Outside Section 6: Bargaining Doesn't End When a Contract is Reached

By Kevin Cuddihy, Contributing Writer

Editor’s note: While this article refers to Section 6 negotiations, the content also applies to the formal negotiating process under the Canada Labour Code (see “The Laws”).

Congratulations! Your pilot group reached a tentative agreement with management, and you and your colleagues voted to approve that agreement. With the amended or new contract in place, your master executive council (MEC) and Negotiating Committee are now able to relax until the next amendable or expiration date, right? Not even close. While the contract has been approved, ALPA pilots, with the support of the Association’s professional staff, are evaluating and capitalizing on the many opportunities to negotiate with management and make improvements outside of traditional Section 6 negotiations.

Capt. Tim Canoll, ALPA’s president, regularly reminds MEC leaders that an airline pilot will work—on average—under just five contracts in his or her career. “It’s extremely important to make gains outside of the full contract negotiation process so you’re doing everything you can to benefit your pilots,” he says. “Especially in today’s bargaining atmosphere, we need to be ready to advance the ball for our pilots at any available opportunity. That’s a must.”

Capt. Paul Ryder (ExpressJet), ALPA’s national resource coordinator and Fee-for-Departure (FFD) Committee chairman, notes that this is especially important for FFD carriers. “We should be at the table or ready to go constantly now, whether it’s officially under Section 6 of the Railway Labor Act or not,” he says. “We should be willing to work with management to achieve goals outside of the Section 6 process and create opportunities for continued gains.”

So how do ALPA’s MECs do that?

Eating an elephant

An old riddle asks, “How do you eat an elephant?” The answer: “One bite at a time.” Endeavor Air pilots know this all too well.

When Endeavor Air exited bankruptcy in 2013 as a wholly owned Delta subsidiary, the pilots’ collective bargaining agreement was a shell of what it was when the company was Pinnacle, pre-bankruptcy. And the contract amendable date was seven years in the future, making it a long wait for improvements.

Or was it? Even without the ability to enter the formal Section 6 contract negotiation process, the Endeavor Air MEC and Negotiating Committee executed 50-plus (and counting!) letters of agreement (LOAs) with management to improve their contract—bite by bite. The result? They now have a contract that’s better in many areas than their pre-bankruptcy contract. And all without entering the Section 6 negotiating process.

Endeavor Air leaders discuss a letter of agreement. From left: Capt J.J. Sweetser; Scheduling Committee chairman; Capt. Dave Szurgot, Negotiating Committee member; Capt. Jim Johnson; Master Executive Council chairman; Jane Schraft, ALPA labor relations counsel; and F/O Nick James, Negotiating Committee chairman.

With an amendable date so far off, the MEC adopted a strategic plan to engage with the company as much as possible. “We came to the table with problems that the company was willing to solve, and we offered mutually agreeable solutions,” explains F/O Nick James, the Endeavor Negotiating Committee chairman. “That gave us the credibility that helped create the relationship and the opportunities we have today.”

The LOAs started in earnest at the end of 2013, when FAR Part 117 regulations came into play; the pilots and the company had to work together to determine how the new regulations would be implemented. After succeeding there, they jointly tackled a number of other initiatives, culminating in a comprehensive LOA that addressed important scheduling issues, along with vacation pay and premium pay. “We restored premium pay on all open time, which improved morale,” says Capt. Jim Johnson, the Endeavor pilots’ MEC chairman, “and further demonstrated to the pilots the value inherent in this approach to negotiations.”

Since then, the pilots take every opportunity they can to improve their contract. Johnson and James admit that they’re not able to achieve every MEC goal this way, and a contractual career-progression program is still at the top of the list of priorities. “Just because we haven’t succeeded so far doesn’t mean we’ve stopped working on it,” acknowledges Johnson. “Continuing to meet with the company regularly and signing LOAs allows us to continually better our contract, maintain our relationship with management, and continue to seek things we weren’t able to achieve at this bargaining opportunity.”

With more than 50 LOAs over three-plus years, the pilot leaders and ALPA staff supporting them remain busy. “It’s a huge amount of work,” Johnson says. “The negotiators are in the office full time when we’re negotiating a package.”

ALPA staff is actively involved as well. “Our support staff is tremendous,” James notes. “We’re fortunate to have support from two labor relations counsel, Jane Schraft and Rob Plunkett, and they’re invaluable to helping us advance our goals. ALPA’s Economic & Financial Analysis Department is amazing as well, and we’ll be coordinating with the Retirement & Insurance Department on 401(k) and health insurance improvements this year.”

The Endeavor leaders continue to be on the watch for new bargaining opportunities. “We always have a list of priorities,” says Capt. Dave Szurgot, a Negotiating Committee member. “Even if it’s not a top priority, when we have interest from the company—we get it done. We actively look for ways to address company needs—how we can make the company work better.”

“It can be hard to say yes to little things,” observes Johnson, “especially if it’s not everything you want, or perfect. But in every LOA, we’ve advanced the ball. And that affects morale tremendously—and gives us momentum to tackle the next issue.”

Endeavor’s Negotiating Committee is currently negotiating to put the pilots’ retention payments (currently set for all pilots at $23,000 per year) into wages—a goal the committee hopes to achieve this year. “The current operational and financial strength of our company, combined with a strong national economy and our pilots’ desire for improvements, makes it imperative to engage in bargaining now,” Johnson says. “Our amendable date really isn’t a factor. Our strategy has put us so much further ahead than we would have been otherwise,” he notes. “If we can continue to achieve as much as we can when we can, we can take full advantage of the favorable bargaining environment we find ourselves in today.”

Differing perceptions

There are occasions when a pilot group may interpret a clause or section of a contract differently than the company does. This becomes an issue that needs to be resolved before problems occur—or corrected after they occur.

These issues often arise in the first few months of a completed contract, when it’s being implemented. The company acts one way, and the pilot group or its negotiators reacts another, and confusion reigns.

This was the case for First Air. The pilots ratified a new contract on June 24, 2016, but that wasn’t the end of the negotiating process. According to F/O Charlene Hudy, the pilots’ MEC chairman, a few issues required interpretation before the proverbial ink was dry on the new collective agreement.

The new contract added a city from which pilots could be scheduled, and this was the first time that rotational pilots at First Air had a defined daily flying schedule. As a result, some kinks needed to be worked out. The Crew Scheduling Department was learning how to implement the rules per the intent of the newly ratified contract, and the pilots were learning how to interpret the new scheduling rules.

“We have a Scheduling Committee, volunteers from the pilots, that communicated on a monthly basis with the company as we worked through this,” explains Hudy. “They were able to work with management to implement scheduling rules so that everyone was on the same page moving forward.”

A First Air airplane outside of Iqaluit Airport, which was the subject of additional negotiations regarding scheduling out of the facility.

Hudy praises ALPA’s labor relations counsel for their contributions. “They’re been very good and very diligent about getting all the facts behind the story,” she says. “In our case, Glen Chochla has been extremely helpful about making sure the contract is applied in the ways that it was meant to be applied for everyone. And where it isn’t being properly applied, he helps us develop a process for bringing the contract into compliance with the parties’ intent or the parties into compliance with the contract’s intent.”

Another issue that needed resolution was an error of omission with a newly negotiated process for flight switches. “We weren’t even aware there was an issue until we’d gone through it a few times,” acknowledges Hudy. “The language in the contract was fairly vague, and we had a different interpretation than the company. But we were able to negotiate a memorandum of agreement that fully clarifies the flight-switch procedure going forward.”

United Airlines pilots and management experienced similar issues with their recent contract. LOA 41 states that the two sides “identified provisions in which the literal language...did not match the bargained intent” and therefore “changes to the language...are required to better reflect the intended meaning” on topics such as vacation slides and reserve availability.

MECs sometimes learn of issues like these through their grievance procedure. “If a large number of pilots are filing grievances over the same issue,” explains Andrew Shostack, assistant director of ALPA’s Representation Department, “it’s likely there’s a discrepancy between the pilots and management over what a clause means.” Then it’s up to the parties to go back to the drawing board—whether at the bargaining table or through the dispute resolution mechanism—to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

Necessity is the mother of negotiation, too

Over the past few years, both Piedmont and Island Air have seen fleet changes that necessitated negotiation between the company and pilot group. Piedmont is in the midst of a transition from Dash 8s to E145s, while Island Air is moving from ATR 72s to Q400s. In both cases, it’s a change that the pilots and management agreed was necessary, but still required negotiating to put the changes in place.

Capt. Bruce Freedman, Piedmont’s MEC chairman, is a strong proponent of using the LOA process to improve contracts, explaining that the constantly changing world of aviation makes it a necessity. “If we just lived with the Section 6 contract amendment process and nothing else, we’d be a disaster,” he says. Capt. Jim Morris, Island Air’s MEC chairman, agrees. “We actually do more outside of Section 6 than we ever do inside it.”

At Piedmont, the transition to new aircraft (pre-LOA) got off to a rough start. “The company just wasn’t prepared and didn’t understand everything that was involved,” says Freedman. “We recognized that the company was going to violate the contract, so we worked as a partner with the company’s negotiators to put the right language in place. Both sides recognized that we had a strange situation—new equipment—but we both needed and wanted this situation and had to work together to fix it,” Freedman acknowledges. “We yielded on some things, management yielded on some things, and it ended with a true compromise to allow progress that benefits all.”

As with all pilot groups, Piedmont’s negotiations are pilot-directed and pilot-led, but Freedman praises ALPA staff as being a strong resource. “At an airline like Piedmont, we have a high turnover of committee volunteers,” he explains, “so the experience level can be less than we would like. But ALPA’s labor relations counsel have experience with multiple contracts, so they can suggest a variety of options as negotiations proceed—as well as catch items that need improvement or added protection for us as a pilot group.”

At Island Air, Morris credits an improved relationship with management—thanks to new ownership—with making the fleet transition go smoothly for the pilot group. In fact, the pilots got much more than just a transition LOA due to a concurrent need for hiring new pilots as well as retaining current pilots. “The new aircraft LOA also improved our pay rates, brought inspection credit back, and increased the minimum daily guarantee,” Morris says. It also addressed the need for new hires: “We were able to fix incentive pay, adjust the pay scale, and add a retention bonus as well, which makes us a better destination for pilots and a better place to stay. It’s been a winning situation all around.”

The importance of that “winning situation” isn’t lost on Morris. “If we didn’t come up with a mutually beneficial solution,” he notes, “the company would have gone under and we’d be out of jobs. Everyone had to get into pulling the cart in the same direction or it wouldn’t have been successful.”

‘A living document’

“A contract is a living document; you should constantly try to deal with whatever you can given your current circumstances, because they change constantly,” says Freedman about negotiating outside Section 6. Bruce York, ALPA’s chief negotiator, echoes Freedman’s sentiments. At a recent training session, York told MEC leaders, “There are always opportunities to bargain outside of Section 6. We should use every chance we get to take advantage of them.”

Whether it’s a clarification, an opportunity, or a necessity, the prospects presented outside Section 6 negotiations are a prime way for MECs to improve upon an existing contract. The key is to be on constant watch for opportunities and ready to take full advantage of them.

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