cougar12
Unite Brothers & Sisters
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2008
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April 16, 2018
To All Flight Options & Flexjet Pilots:
On behalf of the 9,500 members of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA), the pilots of Southwest Airlines, I write to you today to express our unconditional support for International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 1108 and the representation services it provides to the pilots of Flight Options and Flexjet.
If the decertification effort of Local 1108 succeeds, the ramifications and consequences to our profession will be very damaging and far reaching. Unions and collective bargaining in the airline industry arose out of the necessity for safety and protection from greed and abuse by unconscionable owners and management. Today, we are faced with being pressured to fly at any cost, safety being sacrificed for profits, flag of convenience schemes, and many more problems.
Supporters of the decertification campaign against Local 1108 include some of our country’s most notoriously anti-union organizations, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Why are they involved? Because airline owners and management don’t like collective bargaining, which is a legitimate threat to the absolute power they wish to wield. Collective bargaining groups help enforce the requirement to run a safe organization, the duty to be accountable, and the requirement to provide a wage commensurate with the skill and experience required of our profession.
Our profession has been through hell and back. We have finally started to recover from several lost decades of declining wages and benefits. Today, for the first time, there is a confluence of factors in our favor: more emphasis on safety, stable oil prices, pilots in high demand with an ever-increasing shortage of qualified aviators, a recovering, healthy economy, and the public’s insatiable desire to travel. Decertification would threaten the safety of your operation and start the reversal of all of our hard-fought gains.
SWAPA’s pilot demand and pay study is located on our website at: https://www.swapa.org/. It will give some insight into the current market economics of our profession. Please also accept our invitation for Local 1108 to attend SWAPA’s second annual National Conference of Independent Pilot Unions in October. Information to the conference can be found at: https://www.swapa.org/conference.
All of us at SWAPA hope you conclude remaining in Local 1108 is not only what is right but what will protect and advance your careers and our profession. Please say no to decertification. Thank you for consideration and we hope to see you in October.
Fraternally,
Captain Jon Weaks
President
April 16, 2018
To All Flight Options & Flexjet Pilots:
On behalf of the 9,500 members of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association (SWAPA), the pilots of Southwest Airlines, I write to you today to express our unconditional support for International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 1108 and the representation services it provides to the pilots of Flight Options and Flexjet.
If the decertification effort of Local 1108 succeeds, the ramifications and consequences to our profession will be very damaging and far reaching. Unions and collective bargaining in the airline industry arose out of the necessity for safety and protection from greed and abuse by unconscionable owners and management. Today, we are faced with being pressured to fly at any cost, safety being sacrificed for profits, flag of convenience schemes, and many more problems.
Supporters of the decertification campaign against Local 1108 include some of our country’s most notoriously anti-union organizations, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Why are they involved? Because airline owners and management don’t like collective bargaining, which is a legitimate threat to the absolute power they wish to wield. Collective bargaining groups help enforce the requirement to run a safe organization, the duty to be accountable, and the requirement to provide a wage commensurate with the skill and experience required of our profession.
Our profession has been through hell and back. We have finally started to recover from several lost decades of declining wages and benefits. Today, for the first time, there is a confluence of factors in our favor: more emphasis on safety, stable oil prices, pilots in high demand with an ever-increasing shortage of qualified aviators, a recovering, healthy economy, and the public’s insatiable desire to travel. Decertification would threaten the safety of your operation and start the reversal of all of our hard-fought gains.
SWAPA’s pilot demand and pay study is located on our website at: https://www.swapa.org/. It will give some insight into the current market economics of our profession. Please also accept our invitation for Local 1108 to attend SWAPA’s second annual National Conference of Independent Pilot Unions in October. Information to the conference can be found at: https://www.swapa.org/conference.
All of us at SWAPA hope you conclude remaining in Local 1108 is not only what is right but what will protect and advance your careers and our profession. Please say no to decertification. Thank you for consideration and we hope to see you in October.
Fraternally,
Captain Jon Weaks
President
