Opinion ID: 205625
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Plaintiff's Employment with United Air Lines

Text: United hired Rabé in November 1993 to work in France out of the company's Paris hub. She signed an individual employment contract at United's headquarters in Chicago, Illinois. The contract specified that her work would be performed on board United's aircraft registered in the USA as they operate on routes throughout the Company's worldwide system, and that the aircraft would constitute the establishment where she performed her employment. The individual contract also required Rabé to join the Association of Flight Attendants, the American labor union that represents United flight attendants. The contract provided in articles 5 and 6 that the terms and conditions of Rabé's employment would be governed exclusively by applicable United States law, including the Railway Labor Act and the AFA [collective bargaining] agreement, and that jurisdiction over all employment-related claims would lie exclusively in courts and administrative bodies of the United States and Illinois. The individual contract even said that it would not be valid unless Rabé wrote by hand: Read and approved, valid for agreement and in particular for acceptance of the choice of U.S. law clause (article 5) and of the jurisdiction clause (article 6). United transferred Rabé to its Hong Kong base in 1997. According to her complaint, ninety percent of her flights were to or from United States destinations until May 2002, when she took a voluntary furlough from the company. United recalled Rabé from the furlough in August 2005. Still based in Hong Kong, she worked only flights between Asian airports before things went sour between her and United in 2007. According to Rabé, who is a lesbian, her new supervisor once told her that he believed it is not right to be gay and made comments suggesting that he suspected she is a lesbian. In September 2007, the supervisor initiated an investigation of Rabé for allegedly misusing company-issued travel vouchers. Rabé contends that the investigation was a pretext for the supervisor to fire her for invidious reasons. At the end of the investigation in April 2008, United fired Rabé, who was then 40 years old.