With a new ad campaign, the Allied Pilots Association wanted American Airlines leaders to know that they want a new contract soon, with raises and better scheduling.
So they targeted video and banner ads on social media by geofencing American Airlines headquarters in Fort Worth. The ads also will run specifically for American Airlines frequent fliers while they travel through places such as DFW International Airport.
Union contract negotiations are increasingly ferocious at American Airlines and Dallas-based Southwest Airlines, carriers that already reported major disruptions in operations from labor disputes this year. American is nearing deadlines to get a deal with three major groups, including flight attendants, pilots and the maintenance workers it still hasn’t been able to reach a contract with after four years of talks.
Southwest is facing a contentious contract process with flight attendants. It’s also working on deals with four smaller employee groups.
This round of slow contract negotiations is coming only a few months after both American and Southwest sued their mechanics unions for work slowdowns. The airlines say their unions caused hundreds of flight delays and cancellations and cost them millions of dollars.
Each union group wants raises for employees, but there are major points such as scheduling, sick time and job duties that have yet to be resolved, even after months of negotiations.
Employee wages and benefits are the biggest expenses for the two airlines. American spent about 30% of expenses on workers during the first six months of 2019. Southwest spent more than 40% of all expenses on employees.
Could these new contract talks have the same debilitating toll on the airlines that they faced earlier this year? Leaders at the carriers say no, but there hasn’t been significant progress on any of the contracts after more than six months of talks.
“It’s a dramatically different process than what we’re going through with our mechanics and fleet services right now, which is a joint bargaining agreement,” American Airlines CEO Doug Parker said in an interview with The Dallas Morning News on Oct. 3. “I’m not suggesting that there won’t be some negotiations that take some time, but this is going to be much more about how much more our pilots and flight attendants make than they are making today.”
Airlines’ unique contracts
Airline contracts don’t operate like other private companies. There are special rules to ensure that union negotiations don’t result in strikes that cripple the travel industry. To go on strike, airline employees need to follow a meticulous process overseen by federal labor officials. It takes years and rarely happens.
It took the mechanics unions at American and Southwest several years of stalled negotiations to get to the point where the airlines were suing them in court.
Even with federal oversight, it’s often a fierce battle over contracts, said Bob Bruno, director of the labor education program at the University of Chicago. “The airline industry at times has been incredibly hostile and adversarial,” he said.
Technically, federal law says union contracts with airlines never end, but new negotiations start when employees stop getting the scheduled, negotiated raises from the last deal.
After getting raises at the end of 2018, American Airlines pilots and flight attendants won’t get a raise this year without a new contract.
Neither will flight attendants at Southwest, which has a Nov. 1 soft deadline for a new contract. Over the next year, Southwest also will look to get new deals with reservation and gate agents, dispatchers, flight instructors and meteorologists, the latter of whom has just 10 employees.
“Our goal in starting discussions early was to knock out items so we could complete negotiations on time and get ahead of anyone missing out on a pay raise,” said Russell McCrady, Southwest’s vice president of labor relations.
With the pace of negotiations already behind schedule at Southwest and American, union leaders worry that companies are taking a harder stance, particularly after American’s court victory over mechanics this year for the alleged work slowdown.
After that case, American sued its mechanics union for losses from the slowdown.
Southwest wants damages from its mechanics union as well, something union leaders thought would go away after a contract was settled in March, said Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association president Bret Oestreich.
“We don’t want to be in court,” he said. “We feel the contract is over and done, and the company is doing this for unknown reasons.”
Leaders of the pack
Union leaders for each group say they are looking for “industry-leading” pay packages, but money is just the beginning of what they want.
American’s flight attendants and pilots want more flexible schedules that allow more shift trading and reduce the amount of time they spend “on reserve," or on call for a flight. That can be a challenge to coordinate for an airline with 15,000 pilots and 28,000 flight attendants.
“It’s impacting our quality of life,” said Allied Pilots Association President Eric Ferguson, a captain at American Airlines. “We want to be able to spend time at home and with our families, but we can’t do that when we can’t plan our schedules.”
Ferguson said negotiations have been slow, but American has presented a deal that covers some issues pilots want to be addressed, such as medical benefits, but not all.
“American provided $150 million a year to fix all the other lifestyle issues,” he said. “They are trying to give us a fixed pie and telling us to slice it up.”
Ferguson said he is worried about the pace of negotiations and said both sides will have to be more aggressive to get a deal done before the holidays.
American’s flight attendants also want a sick leave policy to match pilots and not penalize them for calling out sick.
Lori Bassani, who heads the union for flight attendants at American, said getting a deal done soon could ease friction building between employees and corporate leaders.
“We have to push for everything we get,” Bassani said. “This management team that I’m working with now ... is probably one of the least workable teams that I’ve worked with. That’s the underlying reason for the low morale.”
Flight attendants at Southwest and American say they are dealing with more delayed flights and cancellations, which lengthen their days at a lower pay rate.
Southwest’s flight attendants want improvements to crew scheduling, but they want dozens of other changes, too.
Southwest and the flight attendants already butted heads in August after the airline presented some contract terms, including raises, straight to employees in a message. Lyn Montgomery, president of Transport Workers Union Local 556, said the deal is overwhelmingly unpopular with flight attendants and doesn’t address the dozens of points they want to negotiate.
The two sides are also discussing issues ranging from what kind of planes flight attendants fly on to whether they can sell food and credit cards during flights like other airlines.
McCrady said in an interview that the company has targeted a limited number of issues to address in this contract to try to speed up negotiations.
‘Right deal,’ not quick one
But for Southwest and its flight attendants, there is little hope of getting a deal done by Nov. 1, a year after starting negotiations.
“We will restate this again — we do not wish for lengthy negotiations, but we will not be pressured into accepting a deal simply for the sake of the company’s expediency,” union leaders wrote to Southwest flight attendants this month. “We want the right deal for our membership, not a quick one.”
In August, McCrady said the company was looking at 3% raises annually or 2.5% raises with a $2,000 signing bonus, which works out roughly the same for the company.
For both airlines, there will be pressure to get deals done quickly, travel industry analyst Seth Kaplan said.
Southwest had a reputation for smooth labor relations with unions — at least before recently clashing with mechanics.
Quick and quiet labor deals could help American Airlines overcome two years of struggles getting planes to destinations on time as well as financial results that lag behind the other major airlines, he said.
While no group will be striking anytime soon, Kaplan said getting deals secured helps with morale.
“Travelers can tell when they are flying on an airline where employees are happy or not,” he said.
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