Furloughed out of seniority?

[72Longhorn]

I was wondering if anyone can help me with this question?

A good friend of mine was recently furloughed from a small 135 company, and was done so, out of seniority order. He was in the next upgrade class, but was "furloughed" before he could even get a chance to upgrade.

The thing is that only two people in his company were furloughed while there were three new hires in ground school. Can a company do this? Is there no law against this? I know the company could fire a person, but claiming that they were furloughed, when actually they just wanted to get rid of the people is fraud.

Has anyone here ever been or known anyone in this situation? It seems like companies today can claim furlough without having to fire their employees and avoid any sort of wrongful termination suites against them.

Well, if anyone can provide me with any helpful information, it sure would be great!

Thanks in advance.

72Longhorn

 

[Publishers]

companies

Small companies or even larger non union companies can employ in many states at will. For the most part, they are not on seniority systems anyway and usually people are not furloughed, just terminated.

 

[atpcliff]

Hi!

If there's no contract (which ususally means no union), they can pretty much do what they want.

At my airline, they furloughed out of seniority order (we have no union and no contract). They were able to recall everybody later on.

I was at TSA (ALPA), and they also furloughed out of seniority order. It was greived by the union, and TSA was forced to change everyone back to where they were supposed to be in the recall (they recalled all of the furloughed pilots).

Chautauqua, which is Teamsters, instead of furloughing, just fired everyone. They did recall them later. I don't know if the Teamsters had to take action to fix this contract violation or not.

Cliff
GRB

PS-I hope they get recalled later!

 

[metrodriver]

another one I know of is massive furlough and then selective recall. Berry aviation (see 135 area) furloughed the top part of the seniority list to cut on crew salaries.....
I think it just looks better on a resume if it says 'furloughed' than 'fired'.
72 longhorn, any chances of getting on with the new longhorn?

 

[mar]

Easy come; Easy go.

I was upgraded out of seniority...

...then I was "furloughed" out of seniority.

Whatever.

Like ATPcliff says, "No contract means they can do whatever they want....and often do."

Fly safe.

 

[DarnNearaJet]

And some people still wonder why we need unions in this profession.