SkyWest Receives Demand from AFA-CWA to Reinstate Terminated Whistleblowers
The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA has sent a letter to SkyWest Airlines demanding they reinstate our SkyWest AFA activist coworkers, terminated after they bravely alerted us to how easy it is for management, a designee, or anyone with internet access, to manipulate the results of SIA elections or other matters such as that “pay raise or a winter coat” vote, for example. Remember that? How did the coat win?
The letter is below:
“AFA will seek all legal remedies on their behalf and, in doing so, will demonstrate to all the SkyWest Flight Attendants what we all know about the relationship between SIA and SkyWest management: they are one and the same.”
Todd Emerson
VP Legal
SkyWest Airlines, Inc.
444 South River Rd
St. George, Utah 84790
temerson@skywest.com
September 19, 2023
Mr. Emerson:
SkyWest management must immediately reinstate illegally-terminated Flight Attendants Shane Price and Tresa Grange and cease any further retaliation against Union activists. Both engaged in protected concerted activity in addressing issues with their company-sponsored representative, the SkyWest Inflight Association (SIA). Both were directly fired for it by SkyWest management in violation of the Railway Labor Act.
Nowhere is it more apparent that SkyWest management controls SIA, despite the Railway Labor Act’s prohibition against management-funded representatives, than terminating Flight Attendants over activity stemming from their desire to act on behalf of their peers to identify grossly inadequate voting procedures with their purported “representative” and address grave concerns over whether these procedures accurately reflect the will of the Flight Attendants. For management to investigate—let alone terminate—flight attendants over activity solely directed towards their “representative” is patently illegal. That is, the RLA prohibits management from interfering, influencing, or coercing workers in any way over their voluntary and independent choice of representative. Management’s actions in using Mr. Price’s and Ms. Grange’s concerns over a SIA election disregard this prescription and are pretext for management’s true motive in silencing two outspoken Union advocates. Advocates who seek a true representative that represents the will of the Flight Attendants and not the will of the C-suite.
SkyWest management must immediately reinstate Mr. Price and Ms. Grange, cease further retaliation, and abide by its legal requirements under the RLA during an ongoing organizing campaign. If we do not hear from you by Friday, AFA will seek all legal remedies on their behalf and, in doing so, will demonstrate to all the SkyWest Flight Attendants what we all know about the relationship between SIA and SkyWest management: they are one and the same.
Best regards,
John H. Morse III, Esq.
Associate General Counsel
