Michele H. Gehrke

Gehrke practices management-side labor and employment law as a Reed Smith partner; she has significant experience in traditional labor cases involving the Railway Labor Act, a key statute in airline disputes in federal court.

Like many, she’s transitioning away from full-time remote work. “This week, I’ll be going back into the office for the first time again,” she said in mid-June. “I want to get my team together to say hello. We’ll be doing office work two days a week or so as we ease back into it. Commuting, we have seen, is such a time suck. At home, that means the work day has extended itself. I get evening calls now that in the past would have come while I was on BART.”

Late last year she prevailed as lead attorney for a major air carrier in a hybrid claim by a terminated customer service representative who sued both the airline alleging breach of contract and her union alleging breach of the duty of fair representation. Hill v. International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, AFL-CIO and United Airlines Inc., 4:18-cv-04669 (S.D. Texas, filed Dec. 11, 2018).

The representative, Jill Hill, was found to have violated United’s waivers and favors policy by changing customer reservations without charging change fees and failing to disclose that she had accepted free tickets to Dancing with the Stars. She alleged that the union failed to file grievance claims against United and that the airline breached its collective bargaining agreement. Gehrke persuaded the district court to dismiss on the grounds that her airline claim was time-barred.

“She appealed because she did not like the outcome,” Gehrke said, “but the case was always about dishonesty and fraud and granting special favors.” In November 2020, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal without oral argument.

In another airline case, Gehrke again achieved a dismissal for her client of claims by a dismissed employee who lost his job after he engaged in inappropriate behavior at a work function where alcohol was served. Booher v. United Airlines Inc., 3:20-cv-01791 (S.D. Cal., filed Sept. 11, 2020).

“We won at the initial pleading stage,” Gehrke said. “He had too much alcohol at a company event.” Her successful motion to dismiss cited Railway Act preemption.

Gehrke and her team have been negotiating the first collective bargaining agreement between a social media company and the Transport Workers Union over its representation of a group of bike-share employees who service the bicycle program at Facebook Inc.’s main campus in Menlo Park.

“It’s an interesting case involving a hard-fought union election and questions about whether bike captains are supervisors under the NLRA,” Gehrke said. “Like most of my work, it’s intellectually challenging and rewarding.”

— John Roemer