US Airway’s Pilots Sign 3 Year Accord
By The Captain, Staff Reporter, SafetyFirst online
Phoenix, AZ June 26th, 2011
Yesterday, US Airway’s and the US Airline Pilots Association announced that they had reached a new 3 year collective bargaining agreement covering the approximately 5,000 pilots of US Airways. In a press release, Mike Cleary, President of the pilots’ union said that “this long overdue agreement will bring the hardworking US Airways pilots up to industry standard with their peers at other carriers. We now look forward to working with management to return our carrier to the top of the industry in on-time and reliability”. US Airways pilots have long complained that their management has taken advantage of them for years, keeping them at substandard wages and work rules compared to their peers at other carriers as a result of their bankruptcy filings that ended over 6 years ago. The new agreement will end what they have dubbed “bankruptcy wages and work rules” assuming that it is ratified by the union’s membership as expected.
The announcement of an agreement seemingly came overnight, after literally years of negotiations that both parties had described as “non-productive” at best with each side accusing the other of being the road-block to a final agreement. In recent weeks, the frustration felt by the pilots over the slow pace of negotiations appears to have negatively affected the daily operations of the carrier to the point where passengers are “booking away” from the airline potentially costing the carrier hundreds of millions in future revenue. After a stellar performance in 2010 and again in the first half of 2011, when US Airway’s led the industry in on-time and completion factor the carrier recently plummeted to dead-last in on-time, flight completions and customer complaints. Last week US Airways emailed a letter to its frequent flyers apologizing for its recent poor performance while promising to fix the problems in the coming weeks. Whatever the cause of the operational melt-down, industry insiders say now that an agreement has been signed they expect that US Airways will again soon lead the industry in several performance related categories such as on-time. This can’t come soon enough for the carrier who has recently been hit with sky high fuel prices and can ill-afford a continuing significant drop in revenue as well.
The agreement still must pass a membership ratification vote by the rank and file that will occur in mid July, but off the record comments by members of US Airways management as well as union insiders suggests the vote is more of a formality at this point. The tentative agreement was recommended for ratification by the pilots’ union Board of Pilot Representatives by a vote of 9-2. The 2 dissenting votes were cast by former America West pilots who now serve on the pilots governing Board and voted against ratification in protest of the inclusion in the agreement of a seniority list that recognizes a pilots years of service with the company and has been a source of litigation by a minority group of former America West pilots. The two dissenting votes are considered to be inconsequential to the outcome of the ratification process.
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The Captain