In response to regional airlines putting increasing pressure on labor to drive down costs in the hotly competitive fee-for-departure market, Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) President Duane Woerth created a Fee-for-Departure Task Force last January, joining pilots from many code-sharing partnerships. Furthering the trend, Delta Connection pilots joined forces at a landmark meeting that could spread across other code-sharing families of airlines.

Task Force Chair Cory Tennen told Regional Aviation News that the purpose of ALPA's Fee-for-Departure Task Force is not only for pilots to share information about management positions and tactics but to hammer out a minimum standard for pay and work rules. It is also examining the fee-for-departure carriers and their labor issues.

"We want to determine a methodology to ensure the contract defines a minimum standard and ensure future contracts continue to build upward," said Tennen, who is also vice chair of Comair's Master Executive Council and its negotiating chair. "Pilots are worth some amount of money and quality of life. We must determine how each airline can work that out."

ALPA indicated that its members at different regionals have been "whipsawed" by the various managements and the new group is designed to minimize the impact of that. Captain J. C. Lawson, chairman of Comair's Master Executive Council and an executive vice president of ALPA, indicated that managements at the four Delta carriers often play one pilot group off another to achieve concessions in exchange for additional aircraft or flying from the major-carrier partners. "It is a classic tactic to use the threat of fleet deployments and flying to divide and conquer, at the expense of our livelihoods," he said.

"Labor is not the only cost in running an airline," Tennen added. "This should not be about competition between pilots. It's about competition between airlines. Pilots are a small percentage of operating costs but management would disagree. There is maintenance, fuel, buildings, reservations, aircraft, ticketing - a lot of fixed costs that are just accepted as the cost of doing business. Instead of addressing them, they go after the pilots as a means of ensuring profitability."

Tennen does not see the groups evolving into a single collective bargaining unit to negotiate with the managements of their family of carriers. Each pilot corps will continue to negotiate with their own management, but they would do so knowing what is, or has, happened at the sister companies within the code-sharing family. "We want them to coordinate what is being done to maintain upward progress in contracts and quality of life," he said, adding he hopes to see the Delta Connection pilot group become the model for the industry. "That has happened in the past, such as ASA and Comair pilots sharing information, but the task force is more."

Pilot leaders from Atlantic Southeast, Mesa (MESA) and Comair (DALRQ PK), all represented by ALPA, extended their group to Chautauqua pilots who are represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 747. Chautauqua is a wholly owned subsidiary of Republic Airways Holdings, while ASA is a wholly owned subsidiary of SkyWest (SKYW) and Comair is a subsidiary of Delta. Comair pilots recently achieved an agreement contingent on management forging a similar agreement with flight attendants. ASA has been in negotiations with its former owner, Delta, for four years, although it has only been owned by SkyWest since last September. Formation of the Delta Connection group comes on the heels of a strike authorization by ASA pilots. (RAN, July 17, p.8) The Delta Connection pilot group agreement does not cover SkyWest, which has its own in-house pilot union - the SkyWest Airlines Pilots Association (SAPA). ALPA has made several unsuccessful runs at recruiting SAPA pilots.

After meeting in Cincinnati, pilot leaders at the Delta Connection carriers said this was the first time they've joined together to develop strategies, provide mutual support and discuss "shared goals for promoting the collective quality of their jobs and trade unionism among the respective pilot groups."

Captain Lawson pointed out that increasing labor pressure comes at a time when most of their airlines were posting profits.