Leaders of the pilots union at American Airlines voted Friday to endorse a tentative five-year labor contract with the carrier.
If approved by union members, the agreement would avert a strike at the nation’s second-largest carrier, a strike that would shut down one-fifth of the nation’s airline system and create havoc for tens of thousands of air travelers.
By a vote of 12 to 6, the 18-member board of the Allied Pilots Association sent the proposed agreement to the airline’s 9,300 pilots for a ratification vote, a process that’s expected to take about a month. Approval by the pilots would end a three-year dispute over pay and job security issues at the Ft. Worth-based airline.
“The issue has now been placed in the hands of the membership,” James Sovich, president of the pilots union, said after the board voted at the Arlington Park Hilton Hotel in Arlington Heights.
Most airline industry analysts and union leaders predict that the contract will be approved by the rank-and-file pilots. But approval is far from a sure thing.
After the board voted 10 to 8 to endorse a tentative agreement reached between negotiators for the union and the airline last year, the rank-and-file pilots in January soundly defeated the proposal.
Moreover, many within the union’s ranks, especially younger pilots, oppose the new agreement because it allows lower-paid pilots from American’s affiliate, American Eagle, to fly, 50- to 70-seat regional jetliners.
“A lot of pilots fear that allowing the Eagle pilots to fly regional jets will lead to a slow but steady erosion of pilot jobs at American,” said Michael Miro, a union spokesman.
In fact, one opponent of the tentative contract, Rob Held, an American first officer based in Chicago, already is predicting that union members will reject the new proposal.
“I don’t see any wholesale change in the `no’ votes over the `yes’ votes,” said Held, who is part of a group, the APA Pilots Defending the Profession, that has vowed to campaign against the tentative contract over the regional jet issue.
The issue has been a stumbling block throughout the contract negotiations. The pilots union had insisted that only American’s pilots be permitted to fly the small jets. The airline, on the other hand, argued that unless it can use lower-paid American Eagle pilots to fly the commuter jets, it cannot remain competitive with other commuter carriers.
In the current proposed agreement, reached last month, negotiators for the union finally relented somewhat on the regional jet issue. They did so, however, only after extracting a guarantee from American that any laid-off American pilot would be moved over to American Eagle to fly one of the small jets that American plans to buy for its commuter operation.
Union negotiators also won a better pay and benefits package than what the airline had originally offered. The new tentative accord calls for raises totaling more than 9 percent through the year 2001, options to buy 5.75 million shares of company stock at $10 below market value and elimination of the lower-scale pay for newly hired pilots.
The package would make American’s pilots, who already average $120,000 a year in wages, the best compensated pilots in the airline business.
Hardliners within the union, such as Held, are not appeased, however. They say they are prepared to sacrifice everything to keep jet jobs from being turned over to American Eagle pilots. They accuse the union’s negotiators of caving in.
If the rank-and-file pilots were to reject the current proposed contract, a 30-day cooling-off period would begin, after which Congress could impose a settlement if the pilots, in fact, do strike.
The pilots struck the carrier in February, but that lasted only a couple of minutes before President Clinton ordered the pilots back to work. Clinton then put in place a 60-day-cooling-off period and formed an emergency board to come up with a proposed settlement.
Because the pilots have little political clout on Capitol Hill, a strike would almost certainly invite congressional intervention, most airline industry analysts say.
And, if Congress were to step into the dispute, the pilots would have to live with the settlement that has been proposed by the emergency board President Clinton put in place. The provisions of that proposed settlement heavily favor the airline, not the pilots, analysts point out.
“There likely is no more to be gained by striking or undertaking additional negotiations, in part because (American Airlines) management isn’t going to budge and in part because Congress could well prevent us from striking,” Sovich said.
