SkyWest Pilots

[rtmcfi]

I think the idea of an in house union has it's merits, but ALPA brings alot of good tools to the table. The insurance, the legal defense, medical advice, not to mention the strike fund are all attractive. I think the last SkyWest union drive failed in no small part due to it being in-house. I think expressjet used to be an in-house union, and decided to become ALPA. I am sure someone on here can tell us some of the before and after stories. My vote is with ALPA....

 

[Tomct]

Thanks for all of the kind words guys/gals. I hope that this new mgmnt team does better than our original group. I personally hope that the majority of them are all replaced.....except for Charlie Tutt. He is truely a class act!

 

[Gobi Gred]

I've been at SkyWest 7 years and for the most part have been happy working there. I quess I'll just list some of the pros and cons of working there (my opinion of course)

Pros

1. Fly to some great locations. Monterey, Jackson Hole, Santa Barbara, Vancouver, West Yellowstone, just to name a few.
2. Great employee group. Most have a really good work ethic.
3. The best maintained CRJs and Brasilias in the country. Our MX is top notch.
4. The training was good in the RJ, the Brasilia was ok.
5. Schedules have been decent lately.
6. Good management team. (have you seen our stock price?)

Cons

1. At will employment status
2. No legal enforceable contract
3. Naive employee group. It seems the people who work the hardest and get paid the least, drink the most company Kool Aid.
4. Same pay for the 50 and 70 seater. Total crap.
5. Manual weight and balance manifests. Very 21st century. Not!

 

[Illinois]

I agree with most of the other opinions previously stated from the Skywest folks. Good and Bad. Management will try to do what is right, but the bottom line is just that. They aren't going to set out to screw anyone!

The only new thing to add is a suggestion for dealing with Crew Support. Be nice to them. They are pretty helpful when treated well.

 

[SBD-2U3]

Here is a Question? With two seperate certificates and ASA being Wholly(sp) owned. Whats to keep SkyWest from transfering airframes to the other certificate, then hiring ASA employees or anyone for that matter to fly such airframe? Its happened before.

 

[73belair]

Here is a Question? With two seperate certificates and ASA being Wholly(sp) owned. Whats to keep SkyWest from transfering airframes to the other certificate, then hiring ASA employees or anyone for that matter to fly such airframe? Its happened before.

How about answering this with a question. What would be the point? They already control both. And don't give me the ALPA excuse. Other than the 70 seat pay, the rules that Skywest operates under are what we are pretty much tring to get in our new contract. Its not that much to ask. And as we've been saying all the time, most of what we want will not cost the company anything, and in some cases will save them monty.

 

[701EV]

I've been at SkyWest 7 years and for the most part have been happy working there. I quess I'll just list some of the pros and cons of working there (my opinion of course)

Pros

1. Fly to some great locations. Monterey, Jackson Hole, Santa Barbara, Vancouver, West Yellowstone, just to name a few.
2. Great employee group. Most have a really good work ethic.
3. The best maintained CRJs and Brasilias in the country. Our MX is top notch.
4. The training was good in the RJ, the Brasilia was ok.
5. Schedules have been decent lately.
6. Good management team. (have you seen our stock price?)

Cons

1. At will employment status
2. No legal enforceable contract
3. Naive employee group. It seems the people who work the hardest and get paid the least, drink the most company Kool Aid.
4. Same pay for the 50 and 70 seater. Total crap.
5. Manual weight and balance manifests. Very 21st century. Not!

Do all of the Sky West Pilot's understand what " At Will Employment " means?

701EV

 

[Rogue5]

Well, if not, here you go:

"At will employment"
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

In most common law jurisdictions of the United States, contracts of employment without a definite term of service (for example, those employment contracts that are not in writing or part of a collective bargaining agreement) are held to be "at will" which means that the employer may dismiss the employee at any time for any reason. This is in contrast to most other common law jurisdictions (for example, Canada and England) where employment for an indefinite term can only be terminated on "reasonable notice" or for "cause". As such, in many cases, an American employee can be fired immediately at any time for any reason.

However, since this doctrine was developed in the late 18th century, several developments have occurred in American law, both at the state and federal level, which restricted the rights of employers to terminate at will. For example, courts have generally limited the rights of employers to terminate for bad faith reasons, such as employees reporting their employer's misconduct to appropriate authorities. Anti-discrimination laws also have restricted the rights of employers to fire persons from identifiable groups, such as women or African-Americans, or persons who are disabled, or pregnant women.

Moreover, although the doctrine of at-will employment has a lengthy history of precedent, recent research has shown that the original cases that held that at-will employment was allowable were based on an article that misstated previous cases on the subject. Although prior to the late 19th century case law on the subject is scarce, it appears what cases were decided followed the English practice of requiring reasonable notice.

Public policy issues
The doctrine is frequently supported by reference to anti-regulatory policy favoring the preference of business to be free from countermanding, particularly by judges or other legal bodies, when it terminates an employee. Exceptions to the doctrine have arisen because of the perception that society benefits from broad job security that comes only from requiring a bona fide reason for termination such as poor performance, misconduct, lack of work or lack of funds. Courts have cited the perception that termination of a long term employee for no reason is "harsh." Most union contracts, for example, require "for cause" termination, reflecting the value union members place on job security and to prevent intimidation against workers who choose to bargain collectively with their employers.

 

[miles otoole]

Do all of the Sky West Pilot's understand what " At Will Employment " means?

701EV

Yep, it's what 99.9% of the U.S. workforce population are hired under.

 

[~~~^~~~]

Here is a Question? With two seperate certificates and ASA being Wholly(sp) owned. Whats to keep SkyWest from transfering airframes to the other certificate, then hiring ASA employees or anyone for that matter to fly such airframe? Its happened before.

Here is an answer:
(1) ASA is contractually obligated (guaranteed) to operate no less than 80% of DCI flying from ATL until 2008.
(2) Airplanes and other assets being transferred to one wholly owned subsidiary to another wholly owned under the operational control of the parent company smacks of "operational integration." Mr. Atkin tells us that he is going to keep ASA and SkyWest separate and follow the criteria necessary to avoid integration.

I think SkyWest management has looked at the union situation carefully and concluded that it really is not a factor, cost wise. Certainly SkyWest would like to keep ALPA off the property and with the way ALPA has treated its membership at ASA and Comair, ALPA could lose a vote. However, ALPA would probably win a lawsuit over the issue and ALPA has beat Mesa at least twice, on CC Air and Freedom.

ALPA already wants the SkyWest pilots and there are no mainline interests to block ALPA from doing the right thing (this time) to protect its members. It is ironic, but ALPA's own actions at the 2000 Board of Director's meeting serve as a road map and justification to SkyWest's management to keep ALPA off the property today.

My crystal ball suggests that ALPA will be on the SkyWest property before it is all over. But to achieve this ALPA has to start behaving itself now:

(1) ALPA needs to resolve the representational issues brought forward in the RJDC litigation
(2) ALPA needs to pry mainline's predatory scope off the airplanes that mainline pilots have no interest in operating
(3) ASA's local MEC needs to do what they can to assist SkyWest's "best practices" survey and get rid of some of the bad apples in the G.O. (Its been done before)
(4) ALPA needs to resolve the representational issues brought forward in the RJDC litigation

By all accounts SkyWest & ASA are a major and should be represented accordingly - but to do this ALPA's representational structure is going to have to change - the fact that ASA and Skywest have turboprops in the fleet should not make a difference in the level of representation our pilots recieve , currently, it does.

I am hopeful that SkyWest pilots will take the time to fully understand what ALPA is about and not simply respond out of fear. Yes, there is the chance that either pilot group could use collective bargaining to start cutting better deals that the other group - ALPA would help prevent that. But ALPA has a terrible, horrible, shameful, and disgusting record on the issue of alter ego whipsaw. This terrible, horrible, shameful, and disgusting record is the result of representational problems within the union that have to be fixed.

It might just be time to require ALPA fix these problems - BEFORE - a vote is taken.

Other folks on this board have mentioned the Continental Express' ALPA vote. In my opinion they really screwed up. The Express Pilots almost had one list with Continental (meaning one MEC, one seniority list, career protection and career progression) but they voted in ALPA BEFORE they got what they needed. Once the vote was taken and ALPA was in, ALPA reverted back to the same old party line driven by the Delta MEC - that none of the regional airlines have any rights to any flying and thus get no scope and no protection from alter ego whip saw.

Jerry Atkin was smart and negotiated a good deal with Delta. We pilots need to be smart and negotiate a good deal with ALPA, before we vote and before we start working to recruit our SkyWest brothers.

~~~^~~~