authority brings with it the “statutory obligation to serve the interests of all members without hostility or discrimination toward any, to exercise its discretion with complete good faith and honesty, and to avoid arbitrary conduct.” Air Line Pilots Assoc. Int’l v. O’Neill, 499 U.S. 65, 76 (1991). This statutory obligation is called the union’s duty of fair representation. The question presented is: Where a labor union imposed as part of its collective bargaining agreement a seniority system that admittedly discriminated in bad faith against a disfavored employee group at a time when the union owed the disfavored employees no duty of fair representation because it did not yet represent them, may the union subsequently, after the duty of fair representation to those employees has attached, agree to re-implement the same discriminatory seniority system following elimination of the contractual status quo by a bankruptcy court order under 11 U.S.C. § 1113 approving the employer’s abrogation of the collective bargaining agreement and its seniority system?