After claims of wrongful termination and labor violations were met with counterclaims of hacking and union election meddling, a legal parry and riposte between SkyWest Airlines and the SkyWest Inflight Association (SIA) is underway.
The legal team for former SkyWest flight attendants Shane Price and Tresa Grange submitted a response on Tuesday, refuting SIA’s counterclaim claiming the two broke into the organization’s website to steal proprietary data and manipulate votes in the leadership race.
Following violations of the Railway Labor Act (RLA), including the illegal termination of the two union activists and the unconstitutional establishment of a business union, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA) filed a federal complaint against SkyWest Airlines and the SkyWest Inflight Association. With a fleet of around 500 aircraft and service to 249 locations across North America, SkyWest is the biggest regional airline in the United States.
The plaintiffs refuted all of the charges made by SIA in its response to its counterclaims, stating only that there were irregularities in the way that flight attendants had to vote in the August 2023 election and that the election results had not been validated. The plaintiffs asked for the counterclaims to be dismissed by the court.
An AFA news release on October 11, 2023 claimed that Tresa Grange and Shane Price, two AFA activists and SkyWest flight attendants, had been unlawfully sacked by the airline in September 2023 for violating the RLA. According to the complaint, SkyWest terminated the two flight attendants as a form of reprisal for their endorsement of initiatives aimed at securing a union representation election at the company and resolving vote discrepancies with SIA.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, where SkyWest’s headquarters are located and the flight attendants reside, is where AFA’s action was filed.
