Weighing In: Working Together to Build a Stronger Union
By Capt. Bill Couette, ALPA Vice President–Administration/Secretary
I’m sure you’re familiar with the expression “a means to an end”—an action taken to achieve a desired result. In this issue, you’ll find several examples of this, including the Mesa pilots’ new contract containing pay and quality-of-life improvements that raises the bar for future negotiations and the Aviation Works 4U initiative, which ALPA and other industry stakeholders announced at Oshkosh to promote aviation careers in North America.
This issue also includes further coverage of ALPA’s Air Safety Forum, highlighting the many ways our members are advancing aviation safety and security. In addition, F/O Mark Haley (United), ALPA’s Education Committee chair, talks about the new Cleared to Dream website and ALPA’s efforts to help students interested in becoming airline pilots. These articles show how we, as airline pilots, work together to build a stronger union. They also highlight how our efforts support ALPA’s three strategic goals of advancing our members’ careers, securing the future of our profession, and achieving the safest and most secure air transportation system possible.
When I was first elected to serve as your vice president of administration, the economy was entering a recession. Airlines were filing for bankruptcy, compelling our members to make sacrifices. In short order, we witnessed industry consolidation in which many carriers were forced to merge. We continue to see pilot groups like ExpressJet and Atlantic Southeast and, more recently, Alaska and Virgin America wade through the difficult decisions that have to be made to combine their respective seniority lists.
In time, the economy improved and many of our airlines returned to profitability. Pilot groups started positive pattern bargaining again. At ALPA, we used this opportunity to update our infrastructure. Thanks to Project AMBER, we’ve replaced our aging software and data information-storage network and updated our website. More efficient systems provide our members with new services and access to a greater amount of information.
Our Professional Development Group has expanded its reach, and ALPA has ramped up its efforts to address the needs of future and current airline pilots—from the time they consider joining the profession to the time they retire. The Education, Leadership, and Membership Committees, together with the Furloughed Pilots Support and Veterans Affairs Subcommittees, are constantly exploring new ways to help enhance the careers and lives of airline pilots. For example, ALPA’s career-progression workshops are helping many of our regional members secure positions at mainline carriers.
Even stand-alone resources like Pilots for Pilots, ALPA’s Emergency Relief Fund, exemplify how the union provides a means for pilot members affected by large-scale disasters to get help from their peers.
ALPA is able to accomplish all of this because we’re pilots serving pilots. We each have a say in the way we do things and the ability to make changes. By using this approach for 86 years, we’ve become the largest airline pilots’ union in the world, representing more than 57,000 airline pilots at 33 different carriers.
This pilot-centric system has worked so well for us that others have taken notice. In recent years, we’ve welcomed to our ranks the pilots of Frontier and Virgin America in the United States and Air Georgian and WestJet in Canada. More independent pilot groups are beginning to consider how ALPA membership might work for them. They recognize the tangible benefit of combining their efforts and resources with ALPA’s as a means to achieve their goals and strengthen the profession.
Although ALPA has achieved these and many other successes throughout its 86 years, we’d be naïve to think that we won’t face future challenges, including another economic downturn. Accordingly, we plan for these events to minimize the damage they can inflict on the union and our members.
I want to thank each and every member, pilot leader, and staff for the support you give to this organization and the time you commit to advance ALPA’s projects and initiatives. This is our union—yours and mine—and each of us, regardless of the size of our airlines or the payload we carry, has something to contribute. Every ALPA pilot working side by side makes us a force to be reckoned with, and a profession that will endure
