NATCA's ATC Push
Federal Judge Rules in Favor of NATCA Plaintiffs in Suit Claiming FAA Violations of the Federal Overtime Pay StatuteIn a resounding victory for the 7,438 NATCA members who joined the suit against the FAA for violations of the country’s bedrock overtime law that was initiated by NATCA last year, a federal judge ruled on July 31 that the FAA’s actions in maintaining comp time and credit hours programs instead of paying time-and-a-half overtime violated the provisions of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In a 51-page decision, U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Emily Hewitt rejected the claims of the government that these programs were lawful under the general grant of authority to set up a new personnel management system that Congress gave the FAA Administrator in 1996. Recognizing the supremacy of the nation’s fundamental law governing minimum wages and maximum hours of work, Judge Hewitt concluded that the Agency’s actions in implementing and maintaining the comp time and credit hours programs violated the FLSA. NATCA initiated this suit against the FAA in 2007 and enlisted the Washington, D.C. law firm of Woodley & McGillivary to represent the NATCA members who joined the suit. Because of the unique nature of the nation’s overtime statute, every NATCA member who wanted to join the suit had to opt-in to the litigation and be a named plaintiff. On the May 1, 2007 filing date, the suit contained 6,458 NATCA plaintiffs. Over the course of the next year, 980 additional NATCA members were added to the suit. The suit claimed that Congress’s passage of FAA personnel reform legislation in 1996 that stripped FAA employees from coverage of most of the provisions of Title 5 of the U.S. Code deprived the FAA of the requisite statutory authority to maintain either a comp time or credit hours program in lieu of paying time-and-a-half overtime for hours worked in excess of forty in a week. Although Congress provided that a few specific provisions of Title 5 would continue to apply to FAA employees, the Title 5 provisions allowing federal agencies to establish comp time and credit hours programs as an alternative to time-and-a-half overtime were not among the specific Title 5 provisions remaining applicable to employees of the FAA after the passage of the personnel reform statute. In a motion to dismiss the case, the government argued to the court that the general grant of authority given to the FAA Administrator to set up a new personnel management system included the ability to continue comp time and credit hours programs. The court disagreed and noted that, once the Title 5 provisions allowing such programs were removed by Congress, the requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act mandated that the FAA pay employees at a time-and-a-half rate for any overtime hours. With this resounding victory finding the Agency liable for violations of the federal overtime law, the case moves into a new stage for the calculation of the dollar amount of actual damages owed to the NATCA plaintiffs. There also remain a number of additional issues still to be resolved such as whether the recovery period for the plaintiffs will run back two or three years from the date they joined the suit and the compensability of pre- and post-shift activities performed by the plaintiffs. NATCA will keep plaintiffs apprised of additional developments in this case as they occur. |