A number of SkyWest Airlines pilots are once again considering whether to form a union at the rapidly growing St. George airline.
The SkyWest pilots have approached the Air Line Pilots Association, which says it will determine whether the desire to unionize is great enough for it to distribute authorization cards to SkyWest's 3,500 aviators.
It would be the third such effort since 1999, and this one comes at time when the association has had mixed success in negotiating pay and benefits for its members with other airlines, including Delta and Northwest. Those carriers have negotiated concessions with their pilot groups, with Delta's aviators in the midst of a vote on whether to approve pay and benefit cuts.
As for the situation at SkyWest, "we are . . . looking for some significant [indicators] that would tell us that this is a serious effort on the part of pilots and that there is a realistic possibility of winning," association spokesman John Mazor said Tuesday.
Distributing authorization cards would be the first step toward forming a union. If the group received signed cards from a majority of pilots, the union could ask SkyWest to recognize it. If the company refused, the association could petition the National Labor Relations Board for a secret-ballot election. If the union won the election, SkyWest would be obligated to bargain with it as the representative of the pilots.
"If we get 50 [percent]-plus-1 we're probably not going to hold an election," said Mazor, who emphasized that the group has made no decision to distribute cards. "But if you get a strong enough response from the cards, that's concrete evidence that you should start moving to the next step, which is petitioning" the board.
If a unionizing drive does materialize, it would be the third attempt in seven years. In 1999, pilots narrowly defeated a proposal to join the union. Two years ago, pilots decisively rejected an attempt to form an in-house union, to the relief of the airline, which believes that remaining union-free is big reason why it is one of a few profitable carriers in the otherwise ailing airline industry. SkyWest executives did not respond to a request for comment.
This attempt would take place under different circumstances. In September, SkyWest's parent company, SkyWest Inc., bought Atlantic Southeast Airlines from Delta Air Lines. ASA's 2,500 pilots are represented by the Air Line Pilots Association. Depending on which aircraft they fly, some ASA pilots earn more than their SkyWest counterparts. The company and union have been unable to agree on a new labor agreement since negotiations began in 2002.
The association is the largest pilots union in the world. It represents 62,000 aviators at 39 U.S. airlines and several Canadian carriers. Most major airlines are affiliated with it or, like Southwest Airlines and American Airlines, have their own unions.
"You have to get down to the level of the small- to medium-sized carriers to find an airline that isn't unionized," Mazor said.
Copyright 2005 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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