Petition to Vacate Articles 5-7 (SBA 1208)
Brothers and Sister,
I hope all of you are enjoying the holidays and time with family.
We filed in the District Court of Nebraska today to vacate SBA 1208 (Articles V-VII Arbitration Award). All the General Committees are listed as parties along with the International. We are pursuing three counts: the permission to use “any qualified employee”; the elimination of extra rest; and no scheduled rest for extra board employees. Our dissenting opinion is also included at the end of the attachment.
Under Section 9 of the RLA, the entire award would be vacated if the court ruled in our favor on just one of the counts. We haven’t gotten any timeline on the court proceedings from legal counsel yet. I’ll pass those along when they are received.
Negotiations over implementation of the Award are still scheduled for January 12-13. We have a duty under the RLA to bargain in good faith until the court makes a final ruling and will continue to do so.
We don’t anticipate anything being implemented on property until the lawsuit is resolved as a ruling by the courts could negate anything that is implemented.
Updates will be sent out as they are received and, as always, don’t hesitate to contact the office if you have any questions.
Fraternally,
Luke Edington
General Chairperson
SMART TD GO-953
Brothers and Sister,
Our legal department just sent over UP’s answer to our complaint (their response to our petition to vacate SBA 1208). I’ve attached it along with our petition. I’ve included our legal departments email below that explains the response and the next steps.
For your information, I wanted to circulate the answer filed by Union Pacific to our petition in the litigation regarding the Articles V-VII award. As you may know, an answer is a required responsive pleading to a complaint where the defendant admits or denies the allegations contained in therein. It is common to see admissions with respect to routine factual claims and denials for everything else, which we see here.
With respect to next steps, the court has entered an order requiring a planning report by March 31, 2026. A planning report is where counsel for the parties discusses how to proceed with litigation, including discovery, deadlines, and how to proceed with dispositive motions. I anticipate I will speak with UP’s legal next week to go through the details, but I saw him last week and we are in agreement that cross-motions for summary judgment based on an agreed-upon record. I will let you know of further developments.
With respect to paragraph 64 (UP’s response to extra rest), the award itself states, “[t]he Arbitrator acknowledges the Organization’s vehement opposition to this position…” so we have it in the record that we opposed it. With respect to paragraph 76, it is our whole argument that this (elimination of extra rest) wasn’t proposed until the last submissions, to which there were no rebuttals or further hearings that allowed us to oppose UP’s desire to eliminate extra rest at the last minute. The arguments we made and UP’s concession under oath at the arbitration that they were not seeking to eliminate extra rest are in our favor.
Fraternally,
Luke Edington
General Chairman
SMART TD GO-953