Pilot Commentary - Continued Positive-Trend Bargaining

By Capt. Phil Otis (United), Chairman, ALPA Collective Bargaining Committee

ALPA master executive councils (MEC) face a rapidly changing environment in an increasingly complex world under the Railway Labor Act. I’d like to update ALPA members on the Association’s Collective Bargaining Committee (CBC) and its work in support of our 33 negotiating committees.

Our collective bargaining agreements provide the pay, work rule, benefit, and job security foundation for our daily work, our careers, and our families’ financial health and security, and I’m proud to be a contributor to our union’s success in these areas. As the CBC chairman, a pilot negotiator, and a former MEC status rep, I know our negotiations interconnect across pilot group lines, and I know that they really matter.

It’s an exciting time to negotiate pilot contracts, and substantial improvements are occurring during this negotiating cycle. Of course, there are still individual negotiations that aren’t progressing as smoothly as needed, and bargaining advances for some pilots still lag others—but overall the trend is positive, and we should continue our forward momentum. Let me tell you why I feel this way.

It was a long climb out of a deep hole following the mid-2000 bankruptcy-era negotiating cycle. Pay and benefits were diminished, jobs were lost, and favorable contract patterns fell apart. ALPA’s ongoing strategic planning initiatives, coordination between pilot groups, identification of developing contract patterns and goals, and corporate financial recovery helped mainline and cargo contracts begin to improve. The 2006 FedEx Express negotiations, the 2008 Delta/Northwest joint contract negotiations, and the 2010 United/Continental joint collective bargaining agreement, among others, were clear markers that an atypical concessionary cycle was ending. Recovery and improvements were evident elsewhere, too. Unfortunately, overcapacity and the restructuring of fee-for-departure carriers extended bargaining challenges for pilots in this segment of the industry.

The current positive five-year mainline and cargo bargaining cycle is even more widespread and robust than the last cycle, and the good news extends in some measure to all segments of the industry—albeit a little unevenly sometimes. Contract improvements are now taking place in all segments of our profession due to industry consolidation, positive corporate financial results, a closer correlation between the number of jobs and the supply of pilots, and coordination of pilot pay and benefit goals across companies. Large pay increases, retroactive compensation, retiree benefit improvements, career-progression enhancements, continued profit sharing, and other gains are the obvious result. Negotiations at Delta, FedEx Express, Hawaiian, and United—along with ongoing negotiations at Endeavor Air, Frontier, JetBlue, and Spirit—are examples.

Another round of bargaining starts in 2020. Here’s a look at what ALPA, the CBC, and pilot negotiating committees—backed by the Association’s professional negotiators and experts—are doing to consolidate and continue our positive rate.

The CBC is meeting regularly to identify, coordinate work on, and achieve enhanced cornerstone contract goals and favorable contract patterns over the next five and 10 years.

The annual CBC-sponsored ALPA Negotiating Training Seminar, which takes place this month, ensures that new pilot negotiators are trained, practiced, and ready for the next round of bargaining. Approximately 70 pilot negotiators from almost all of ALPA’s pilot groups will receive instruction and take part in bargaining exercises and negotiation simulations.

ALPA continues its efforts to organize new pilot groups in the U.S. and Canada and continues to sponsor industry collective bargaining roundtable meetings—even with pilot groups not represented by ALPA—to ensure that everyone has the resources to succeed and to build pilot consensus on favorable pilot contract patterns.

The CBC is looking carefully at important issues for the future—new retiree health programs and retirement benefits, emerging family issues that will make the profession more attractive and help recruit new pilots, remotely piloted aircraft, and others.

With the current round of bargaining winding down a bit, CBC pilot negotiators are making themselves available to other pilot groups to share their recent experiences.

ALPA’s history is full of negotiating accomplishments, and the union is confident that it will achieve more success in the next bargaining cycle—and ALPA negotiators are excited to be a part of this effort.

This article was originally published in the October 2017 issue of Air Line Pilot.

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