Lewbronski

Alaska Airlines pilots vote 'overwhelmingly' to authorize strike if three-year-long contract talks continue to fail

Note: this doesn’t mean Alaska pilots are going on strike anytime soon. They have only been in mediation since Novemberish. They have at least a couple of years to go until the NMB might consider releasing them to a cooling-off period. However, it IS a very good move at this stage of the game in that it communicates to Alaska management that the Alaska pilot group is extremely unified around the idea of going on strike when the time comes.

Tenacvols

Read that Alaska’s management requested meetings with the pilot groups negotiating committee after the results of vote…

Lewbronski

That wouldn't surprise me assuming it's true. The leverage timer started for the Alaska pilots when they entered mediation. In a sense, they just accelerated the timer with the results of their strike authorization vote.

Alaska management knows that it becomes realistic that the NMB may release the Alaska pilots into a strike about two-ish years from now ("The time during which disputes between employees and commuter rail companies are in mediation must be compared with all other carrier disputes mediated before the Board. In this case, the Board has offered evidence that the time in mediation falls within the range of average times in other mediation cases." [888 F.2d 1428]) Two years from now a NMB appointed by a Democratic administration (more friendly to labor) will still be seated. If Alaska management allows their mediated negotiations to continue without resolution, they are aware that the leverage of the pilots grows while their own leverage shrinks. Ultimately, they run the risk that the pilots are allowed to strike a couple of years from now, which could become an existential crisis for the company. In the midst of a historic pilot shortage, where will the replacement pilots come from? If I were Alaska management, I'd be keen to end these negotiations sooner rather than later while I still had some leverage.

FliesInSoup

What pilot in their right mind would consider applying to Alaska given the 99% strike vote?

Psycho18th

Maybe someone who assumes it means they’ll get a good contract because of the unity of their pilots.

flysnoopy76

This is inaccurate, negotiating was scheduled for this week prior to today’s results.

Tenacvols

Not an Alaska pilot, just going off the Alaska MEC Chairman’s message that I read online….

Noconcessions

The industry needs a "Real" strike. Hundreds of planes grounded and massive loss of revenue. CEOs having to answer questions and getting fired. Maybe AK will lead.

rickair7777

I doubt CEO's will let it go that far, the day-one losses would amount to 100's of millions $ and the damage to the brand would reverberate for many months, at least. I'd expect any such CEO to be quickly canned, unless he truly has the BoD in his hip pocket. A CEO might try to take it to the brink to maximize negotiating position and thus long-term savings, but a slight miscalculation could be catastrophic (for the boss's career).

And you can't get an an AIP and then a TA approved in a day or two either, so any major today would be crippled for many days if not weeks. I don't see many pilots crossing the line in this era, and it's not like there's a pool of scab wannabes waiting in the wings anywhere either. Assuming you could even train them fast enough... they'd have had to start hiring specifically for SCABS a year or two ago, but they can't even hire enough honest pilots these days

rickair7777

The discussions were scheduled before the results of the vote were known.

VP flight ops got canned recently, and the COO is probably hanging by a thread (diversity politics may have saved her). A couple other managers went as well. The CEO probably waded in himself to appease the board, who cannot be happy with overall performance this year. CEO presumably bought himself some time by sacrificing a few goats, but he probably needs to achieve some new results fairly soon. I'm guessing he needs less operational disruption (which in large part hinges on hiring and retaining pilots, and also on pilots being in a good mood and maybe willing to step up to help when the op goes south). Also there's a lot of bad press, and a lot of that revolves around pilots, shortage, and labor actions.

Those two things probably influence the board a fair bit. The CBA is at the heart of it all.