Activism climbing at airline unions
Leaders pressured to take harder line
By Julie Johnsson |Tribune staff reporter September 16, 2007
United Airlines pilots have put a new face on labor unrest -- it's a giant inflatable rat holding bags of money, the pilots' latest universal description of upper management.
United's unionized pilots last month used the rodent to greet passengers at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport as they were checking in, the latest in a series of stepped up public attacks on company management as union leaders face key elections Oct. 9.
After six years of relative calm, union activism is escalating across the airline industry. And it's not just management on the hot seat.
Rank-and-file employees, seething over losing one-third or more of their pay and management's perceived greed, are striking back at the easiest targets too: the union leaders who agreed to those concessions. As emotions rise among workers, so does the pressure on union leaders to take a harder line with management, or be replaced by someone who will.
"If Attila the Hun were running he'd be elected," said Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group, an Evergreen, Colo.-based consulting firm.
It's a volatile situation that appears to be building into one of the labor paroxysms that seize major airlines each decade. The last spasm, in the late 1990s and 2000, resulted in rich contract concessions that helped speed some carriers, including United, into bankruptcy when the market for air travel collapsed following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Momentum swung labor's way, some experts say, when Northwest Airlines pilots last month won time-and-a-half overtime pay from a management team known for its unyielding stance on labor issues.
Pilot shortages had forced Northwest to cancel thousands of flights during June and July. Executives blamed the weather, air-system congestion and pilot absenteeism for the disruptions; pilots said inadequate staffing was at fault.
"Every five to seven years the baseball bat changes hands," said Kit Darby, an airline pilot who is president of Atlanta-based AIR Inc., a firm that specializes in pilot recruiting and job placement
. "I think we have the official changing of the baseball bat."
Already pilot contract talks are under way at American, Continental and Southwest Airlines and are expected to set the tone for the rest of the industry through the end of the decade.
Negotiations at American, the world's largest carrier, are of particular interest to other airlines and unions because of the ill will that has crept into labor relations since unions voluntarily gave up pay in 2003 to keep the carrier out of bankruptcy.
American's pilots say they are in no mood to be conciliatory. They are angered by incentive plans that have granted rich payouts to senior executives but not to other employees.
In fact, talks ground to a halt this summer after pilots voted out union chief Ralph Hunter, who presided over the 2003 talks. Lloyd Hill, who replaced Hunter, has vowed to take a more aggressive stance. Negotiations are set to resume Oct. 2.
"Across the industry, pilots are done giving up [pay] and we're ready to recoup some of the losses," said David Aldrich, a Miami-based pilot for American and a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association, the independent union representing the carrier's 8,325 pilots.
"Management's had time to fix the store since 2001. It's time to stop giving away our services."