Delta Refused To Pay Pilots On Short Military Leave — Now A Class Action Could Cost Over $100 Million

Delta Air Lines pilots who serve in the National Guard and in military reserves have certified a class action lawsuit against the carrier on August 7, stretching back to how the airline treated their military leaves from 2007 to today. The pilots claim Delta violates federal law refusing to pay thousands of pilot union members during their short-term stints with the military, even though Delta provides pay for jury duty, funeral leave and sick leave. Approximately 3,361 pilots took 119,285 periods of short-term military leave between April 2007 and the end of 2022. The eventual number by the time of any final judgment will be larger. Like most airlines, Delta employs pilots who also serve in the military reserves and National Guard. They have to take period leave for military training, drills and other service obligations. At Delta, military leave of 30 consecutive days or less is unpaid. A pilot can use accrued vacation to cover the absence, but pilots otherwise don’t get paid for missed work. The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act doesn’t require paid military leave. However, an employee on military leave must receive the same rights and benefits that the employer provides to employees taking comparable forms of nonmilitary leave. So the class action suit argues that if Delta is going to offer pay for other short-term leave, they have to offer it for military leave and they’ve failed to do so for decades. Under federal law, whether or not leave types are ‘comparable’ depends on how long the leave is for, the purpose of leave, and the employee’s ability to choose when to take it. And if an employer treats different comparable types of leaves differently, then a servicemember is entitled to the most favorable treatment given to any of those types of leave. To win, pilots don’t have to prove military leave is comparable to sick leave, bereavement leave and jury duty. They just need to show that short-term military leave is comparable to even one kind of paid leave like jury duty. There are two cases that have been combined, the first one filed on March 11, 2021 and the second one filed five days later. Delta will try to break up the class, arguing that lumping together military absences combines things that are too different. A one-day military drill might be comparable to one day of jury duty, but a 30-day military assignment could be completely different. They’ll argue that that court has to consider each absence’s length, purpose, frequency and the pilot’s ability to control its timing. Some military assignments are mandatory, while others can be volunteered for. Pilots can trade trips. American actually beat a similar class action tihs way last summer with the judge concluding that military leave varied too much to be resolved through classwide averages. But the pilots are challenging a uniform Delta policy. Since the same unpaid leave rule applied across the board they’ll argue everyone qualifies to be in the same class. And they’ll frame jury duty especially as comparable, saying they’re both short-term civic obligations whose timing is imposed by the government. So Delta’s decision to pay for one but not the other is a violation of the law. Delta hasn’t shared the necessary payroll information with the plaintiffs to calculate damages, but with over 100,000 ‘occurrences’ through 2022 this is easily in the $100+ million range. Last year, Southwest settled a similar case for $18.5 million. So I’d say that the pilots – having gotten their class action certified – have a strong likelihood of settling for a significant amount, unless Detla can get the class decertified. It seems to me that there are two very different questions here. What is legally required under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act – whether paying jury duty leave requires also offering paid military leave And what is the morally or ethically correct stance. The courts will decide whether offering jury duty pay for a day or two obligates an airline to pay pilots for weeks-long military leave, when they could trade trips with other pilots to accommodate those schedules. However, the pilots in question are generally being paid by the military for this time. They’re represented by a union and have negotiated several contracts during the period in question, and never once negotiated for this. They’re well-compensated, which seems relevant when asking whether the leave policy places them in a position of being unable to fulfill their military obligations. Delta pilots picketed today at @ATLairport to protest the airline's scheduling practices that have caused pilots to work record overtime, foregoing time off. Delta customers and pilots deserve better. Learn more: https://t.co/0ub6p74epr #DeltaPilots #ALPA #ScheduleWithSafety pic.twitter.com/hBaKSJ9fcw — Delta Pilots (@Delta_Pilots) March 10, 2022 Several hundred Delta pilots may be legally entitled to a payday, but I’m not sure I’m overly sympathetic to the claim. Am I off base? Topics on this page