Robert A. Siegel 

Robert A. Siegel has a rather unusual practice representing airlines in labor disputes with their unions. It has provided him with some rather unusual cases lately.

In two of them, he won rulings that unions had filed actions against United Airlines in the wrong forums. The flight attendants’ union sued United for allegedly interfering with union activity when the airline investigated two union officials for misconduct. “We took the position that even though they were union officials, they were also flight attendants … subject to company rules and procedures,” Siegel said. “So it was one of those point-counterpoint Railway Labor Act issues.”

A federal judge agreed with his client that the act does not grant immunity to union officials and sent the matter to arbitration. The arbitrator upheld United’s firing of the flight attendants. Ass’n of Flight Attendants-CWA, AFL-CIO v. United Airlines Inc., 583 F. Supp. 3d 162 (D.D.C. Jan. 27, 2022).

“That got a lot of attention just because not that many court decisions had directly addressed that kind of issue,” Siegel said.

In the second case, the machinists’ union filed an arbitration accusing United of violating holiday pay requirements at the three New York City-area airports. Siegel argued the dispute was really about Port Authority of New York/New Jersey rules, so the labor arbitrator dismissed the case without a hearing. A federal court upheld the decision. The Int’l Ass’n of Machinist & Aerospace Workers Dist. 141 v. United Airlines, Inc., 1:21-cv-04589 (N.D. Ill., dec’d Jun. 6, 2022).

He had three cases recently about whether state sick-leave laws that run contrary to airline-union contracts are pre-empted by the federal Airline Deregulation Act. A federal court in Washington state ruled against the airlines in 2021. But the Massachusetts federal court made headlines in June when it held that the act does preempt that state’s law. Air Transport Association of America Inc. v. Healey, 1:18-cv-10651, (D. Mass., dec’d June 2, 2023).

Last month, he settled a similar case for Southwest Airlines with the state of Colorado.

After Atlas Air and Southern Air merged, they needed to formulate a joint collective bargaining agreement with their pilots. When the two cargo carriers couldn’t work out a new contract with the Teamsters, Siegel represented them in an unusual “interest arbitration” in which the arbitrator largely writes the new collective bargaining agreement. About $400 million was in dispute.

After an 11-day hearing, including a battle of the experts in 2021, the arbitrator largely adopted the airlines’ positions, he said.

Siegel developed his specialty in the early 1980s when he was assigned to represent Flying Tigers Line. “Eventually, they were purchased by FedEx,” he said. “But the people I met at Flying Tigers went on to other airlines, such as United and US Airways and American … so I ended up spreading my practice with the people I had met then.”

— Don DeBenedictis