In a landmark decision, pilots at US Airways have voted to switch representation, meaning that the Air Line Pilots Association(ALPA) will be removed from the negotiating seat and replaced by the new US Airline Pilots Association (USAPA), which will represent more than 5,200 pilots.
The revelation about the narrow victory for the independent union was revealed in a US Airways management notice to employees. It said that USAPA "won the election by a 2,723 to 2,254 vote".
The vote, which was due to be ratified on 18 April, means that USAPA will now represent US Airways pilots, both the US Airways "East" side and the former America West Airlines "West" side. USAPA will "inherit" the contracts currently in place for East and West pilots.
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A group of US Airways pilots formed the USAPA in the third quarter of 2007 and began collecting signatures to replace ALPA.
"The company's position throughout this process has been that we'll honour the union representation choices made by our employees," says US Airways. It says its next step is to reach out to USAPA for talks toward a single agreement for our pilots, "just as we've reached single agreements with unions representing our reservations, airport customer service, maintenance employees, engineers and dispatchers [and tentative agreements for fleet service employees and maintenance instructors]".
The company adds: "We want all of our represented employees to be working from the same contracts, with the same pay rates, work rules and benefits. It's important to have us thinking and working as one company, and this continues to be an important goal of our merger."
Source: Flight International
