SkyWest Upheld on Work Rules, Minimum Wage

Lawyers for Reed Smith LLP, representing SkyWest Airlines, Inc., have won an important appellate victory in a wage-and-hour class action closely watched by the airline industry. Michaelena Fitz-Gerald et al. v. SkyWest Airlines, Inc., involved a challenge by two former California-based flight attendants to SkyWest’s method of compensating its nearly 2,000 flight attendants across the country. The plaintiffs claimed that SkyWest flight attendants’ bargained-for, pay-and- work-rule agreement violated California’s minimum wage, meal and rest breaks, and overtime wage requirements. SkyWest’s method of compensating and giving meal and rest breaks to flight attendants is an industry standard.
The published opinion by the Ventura-based three-judge panel of California’s Second Appellate District, Division Six, upheld a summary judgment entered by Santa Barbara County Superior Court Judge Denise de Bellefeuille in November 2005. In her ruling, Judge de Bellefeuille found the minimum wage, overtime pay, and meal and rest break requirements contained in California Industrial Welfare Commission Order No. 9-2001 were preempted by the federal Railway Labor Act (RLA) and the federal Airline Deregulation Act (ADA) and violate the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause. She also ruled that SkyWest flight attendants were exempt from California’s overtime pay requirements because they have a valid collective bargaining agreement with SkyWest, which contains its own overtime pay guarantee.