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United Pilots Picket for Better Contract After American, Southwest Counterparts Authorize Strikes
On the heels of strike-authorization votes by American and Southwest pilots, United pilots protested at airports across the U.S. on Friday to tell management that "enough is enough."
May 13, 2023
Following what the Air Line Pilots Association called "more than four years of empty promises," 3,000 off-duty United Airlines pilots represented by the union protested at major airports across the U.S. on Friday, demanding the finalization of a contract with higher pay and humane scheduling practices.
"Thousands of United pilots are picketing coast-to-coast today to deliver management a message they cannot ignore: Enough is enough," Capt. Garth Thompson, chair of the United ALPA master executive council, said in a statement.
"United management needs to stop slow-rolling negotiations... and do the right thing for their pilots."
"We have been stuck with an antiquated scheduling system and a contract nowhere near industry-leading standards," said Thompson. "We want United to succeed as industry leaders, and every day that passes without an agreement is another day the best and brightest future aviators go elsewhere."
United pilots—joined by ALPA president Capt. Jason Ambrosi, fellow ALPA pilots, and union supporters—demonstrated in front of terminals at airports in 10 cities as well as outside the company's flight training center in Denver.
Association of Flight Attendants-CWA president Sara Nelson was among those who participated in an act of solidarity.
\u201c\u270a #OneCrew\u201d— AFA-CWA (@AFA-CWA) 1683910072
"I am proud to stand here today to send United Airlines management a message that the airline's pilots have the full backing of their international union in their fight for the contract they have earned," said Ambrosi, who leads the 69,000-member union and joined a picket line in Chicago. "United management needs to stop slow-rolling negotiations that have dragged into their fifth year and do the right thing for their pilots."
Management has failed "to recognize the value pilots bring to the overall success of the airline," ALPA said. "United pilots were there for customers during one of the worst times for travel in recent history, and they also helped United Airlines emerge from the pandemic stronger than before."
Thompson, who called Friday's nationwide informational picket a "resounding success," stressed that "United pilots will always be there for our customers."
"Unfortunately," he added, "the same cannot be said about management, who seems to think that a last-minute cancellation of a United pilot's scheduled day off, or abrupt trip reassignments that extend into planned days off, is acceptable for a United pilot's family."
"This old pilot contract impacts our ability to maintain a healthy work-life balance," Thompson continued. "United pilots will deal with this adversity in our usual professional and safe manner. We will continue to work in 2023 despite staffing shortages in Air Traffic Control facilities, aggressive summer schedules, capacity constraints, and weather." However, he noted, "United pilots want the company and the public to know that the bold 'United Next' growth plans cannot work without an updated pilot contract."
"This old pilot contract impacts our ability to maintain a healthy work-life balance."
The action by United pilots comes in the wake of a pair of successful strike-authorization votes by pilots at other airlines.
On May 1, 95% of American Airlines pilots voted to authorize a strike. (Of the airline's 15,000 pilots, 96% participated, with 99% expressing support for a possible strike).
"We will strike if necessary to secure the industry-leading contract that our pilots have earned and deserve—a contract that will position American Airlines for success," said Capt. Ed Sicher, president of the Allied Pilots Association. "Our pilots' resolve is unmistakable. We will not be deterred from our goal of an industry-leading contract."
"The strike-authorization vote is one of several steps APA has taken to prepare for any eventuality and use all legal avenues available to us for contract improvement and resolution," Sicher noted. "The best outcome is for APA and management to agree on an industry-leading contract—achieved through good-faith bargaining—benefiting our pilots, American Airlines, and the passengers we serve."
On Thursday, 97% of Southwest pilots voted to authorize a strike. (Of the airline's 10,000-plus pilots, 98% participated, with 99% expressing support for a possible strike).
"This is a historic day, not only for our pilots but for Southwest Airlines," said Capt. Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association. "The lack of leadership and the unwillingness to address the failures of our organization have led us to this point. Our pilots are tired of apologizing to our passengers."
Murray and other union leaders have attributed Southwest's meltdown last winter to executives' yearslong refusal to invest in much-needed technological upgrades despite benefiting from billions of dollars in federal aid during the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic.
"We want our passengers to understand that we do not take this path lightly," Murray said Thursday. "We want our customers to be prepared for the path ahead and make arrangements on other carriers so that their plans through the summer and fall are not disrupted."
United's 14,000 pilots could be next in line to vote on strike authorization.
As The Associated Press reported Saturday, "Pilots at all three carriers are looking to match or beat the deal that Delta Air Lines reached with its pilots earlier this year, which raised pay rates by 34% over four years."
"United has proposed to match the Delta increase, but that might not be enough for a deal," AP observed. Citing Thompson, the outlet noted that "discussion about wages has been held up while the two sides negotiate over scheduling, including the union’s wish to limit United's ability to make pilots work on their days off."
The nation's pilots "are unlikely to strike anytime soon, however," AP reported. "Federal law makes it very difficult for unions to conduct strikes in the airline industry, and the last walkout at a U.S. carrier was more than a decade ago."
"Under U.S. law, airline and railroad workers can't legally strike, and companies can't lock them out, until federal mediators determine that further negotiations are pointless," the outlet explained. It continued:
The National Mediation Board rarely declares a dead end to bargaining, and even if it does, there is a no-strikes "cooling-off" period during which the White House and Congress can block a walkout. That's what President Bill Clinton did minutes after pilots began striking against American in 1997. In December, President Joe Biden signed a bill that Congress passed to impose contract terms on freight railroad workers, ending a strike threat.
Regardless of the legal hurdles to a walkout, unions believe that strike votes give them leverage during bargaining, and they have become more common. A shortage of pilots is also putting those unions in particularly strong bargaining position.
Although Congress is highly unlikely to permit an airline strike, disgruntled pilots could still cause disruption through "work to rule," Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University, told AP.
"They could say, 'We're not working any overtime,'" said Wheaton. "I don't anticipate the pilots trying to screw up travel for everybody intentionally, but bargaining is about leverage and power... having the ability to do that can be a negotiating tactic."
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'Open Admission of Fraud': United CEO Says Airlines Are Scheduling Flights They Can't Fulfill
Facing criticism over recent air travel issues, the U.S. Transportation Department is reportedly investigating whether three airlines have scheduled flights they know they can't staff.
Jan 20, 2023
Three unidentified U.S. airlines are under federal investigation for potentially scheduling flights the companies know they ultimately will not be able to fly—a revelation The New York Times reported Friday, just two days after United Airlines' CEO suggested competitors are doing just that.
The Times focused largely on how air travel issues—including mass cancellations from a winter storm during the holidays last month and a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) system outage that grounded air traffic across the country last week—have put Pete Buttigieg, the head of the U.S. Department of Transporation (DOT), "in the hot seat."
"Unfortunately, the Department of Transportation has been hesitant to hold the airlines accountable," John Breyault, the vice president for public policy at the National Consumers League (NCL), told the newspaper. "While Secretary Buttigieg has talked a tough talk, particularly over the past few months, we have yet to see that really translate into action."
"Imagine any other industry taking money for products it can't deliver."
In an interview, Buttigieg defended his record—which has included a proposed rule on refunds, an online dashboard of airlines' commitments, and nearly $16 million in fines—saying that "in terms of what we've done and in terms of what we're doing, I would stack up our work in this area against anybody who’s taken this on at the federal level."
According to the report, "The department is also investigating three U.S. airlines over whether they scheduled flights that they did not have enough staff to support, a spokeswoman for the agency said, though she declined to identify the airlines."
That reporting came after United CEO Scott Kirby said Wednesday during an earnings call with investors that "there are a number of airlines who cannot fly their schedules. The customers are paying the price. They're canceling a lot of flights. But they simply can't fly the schedules today."
\u201cThe CEO of United Airlines accused his rivals of committing fraud by selling tickets on flights they know they can't service. This statement by an airline CEO about the industry's problems is so much harsher than anything Pete Buttigieg has said or done. https://t.co/dW7SAt6Ji8\u201d— Matt Stoller (@Matt Stoller) 1674141074
"What happened over the holidays wasn't a one-time event caused by the weather, and it wasn't just at one airline. One airline got the bulk of the media coverage, but the weather was the straw that broke the camel's back for several," Kirby said—presumably referring to Southwest Airlines, which faced intense scrutiny for canceling nearly 17,000 flights partly due to issues with its personnel management system that employees and other critics claim could have been avoided with technological upgrades.
United has recognized "the new reality and the new math for all airlines," Kirby asserted, while warning that "our industry has been changed profoundly by the pandemic and you can't run your airline like it's 2019 or you will fail."
"We believe any airline that tries to run at the same staffing levels that it had pre-pandemic is bound to fail and likely to tip over to meltdown anytime there are weather or air traffic control stresses in the system," the CEO said, highlighting the need for investments in not only staff but also technology and infrastructure.
Kirby's comments about competitors' alleged scheduling practices caught the attention of the anti-monopoly think tank American Economic Liberties Project (AELP), which described them as "the airlines' open admission of fraud."
\u201cAnd yet, crickets from @USDOT.\n\nJust one more reason why we need to eliminate federal preemption and allow state AGs, courts, and consumers to crack down on the airlines themselves.\nhttps://t.co/4f3hHswTyR\u201d— American Economic Liberties Project (@American Economic Liberties Project) 1674146197
"What an extraordinary admission," William McGee, senior fellow for aviation and travel at AELP and author of the airline industry exposé Attention All Passengers, tweeted Thursday.
For months, the AELP has asked the DOT "to investigate IF airlines were accepting bookings (and $!) for flights they couldn't operate," he said. "Now United's CEO confirmed it. Imagine any other industry taking money for products it can't deliver."
"Ironically, we're learning more about canceled flights from the airlines than we are from the Department of Transportation," McGee told The Lever, while also pointing out that the DOT's "complaint database showed that United was by far the worst offender on unpaid refunds dating back to the earliest days of Covid in 2020."
As The Lever reported Friday:
Complaints against the major U.S. airlines, including United, more than tripled in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, as companies routinely sold tickets for flights they could not adequately staff, canceled the flights at the last minute, and slow-walked or withheld refunds while collecting billions in taxpayer bailout dollars.
The behavior prompted 34 attorneys general to write to Buttigieg on December 16 asking his agency to "require airlines to advertise and sell only flights that they have adequate personnel to fly and support, and perform regular audits of airlines to ensure compliance and impose fines on airlines that do not comply."
The letter, submitted as part of the rulemaking process for a still-delayed consumer protection proposal at Buttigieg's agency, also noted that the proposed rule "includes no provision that would correct this practice and that would prevent airlines from advertising and selling tickets for flights that they cannot reasonably provide."
In an opinion piece published by the Times last week in the wake of the FAA outage, the AELP's McGee traced U.S. air travel troubles back much further than the ongoing pandemic, explaining that although "the airlines were initially regulated in the 1930s for many reasons, some of which should be familiar to us in 2023," Congress passed the Airline Deregulation Act (ADA) in 1978.
"One could envision a wholesale return to the pre-1978 era, with route-setting and price-setting brought back into public hands entirely," he wrote, noting that the AELP "has proposed more FAA funding and eliminating federal preemption, which would allow consumers and state officials to sue airlines over consumer and safety rules."
"My colleagues and I are, however, eager to take part in a national conversation about regulating the industry more comprehensively," McGee added. "We haven't had a national discussion for 44 years about the state of air travel. It's time to have that discussion, rather than playing whack-a-mole with each crisis as it arises."
Buttigieg "has taken a tougher line than most of his predecessors" at the DOT, the NCL's Breyault tweeted Friday, while sharing his critical remarks to the Times. "But he is hamstrung by the ADA, which gives airlines far too much power. To truly protect passengers, Congress needs to act."
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Senate Democrats Demand Answers From Southwest About Holiday 'Meltdown'
"Southwest must take all necessary steps to ensure that this debacle never happens again," wrote the senators, who inquired about software, staffing, refunds, bags, wheelchairs, and executive and shareholder compensation.
Jan 13, 2023
A group of 15 U.S. senators on Thursday demanded answers from Southwest Airlines' CEO regarding the company's management of the disastrous 2022 holiday season, when thousands of travelers were stranded in airports amid nearly 16,000 flight cancelations.
"The mass flight cancellations at Southwest Airlines... during the last week of December ruined the holidays for tens of thousands of travelers, stranding them at gates without their bags and forcing them to miss celebrations with families and friends. Although winter storm Elliott disrupted flights across the country, every other airline operating in the United States managed to return to a regular flight schedule shortly thereafter—except Southwest," the senators wrote in a letter led by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) to company CEO Robert Jordan. "Southwest must take all necessary steps to ensure that this debacle never happens again."
"In total, Southwest canceled nearly 16,000 flights during this period. As you have rightfully acknowledged, Southwest simply failed its customers," wrote the lawmakers, who include 14 Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). "For consumers across the country, this failure was more than a headache—it was a nightmare."
\u201cNEW: Senators send letter to Southwest CEO Bob Jordan "demanding" answers for holiday meltdown. $LUV\u201d— Edward Russell (@Edward Russell) 1673622065
The letter continues:
Travelers were stranded across the country for days at a time, forced to spend hours on hold with Southwest customer service representatives or in line at Southwest service desks at the airport. Just as the storm set off a chain reaction of problems for Southwest, these cancellations inevitably led to bad consequences for travelers who could not return to their loved ones over the holidays, lacked access to critical medicine and other personal items in their misplaced bags, or were forced to miss days at work.
Your employees—flight attendants, pilots, ground workers, customer service representatives, dispatchers, ramp workers, and others—were also victims. Some found themselves stranded across the country. Others had to work mandatory overtime in frigid temperatures or spent countless hours seeking impossible-to-find solutions to help furious customers find their way home.
The senators noted that "based on initial comments from Southwest executives and news reports, the main cause of Southwest's meltdown appears to be legacy software that Southwest uses to coordinate its crews and planes."
"Yet, Southwest has long known that its software was outdated and the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association had warned that such a debacle was inevitable unless Southwest invested in new scheduling systems," the lawmakers wrote. "Instead of making those investments, Southwest distributed over $1.8 billion in dividends to its shareholders and bought back over $11 billion in its shares between 2011 and 2020. And just last month, Southwest announced that it would issue a $428 million dividend in the first quarter of this year—the first airline to announce a dividend since the start of the pandemic."
\u201c.@SouthwestAir\u2019s holiday meltdown was inexcusable. No business can treat its customers like that and get away with it. The passengers and the public need answers about what went wrong and how Southwest will make sure it never happens again.\nhttps://t.co/lvpnb6Xj4N\u201d— Ed Markey (@Ed Markey) 1673567578
To "better understand the causes of these cancellations and ensure a breakdown of this magnitude never happens again," the senators request answers to questions, including:
- Why Southwest was unable to return to a normal flight schedule after winter storm Elliott;
- Why Southwest's pilot and flight attendant scheduling software was unable to efficiently process cancellations;
- Why Southwest failed to modernize systems so they could effectively coordinate crew and flight schedules after major storms and during major travel periods;
- How and when Southwest plans to modernize its systems and what, if any, changes the company has made to its crew scheduling software system since the meltdown;
- How many Southwest employees worked overtime—and how many were forced to work overtime—between December 1 and January 2;
- How many passenger refunds the airline gave—and rejected—and whether passengers on canceled flights were reimbursed for hotels, meals, and alternative transportation;
- How many customers experienced delayed, damaged, or lost baggage and wheelchairs, and whether any passengers are still waiting for these items;
- When the decision was made to resume paying stock dividends, and whether other uses for the funds—like software updates or employee pay hikes—were considered; and
- Whether Southwest plans any stock buybacks for 2023, and if so, would they be tied to company performance.
Southwest sparked further outrage this week by announcing the promotions of several company executives, a move that Liz Zelnick, director of the Economic Security and Corporate Power program at Accountable.US, called indicative of "the behavior of a company with no intention of changing course from management decisions that seek to enrich shareholders while leaving consumers holding the bag."
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