flyingmusicianlax

Story here

As a member of two different unions myself, I support the pilots' quest to achiever work rules parity with their counterparts at Alaska's competitors. It's a real shame that AS management has taken three years of bargaining to come to a sensible solution. Hopefully management will come to their senses so we don't all get screwed.

Should a strike happen, it will likely be at least a month from now. Keep your eyes on this space so you don't get caught by surprise.

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cragAK

A month as in sometime in May or at the end of May?

I have a JFK-PDX-ANC in ~25 days I'd hate to have to work around.

Pay the pilots!

PDXPremier

Authorizing a strike and actually striking are two very different things--a lot has to happen before a strike is even allowed to happen and it's worth noting that the last actual airline strike was in the 1980s.

olouie

Right in time for summer travel boom. Its going to be a wild summer.

NoLaGent

It’ll be late Summer, if it happens at all. Voting ends May 25th, then there’s the possibility of Biden doing a 30 day review, which is then followed by a 30 day “cooling off” period, so we’re really looking at closer to August.

flyingmusicianlax

100% correct. Which is why we're looking at a timeline of a month or greater in the event a strike happens.

I don't know how much history is a guide here, but I am pretty sure AS management has no incentive to let it get to the point where the pilots' actually do go through with it. You just never know, though.

One of the unions I am a part of has tens of thousands of members who are employed by the largest employer in the state. We had a strike authorization vote and subsequently voted to have a limited two day strike last fall in protest of the employer's willful ignorance of over a dozen complaints filed with the NLRB. If we had gone on strike - even for two days - the entire system would have had to shut down. Nevertheless, management waited until 4 am the day we were to go on strike to finally come to a tentative agreement. These things very often come down to the line.

Point is: be prepared, folks. Hopefully they'll work something out. But the fact that AS management has been delaying for three years and things have only gotten worse is not a good sign. You just never know whether the people in charge are willing to cut off their nose to spite their face.

allset2travel

Thank you for the heads-up about a potential strike. I was about to pull the trigger to book.

flyingmusicianlax

I don't think I'd assume that possibility is a foregone conclusion.

Xrayman

Already having a hard time being able to get to 75K this year. A prolonged strike would likely relegate me to only 65-70k EQM this year.

NoLaGent

I haven’t, which is why I said it’s a possibility. We’re still looking towards July at the earliest, that’s just a fact.

Tack

I made this same post on 4/23 , but I was wondering why the MEC didn’t authorize a strike vote sooner. It doesn’t mean that ALPA will strike or even be allowed a work stoppage, but it does show AS management the membership numbers in support of the MEC negotiating committee. It also turns up heat on mediation and usually helps speed up the negotiations. Based on the AS internal communication to employees after the 1st Quarter earnings report, I can’t see this dragging on much longer and not hurting AS in their quest to get new hire drivers on the line. (That said, this current management team is falling right in line with AS's anti-union history, so I could be waaaay off here.) Their pilot training numbers show the schoolhouse full for the next few classes. But if AS keeps screwing around, you’ll see students pull the loud handles for other carriers.

Eastbay1K

I'll cut some slack here in that for two of the years, it was wise not to commit to long term of anything. If I were say, a Vegas gambler (note the small "g") I'd say better than even odds of no strike.

NickHH

Spirit pilots struck in 2010. It lasted 5 days before management capitulated.

sltlyamusd

Clinton used the Railway Labor Act to intervene after the APA called for a pilot strike at AA in 1997 and created a Presidential Emergency Board to reach an agreement.

https://clinton.presidentiallibrarie...ems/show/44100

PDXPremier

Based on the reports of people earning thousands of EQMs for cancelled flights, it would likely be easier to earn 75K if there were a strike. I would have no problem booking an AS flight now or anytime in the future.