ALPA Supports NMB’s Changes to Union Election Rules
ALPA president Capt. John Prater
testified at a National Mediation Board (NMB) public hearing this week in support of the
notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that the Board published on November 3, 2009, regarding airline representation elections. Under this proposal, the NMB would no longer count all nonparticipants as “no” votes in union elections, allowing the elections to be decided by the majority of those actually voting, as are most other elections.
“ALPA believes that the Board’s proposal is a long overdue step to level the playing field in union elections,” Prater said. “It’s a realistic but important update that ensures basic fairness and recognizes that conditions for voting have changed since the 1930s,” when the original balloting rules were adopted.
ALPA joined with the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO and several of its member unions in unanimously supporting this proposed rule change. Edward Wytkind, president of the TTD, stated that today’s method of discerning voter intent is inherently flawed and unreliable.
“By automatically assigning non-participating voters a ‘no’ vote, these procedures are declaring intent when none is expressed,” Wytkind said during his testimony. “There are a host of reasons why individuals do not vote . . . we’ve seen in 9 out of 10 union elections in recent history workers face an employer-run campaign to block unionization.”
The public hearing also featured several individual airline employees who testified in support of the change on their own behalf, including David Boehm, a member of the ALPA Organizing Committee during the 2007 SkyWest organizing drive. “I’m here to tell you a story about SkyWest,” Boehm said before the Board. “In 2007, SkyWest was rapidly expanding. Over 40 percent of SkyWest pilots had been there for less than two years, most fresh out of college. Today, we remain the largest group of unrepresented pilots in the industry.”
Boehm went on to describe the challenges of getting 2,600 pilots to participate in voting under the current NMB election rules presuming that nonvoters vote against representation, especially with so many pilots still on probation with the company. “There was a certain sense of intimidation by management,” he said. “These pilots were trying to learn not only how to fly new equipment in training, but who the NMB was, what their rights are under the Railway Labor Act, and the benefits of having union representation.”
A total of 31 interested parties testified at the hearing, presenting both labor and management viewpoints on the proposed rule and its effects on the transportation industry. The NMB will receive additional public comments until Jan. 4, 2010. For more information, including the list of hearing speakers, submitted written testimonies, and various public comments on the rule, visit
Proposed NMB Representation Rulemaking.
