Originally from:

Journal of American Arbitration (JAA) - Vol. 4, No. 2

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ARTICLES

Arbitrator Selection and Neutrality
Under the Railway Labor Act:
An Airline Employee’s Perspective
By Michael S. Maza

I. INTRODUCTION
Practitioners of arbitration as a form of alternative dispute resolution
will tell you, an arbitration is only as good as the arbitrator.1 In other
words, the quality of the outcome in arbitration naturally flows from the
quality of the arbitral tribunal. The traditional line of thinking in
commercial arbitration is that members of an arbitral tribunal must at all
times be “neutral.”2 The term neutral is usually associated with being
“impartial and independent.”3 The purpose of this article is to describe a
well-established arbitral system operating under the Railway Labor Act
(RLA)4 that may challenge the commercial arbitration community’s
time-tested notion of “independence” and “impartiality” as a prerequisite
for a “fair” hearing.5 This article will attempt to illustrate a different, yet
traditional method of choosing arbitrators which casts aside the
requirement of impartiality and independence when selecting the “partyappointed”
tribunal members.
The purpose of this article is not to attempt to explain why the
United States Congress did what it did in 1926 and in the many
subsequent amendments to the RLA. Instead, I write from the
perspective that the Act is what it is, and this is how we operate within
that realm. My experience is that of an end-user in the specific areas of
airline labor negotiation and arbitration at Northwest Airlines, Inc.
(NWA). These negotiations and arbitrations were conducted in
accordance with the RLA and under the auspices of the National