United Pilots Flex Brawn

The pilots union at United Airlines is forming a strike-preparedness committee, saying it wants improvements to its labor contract as the company returns to profitability and senior managers are awarded "huge pay raises."

"We have always worked with this company under the protocol of shared sacrifice," Steve Derebey, spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association at United, told members in a recorded phone message Tuesday night. "The company has clearly signaled that they have returned to profitability by granting some senior management individuals huge pay raises.

"Pilots - the very group who saved this airline from the scrap heap of failed airlines - deserve the same return on our investment."

United spokeswoman Jean Medina said in a written statement that the company has "been through a challenging time" and has "emerged from an extremely difficult restructuring."

"We worked very hard with ALPA to consensually and successfully negotiate the current contract. We look forward to doing the same when this agreement becomes amendable," Medina said.

The strike-preparedness committee comes just after the election of a new national leader of the Air Line Pilots Association - an umbrella organization over groups at United and other airlines - who vowed to take stronger action than in the past.

"After five years of concessionary bargaining, lost pension and battered work rules, our pilots are primed to take offensive action," said ALPA president- elect John Prater in a written statement after the October election. "This may mean a return to the hard-nosed tactics of earlier years and a grassroots mobilization of each and every one of our members."

Prater will succeed current president Duane Woerth.

Calyon Securities airline analyst Ray Neidl has for some time been warning about the long-term threat of organized labor.

"The airline business is labor intensive, with highly skilled people that are heavily unionized," Neidl wrote in a report he issued this week. "At the first sign of profitability, employees begin to demand outsized wage increases and their 'fair share' to make up for cuts previously made to turn their employers around.

"This is usually a sign that we are entering the tail-end of the economic cycle for the industry."

Sharing the fruits of success with employees is only fair, Neidl continued, since they were part of the process.

"However, airline management has to be diligent in continuing to control costs, particularly labor costs, and must remain conscious of continuing cost containment," he wrote. "It is, after all, a variable and largely unpredictable industry."

News stories provided by third parties are not edited by "Site Publication" staff. For suggestions and comments, please click the Contact link at the bottom of this page.