Alaska Airlines, the Association of Flight Attendants, and union thuggery for the digital age 

Republicans and supposed conservatives who want to hand America’s labor unions more power to extract resources from and compel activities among America’s working people have a gigantic problem: Big Labor is extremely socially and culturally progressive, endorsing left-wing vanguard positions on transgender issues and abortion. 

When challenged on unions’ social liberalism, these conservatives’ strategy is simple: whataboutism. Blame the companies for “[standing] with the radical left to push woke, transgender ideology,” to quote a spokesperson for Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO). 

But a legal opinion out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals illustrates how this is an irrelevant dodge because Big Labor is a co-conspirator in corporate wokeness, not an opponent or defender of dissenting workers. In short, two flight attendants alleged that when Alaska Airlines terminated them for questioning social-liberal legislation the company endorsed, union leadership proved ineffective defenders of their rights, in all probability because the union and the airline were on the same left-wing side of the political spectrum. 

The Case 

The tell that Big Labor may not be the defender of the Christian employee’s rights of conscience is the title of the case itself: Marli Brown and Lacey Smith v. Alaska Airlines and Association of Flight Attendants-CWA AFL-CIO. The union and the employer are on the same side, and the workers are the opponents. 

The workers were represented by the religious-liberty-focused public interest law firm First Liberty Institute, so I’ll let them present the principal claims of the case:  

In early 2021, Alaska Airlines announced its support for the Equality Act on an internal employee message board and invited employees to comment. Flight attendant Lacey Smith posted a question, asking, “As a company, do you think it’s possible to regulate morality?” In the same forum, First Liberty’s second client asked, “Does Alaska support: endangering the Church, encouraging suppression of religious freedom, obliterating women [sic] rights and parental rights? ….” Both clients were subsequently investigated, questioned by airline authorities, and eventually fired from their jobs. 

As the case progressed, investigators uncovered an alleged union role in the firings. Again, from First Liberty Institute: 

Court documents filed yesterday [January 16, 2024] reveal the extent of the union’s involvement. Union MEC President reported the flight attendants’ comments to Alaska Airlines leadership. In a company chat among union representatives, one stated, “Can we PLEASE get someone to shut down comments, or put Marli and Lacey in a burlap bag and drop them in a well.” Union representatives repeatedly disparaged the flight attendants, calling them “bigots” and “pukes.” Referring to Lacey, the Union President said, “I hate her.” 

In the district court in Seattle, the judge threw the case out on summary judgment. First Liberty Institute’s clients, the fired flight attendants, appealed to the Ninth Circuit, which handed down its ruling Wednesday. 

The Ruling 

In short, the three-judge panel ruled that the district court was wrong and the fired flight attendants’ claims of religious discrimination can go forward against both the airline and the union. (A note on the ruling: At this stage of consideration, the court considers the facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs, so it assumes that everything the fired workers claim to be true is in fact true.) Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan, a prolific Twitter/X commentator on legal matters, has a thorough thread detailing the Ninth Circuit panel’s ruling for readers who want a full rundown on what the court held. 

What’s relevant to our discussion of American organized labor and its collusion in corporate wokeness is the (again, alleged and taken as true for purposes of legal considerations at this stage of the case) behavior of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) union officials. For what it’s worth, AFA is a constituent union of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), which, as a consequence of the Long Declines in both unionization and landline telephony, has adopted a mergers-and-acquisitions strategy for keeping itself afloat. CWA is notoriously left-wing even by unions’ leftist standards (it was the most prominent union to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential campaign), and AFA-CWA’s national president, Sara Nelson, is a prominent activist on the left wing of organized labor. (She’s also a Bernie fan.) 

Back to the ruling. After the first dissenting flight attendant posted her religious-based objection to the Equality Act to Alaska Airlines’ internal employee message board, the company behaved exactly as Sen. Hawley’s talking points say it would: In Wessan’s retelling:

“The head of Alaska’s legal team said ’employees do not have the right to believe that LGBTQ rights are immoral.’ A VP wrote, ‘I 100% agree.’” 

But how then did the union respond, and how does that compare to Hawley and company’s expectations? Remember, the pro-union think tank American Compass, lavishly funded by the left-wing anti-capitalist Hewlett Foundation to promote economic leftism as a “conservative” approach, asserts that Big Labor has a “conservative heart,” and one of its former U.S. Senate allies, Marco Rubio, wrote once that unions might protect workers against “a requirement that the workers embrace management’s latest ‘woke’ human resources fad.” 

So, when presented with the opportunity to protect workers who were asserting, in internal communications channels, the position ultimately taken by the United States Senate (the Equality Act did not pass), did AFA-CWA take it? Not just no, but (again, according to the allegations taken at face value) hell no. The court wrote: 

Peterson, the AFA Master Executive Council President, separately emailed his AFA colleagues to express dismay at Smith’s post. Referencing Smith, he wrote:

“Employees get to be bigots in their private lives and to express their bigoted and misinformed opinions while not at work—as horrifying as that may be.” He added that “the post is reprehensible and there should be repercussions.” 

One does not need to be a judge ruling at summary judgment to discredit the union official’s claim that he would represent Smith in disciplinary proceedings “fairly, in good faith, and without discrimination.” Other union officials channeled their predecessors’ labor-violence rhetoric, at least rhetorically. From the ruling: 

Independently, AFA representative Terry Taylor posted in a Google chat with other union officials: “Can we PLEASE get someone to shut down comments or put Marli and Lacey in a burlap bag and drop them in a well” (Taylor later revised that message), and also that [Marli] Brown “needs to go!” In an email to another flight attendant who had complained about the posts, Taylor called the posts “reprehensible.”  

So far, so free speech, I guess. But now union internal politics meet the realities of exclusive monopoly bargaining. The court continues: 

Taylor would later serve as Brown’s union representative in Alaska’s disciplinary proceedings against Brown. Union Grievance Chairperson Stephanie Adams privately described Brown’s comments as “shitty,” also telling Taylor that she expected Brown to receive “[a]t least a suspension,” to which Taylor responded: “I certainly hope so!”  

 So, according to the court, Brown had a representative in disciplinary proceedings who had written explicitly that she should be thrown down a well and thought she was guilty and should be punished. If this were a criminal case, one presumes the judge would be here discussing “ineffective assistance of counsel.”

For his part, Wessan dryly writes, “I can see why they [the cashiered flight attendants] did not think the union had their backs!” 

It should not be surprising that, during the disciplinary process, the union’s assistance to the two employees—which the employees, under the law, had no choice but to accept—was allegedly self-sabotaging. I’ll let the lawyer Wessan explain: 

Reading this discussion of the investigation into the employee who posted an innocuous question is disheartening. At least they only recommended “no discipline” for the sincere beliefs. (That is, until [AFA representatives] told her not to mention her religious concerns and Alaska fired her.)

The other employee was fired too. Alaska explained that questioning the progressive viewpoint of “gender identity or sexual orientation” is itself discrimination. Got it. The union declined to arbitrate because the member is entitled to be “a bigot at home, but not at work.”

The Lesson 

So to make a very long story short, Alaska Airlines allegedly canned two flight attendants for making a political argument that was ultimately upheld by the procedures of the United States Senate and, in so doing, might have violated their religious rights (both workers are Christians, and both feared the Equality Act’s potential effect on their religious freedom). The union officials tasked with representing the workers in disciplinary proceedings put in writing that they agreed with the company that expressing this political view was a punishable offense and that maybe violence should be done to the workers they were obligated to represent, in Minecraft of course. 

Indeed, the court concludes: 

The record raises factual questions about whether AFA’s representation of Brown was colored by potential disagreement with her religious views. As Brown was advocating a religious defense during her investigatory meeting, it was AFA’s Taylor who privately texted:“I may hurl,” to her AFA colleague Stephanie Adams, who was also participating in the meeting. As noted above, Adams had written to others that Brown was unlike her own friends, whom she described as “good women with good values and [who] believe in equality.” Taylor had also earlier written in private communications to other AFA colleagues that Brown “needs to go!,” that the Smith and Brown posts on Alaska’s World were “reprehensible,” and that someone should “put Marli and Lacey in a burlap bag and drop them in a well.”  

… 

AFA’s account may ultimately carry the day with the jury. But between the comments that could be interpreted as expressing a negative view of Brown’s faith, Taylor’s claimed unwillingness to defend Brown on religious discrimination grounds, and Taylor’s efforts to dissuade Brown from raising this defense, it is genuinely disputed whether AFA attempted to cause Brown’s termination based on her religious beliefs or acquiesced in it. 

… 

As was true in the case of Brown, AFA’s Peterson was heavily involved in Alaska’s efforts to investigate and discipline Smith, even though this level of involvement was rare for him. Peterson’s “struggle with faith” text extended to Smith as well as Brown, and he repeatedly referred to Smith as a “bigot” and “bigoted.” As we noted above, Peterson did tell others at AFA that the union would “represent [Smith] through the grievance process fairly, in good faith, and without discrimination.” But a reasonable jury could find that Peterson’s explanation was not believable when, among other things, he was internally saying that “Mngmt needs to send [Smith’s] bigoted ass packing for a variety of reasons.” 

The appeals court sent the case back to the lower court for a jury to evaluate the facts and arguments. Whatever the final legal analysis concludes, if the facts alleged by the flight attendants are even somewhat accurate, one thing is clear: If there were a case that more conclusively put to rest the now-Secretary of State’s politically dangerous delusion that organized labor could prove the defender of dissenting workers against “a requirement that the workers embrace management’s latest ‘woke’ human resources fad” than the case Marli Brown and Lacey Smith have been forced to endure, I cannot imagine it.  

 

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/alaska-airlines-the-association-of-flight-attendants-and-union-thuggery-for-the-digital-age/