ASADriver
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 1, 2004
- Posts
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Guest Editorial:
The Irrelevancy of ALPA in the 21st Century
by Captain Brian Wilson
by Captain Brian Wilson
I have been an ALPA union member for ten years, having joined with an open mind. During that ten years, I have formed my own opinions, after carefully observing ALPA in action. I soon realized the need to understand the industry better, so I researched the history of the airlines and the union. After much research and thought, it has become clear to me that ALPA, and indeed all AFL-CIO unions, are far more interested in acquiring and projecting political power than they are in representing the long-term best interests of their members.
ALPA, in their March 2006 magazine, tells us that the current state of the airline industry is due to management having their heads in the sand, post deregulation. There is some truth to that - management was poorly prepared to compete in a free market environment. Pre-deregulation, there were no incentives for management or unions to hold down costs. Both were able to simply pass along increases in operational costs, to the customers, via the Civil Aeronautics Board approval of higher ticket prices. AFL-CIO unions could therefore indirectly determine the value of their member's services. The windfall for the national offices of these unions was millions and millions of dollars in dues, which in turn, equated to political power.
Unfortunately, post-deregulation, it is no longer the case that unions can indirectly drive customer purchasing decisions, nor that operational costs no longer matter----since the customers now have free market choice.
Due to a complex fusion of different market forces----too complex to treat here----the customer today uses price as a primary driver of purchase decisions. That has created a downward pressure on ticket prices, while it also creates increasing pressure on airlines, to reduce their operational costs, just to remain competitive. The arena was ripe for new, well-financed low cost carriers, entering with lower labor and maintenance costs. With 30 years of voracious feeding at the pre-deregulation compensation trough, unions at legacy airlines suddenly found themselves priced out of the marketplace.
With that in mind, consider that AFL-CIO unions such as ALPA, continued to engage in pattern bargaining, without any regard for the ability of their companies to pass along those costs to the customers, as they did pre-deregulation. That practice has resulted in nearly every established airline losing money, due to excessive labor costs. In short, ALPA has refused to make the effort to understand current market trends and to embrace the new reality. Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. ALPA fits that post-deregulation description perfectly; it continues to live in a 1976 alternate reality, trying the same obsolete approaches that have no place in the 2006 reality. It is as much ALPA who has its head in the sand, as it is management.
ALPA National provides us with "financial experts" who inform our local leadership as to whether our companies can afford our contract demands and they were very good at it - as long as they don't have to look ahead more than one or two years. Yes, legacy airlines could afford those contracts in the heyday of the 1990s, when airline profits were at an all time high. But ALPA National failed to review industry history. Every business has cycles and a surface analysis of the business cycles in the airline industry, indicates the cycles are deepening; it's becoming harder for airlines to weather the down cycles. Today, there is far more competition, much more downward pressure on ticket prices, while labor costs, and direct operating costs (fuel and parts), are higher. The result is longer recessions in the industry, followed by shallower recoveries, before the next downturn. But ALPA seems oblivious to the elementary business principles learned in Management 101. ALPA behavior seems to prove the axiom, "The only thing you can learn from history is that no one learns from history." ALPA needs to get out from under its political myopia.
So what is a union to do to make itself more relevant in the 21st century?
First, power has to return to the rank and file. That requires a rejection of mandatory union membership, the elimination of mandatory dues payments, and the option for the rank and file to quit their unions. Such policy changes will make union leadership more responsive to front line members.
Second, Congress should pass legislation, which requires unions to reveal their financials, at both the national and the local level, of the bargaining unit. How can you exercise control over your representatives, when you have no idea what they are doing with your money? Today, union spending is a big secret to the rank and file members; there are no provisions in the ALPA constitution to hold union leadership accountable for how they spend member dues.
Third, the Railway Labor Act (RLA) and the policies of the National Mediation Board (NMB) desperately need overhauling.
We need to eliminate the power of the NMB to impose information blackouts during negotiations. Today, with NMB complicity, unions can keep secret the exact details of the provisions they are negotiating for. How can the rank and file know whether management or their union, has the more reasonable proposals on the table? The answer is it can't be done - the rank and file is totally dependent on the accuracy of union leadership statements, during the progress of negotiations. More often than not, union leadership filters such information to enhance their own political advantage.
It should be required that all activities related to negotiations, be totally transparent. Today, unions, in the guise of "representing" the rank and file, poll their members periodically during negotiations and then keep the results of that polling secret from those whom they deign to represent - it is quite simply an abuse of their leadership provisions to do so, and is a common example of union corruption in action.
The RLA must be modified to require mandatory arbitration, if there is no contract agreement after two years of negotiating. The contract issues would then be resolved within one year, by an independent arbitration panel, made up of industry experts drawn from labor, management, and financial institutions. Such mandatory arbitration would eliminate the need for unions to go on strike, so the revised law should outlaw strikes too. The airline industry is such an important part of the national infrastructure, that union activists should not be allowed to shut it down, or even to slow it down, as did the American Airline pilots in 1999.
ALPA, in their March 2006 magazine, tells us that the current state of the airline industry is due to management having their heads in the sand, post deregulation. There is some truth to that - management was poorly prepared to compete in a free market environment. Pre-deregulation, there were no incentives for management or unions to hold down costs. Both were able to simply pass along increases in operational costs, to the customers, via the Civil Aeronautics Board approval of higher ticket prices. AFL-CIO unions could therefore indirectly determine the value of their member's services. The windfall for the national offices of these unions was millions and millions of dollars in dues, which in turn, equated to political power.
Unfortunately, post-deregulation, it is no longer the case that unions can indirectly drive customer purchasing decisions, nor that operational costs no longer matter----since the customers now have free market choice.
Due to a complex fusion of different market forces----too complex to treat here----the customer today uses price as a primary driver of purchase decisions. That has created a downward pressure on ticket prices, while it also creates increasing pressure on airlines, to reduce their operational costs, just to remain competitive. The arena was ripe for new, well-financed low cost carriers, entering with lower labor and maintenance costs. With 30 years of voracious feeding at the pre-deregulation compensation trough, unions at legacy airlines suddenly found themselves priced out of the marketplace.
With that in mind, consider that AFL-CIO unions such as ALPA, continued to engage in pattern bargaining, without any regard for the ability of their companies to pass along those costs to the customers, as they did pre-deregulation. That practice has resulted in nearly every established airline losing money, due to excessive labor costs. In short, ALPA has refused to make the effort to understand current market trends and to embrace the new reality. Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. ALPA fits that post-deregulation description perfectly; it continues to live in a 1976 alternate reality, trying the same obsolete approaches that have no place in the 2006 reality. It is as much ALPA who has its head in the sand, as it is management.
ALPA National provides us with "financial experts" who inform our local leadership as to whether our companies can afford our contract demands and they were very good at it - as long as they don't have to look ahead more than one or two years. Yes, legacy airlines could afford those contracts in the heyday of the 1990s, when airline profits were at an all time high. But ALPA National failed to review industry history. Every business has cycles and a surface analysis of the business cycles in the airline industry, indicates the cycles are deepening; it's becoming harder for airlines to weather the down cycles. Today, there is far more competition, much more downward pressure on ticket prices, while labor costs, and direct operating costs (fuel and parts), are higher. The result is longer recessions in the industry, followed by shallower recoveries, before the next downturn. But ALPA seems oblivious to the elementary business principles learned in Management 101. ALPA behavior seems to prove the axiom, "The only thing you can learn from history is that no one learns from history." ALPA needs to get out from under its political myopia.
So what is a union to do to make itself more relevant in the 21st century?
First, power has to return to the rank and file. That requires a rejection of mandatory union membership, the elimination of mandatory dues payments, and the option for the rank and file to quit their unions. Such policy changes will make union leadership more responsive to front line members.
Second, Congress should pass legislation, which requires unions to reveal their financials, at both the national and the local level, of the bargaining unit. How can you exercise control over your representatives, when you have no idea what they are doing with your money? Today, union spending is a big secret to the rank and file members; there are no provisions in the ALPA constitution to hold union leadership accountable for how they spend member dues.
Third, the Railway Labor Act (RLA) and the policies of the National Mediation Board (NMB) desperately need overhauling.
We need to eliminate the power of the NMB to impose information blackouts during negotiations. Today, with NMB complicity, unions can keep secret the exact details of the provisions they are negotiating for. How can the rank and file know whether management or their union, has the more reasonable proposals on the table? The answer is it can't be done - the rank and file is totally dependent on the accuracy of union leadership statements, during the progress of negotiations. More often than not, union leadership filters such information to enhance their own political advantage.
It should be required that all activities related to negotiations, be totally transparent. Today, unions, in the guise of "representing" the rank and file, poll their members periodically during negotiations and then keep the results of that polling secret from those whom they deign to represent - it is quite simply an abuse of their leadership provisions to do so, and is a common example of union corruption in action.
The RLA must be modified to require mandatory arbitration, if there is no contract agreement after two years of negotiating. The contract issues would then be resolved within one year, by an independent arbitration panel, made up of industry experts drawn from labor, management, and financial institutions. Such mandatory arbitration would eliminate the need for unions to go on strike, so the revised law should outlaw strikes too. The airline industry is such an important part of the national infrastructure, that union activists should not be allowed to shut it down, or even to slow it down, as did the American Airline pilots in 1999.
