SkyWest Pilots Again Consider a Union

Over half of SkyWest Airline's 2,500 pilots have shown interest in joining the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), but the union isn't ready to conduct an election, ALPA President John Prater said Tuesday.

Prater met Monday in Salt Lake City with about 75 SkyWest pilots to answer questions and dispute mistaken notions about how ALPA would affect the St. George-based airline, which has never had a pilots union in its 35-year history.

Prater said enough pilots have signed cards that would permit ALPA to ask the National Mediation Board for a secret-ballot vote, but the union would not take that step until at least 70 percent of pilots indicate they want ALPA to represent them.

"We want an overwhelming majority," Prater said. "We want to make sure [pilots] have the opportunity to ask questions. Quite honestly, there are a lot of lies out there about being members of ALPA."

SkyWest officials were unavailable for comment Tuesday.

SkyWest has hired hundreds of pilots over the past year and has plans to add hundreds more to support its rapidly growing business. The airline flies as Delta Connection for Delta Air Lines and as United Express for United Airlines. On Sunday, SkyWest began flying as Midwest Connect for Midwest Airlines. Passenger traffic in February was up 9 percent from a year ago.

The airline is staging a job fair in Salt Lake City today and is planning 15 more fairs before July. Many of the new pilots going to work for SkyWest are in the early stages of their careers and may have distorted views of ALPA, Prater said.

He said some pilots believe their union dues will be 5 percent of their annual incomes. (The figure is 1.95 percent.) Others think ALPA will disrupt SkyWest so much that its growth will stop. Many aviators don't know that the largest airline pilots union in the world is a professional organization that advises the industry on safety and aircraft design, he said.

Although its mission is to help pilots win favorable pay, benefits and work rules, it isn't true that ALPA hurts airline companies, he said.

The union is the bargaining agent for Continental's 4,000 pilots, and last year the Houston-based carrier earned $343 million.

"We make no apologies that we are a union and that we conduct collective bargaining on behalf of members in order to provide [labor] contracts that provide a stable career," said Prater, who was elected president of ALPA in October and began a four-year term in January.

SkyWest pilots have tried twice since 1999 to affiliate with a union. Their last effort in 2004 failed when only a third of eligible pilots voted for an in-house association to act as their bargaining agent.

The issues driving the latest organizing effort have less to do with wages and benefits than with having more control over their fate as the airline industry consolidates, SkyWest pilots have said.

Even so, ALPA is primed to be more aggressive when bargaining with the airlines. Prater has taken over leadership of ALPA at a time when the financial prospects for airlines are not as bleak as they have been.

The Air Transport Association, which represents U.S. airline companies, is betting that industry profits will reach $4 billion this year after posting modest operating profits in 2006. Pilots who agreed to wage-and-benefit concessions in order to help their airlines survive now want to recover what they gave back, Prater said.

ALPA "desires to return to its roots of aggressive bargaining, strict contract enforcement, tenacious organizing and pilot action to restore our contracts and our profession," Prater said.

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