Transportation NewsWire
IAM Transportation Department
General Vice President Robert Roach, Jr.
9000 Machinists Place
Upper Marlboro, MD 20772
www.goiam.org/transportation
March 6, 2007
Appeals Court Backs Rail Unions
in FMLA Case
In an important legal victory for workers covered by the Railway
Labor Act, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
recently upheld a lower court ruling that said when vacation use is a
subject of collective bargaining agreements, employers cannot
unilaterally force employees to use vacation time in conjunction with the
Family Medical Leave Act.
The ruling follows a lawsuit by a coalition of rail unions, including
the IAM and the TCU, who opposed rail carriers requiring workers to use
paid vacation time as part of leave that would otherwise be mandated by
FMLA guidelines.
"Unions have fought to secure workers vacation rights for
decades," said IAM General Vice President Robert Roach, Jr. "This
decision rightly puts the choice of how to use vacation time in the hands
of the workers who earned it."
"The vacation agreements are the subject of apparently hard
bargaining," the court said in its ruling. "The right to time one's
vacation...is a hard-won right of railroad workers. It would seem quite
odd indeed to say that this...can be wiped out by unilateral action on the
part of the carriers."
The court's ruling is available at www.goiam.org/transportation.