The Federal Circuit Court Of Appeals has denied back pay to
a group of supervisors and managers at the Federal
Aviation Administration’s Albuquerque air traffic control
center.
The supervisors and managers receive compensation partly
based on the volume and complexity of air traffic over
Albuquerque, for which FAA assigns an ATC classification, in
this case ATC 10, assigned in 1998.
The appellants argued it really should be ATC 11, and they
wanted the difference between pay and benefits between the
two, even though FAA has not reclassified the Albuquerque
center.
As supervisors, they are not union members, but nonetheless
claimed to be third-party beneficiaries to a collective
bargaining agreement as well as a “memorandum of
understanding,” reached in 1999 between FAA and the National
Air Traffic Control Association.
The appellants alleged that the CBA and MOU obligated the
FAA to reclassify the Albuquerque Center as an ATC-11
facility when the air traffic increased in 1999, and that
FAA breached the CBA and MOU by refusing to do so.
A federal claims court initially blocked the effort, “for
failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted,”
a decision upheld by the appeals court.
According to the decision, the appellants brought suit under
the Tucker Act, which grants the federal claims court
jurisdiction over actions that are “founded either upon
the Constitution, or any act of Congress or any regulation
of an executive department, or upon any express or implied
contract with the United States, or for liquidated or
un-liquidated damages in cases not sounding in tort” – 28
U.S.C. 1491, 2000.
Under the Tucker Act, the federal claims court’s jurisdiction
is, “limited to actual, presently due money damages from the
United States,” and requires litigants, “to identify a
substantive right for money damages against the United
States separate from the Tucker Act itself.”
The FAA managers argued that their “substantive right for
money damages” was established because FAA breached the CBA
and MOU, but the court found they were not covered by those
agreements.
As such, they “do not have a contract with the United States
and cannot base a claim for money damages against the United
States on a contract to which they are not a party,”
according to the decision.
