As somebody who worked at Skywest for many years and is now at an ALPA carrier (Delta) I can tell you the difference is night and day. We get much more respect from managment to scheduling at Delta than I could have ever dreamed of at Skywest. One mans experience for what it is worth.

 

Jack...could not have sait it better myself. I too am at Delta now and the difference is quite clear. Again is ALPA and the answer? Maybe...maybe not. Fact is, it's better than what SkyWest has now which like I said in a previous post is NOTHING.
What really got me when I was at SW was the fact that managmement kept talking about "Good things to come if we stay non-union".....Two years later, they are still saying the same thing. I would like to see those "good things to come" that they promised for all my SkyWest buddies.

 

They said good things to come in the last union drive but we have not seen any of the changes be good. Everything that has changed has been a reduction to our overall compensation and qol. And all of the changes have been immediate and with no discussion with the people it effects. The main advantage to the union, in my mind, is the locked in contract.

I used to think that not having a contract was great; we didn't have to waitfor the contract to end to get pay raises, but now I see the flip side. We jet got espp and health insurance canned out of the blue.

So now......yes to Alpa,

 

I have some real issues with alpa's track record in regional-land, but with great difficulty I finally decided to vote yes on the last drive, on the assumption that it might be good for the industry as a whole.

It would be easier to vote yes next time, if there is a next time.

Actually I almost suspect that the company wants a pilot union now...they can allow alpa to deal with the ASA/SKW integration, play off the pilots against the other employees (we have to cut YOUR compensation because of the greedy pilots union...) and avoid having to make hard decisions.

They may see this as likely or inevitable, and are reducing compensation as much as practical in advance of a contract.

 

Did SKW management promise some sugar to encourage a "no" vote?

 

I agree and I am also considering voting YES in the next drive but there is one thing the company has done right........

Skywest is (contrary to what I believed) way overstaffed and no furloughs yet........ The company has not tried to save money by letting people go (yet).

I know a few guys that have an average of 15 hours / month of flying while on reserve for the last two years.....I believe there are at least 100 pilots averaging that amount of hours while getting paid for 75 hours.

Skywest could easely furlough 100 to 200 pilots and keep the operation as it is. We have bases with 50% or more on reserve.
I think they are trying to find any way possible to deal with what "no furloughs" cost the company and that is why we are seeing these negative changes.
When the company mentioned "good things to come" after the last drive the crisis was not here and noone knew how bad the market would be today.
So yes, we have had negative changes but these changes are also related to bad times for the company, no growth for the last year and an uncertain operational future. It is not like we can get better QOL no matter how the company is doing or how the future looks.

Maybe it would have cost us 200 furloughs to keep everything we had intact like they have done at other places. I do not know if that would have been the right road...........

Some would say "but we have almost a billion in cash"......

The company cannot just use the capital to cover "no changes" for all in bad times.

That money is there as reserve for and if United closes the doors (we do over 1000 departures a day for them and would go under without that money), for growth if possible and for high cost events like having to overhaul a lot of engines in a short period of time.

During 2007-2008 Skywest hired tons of pilot for future expansion that never came. To keep all these pilots cost a lot more money that what the company counted with. Yes we have had and have different programs to ease that but it has not been enough.

So while I am not happy with the changes and would probably vote yes in the next drive I am trying to see both sides of the picture.

 

That's not a valid comparison, DAL and SKW are not in the same league.

I have worked at alpa and non-alpa regionals, and non-alpa has been far better hands-down. That is not necessarily alpa's fault but they have certainly not done much to correct the situation so far. We'll see how things go with PCL and Colgan.

 

On the contrary, I think we saw the expansion...we were all working our butts off in 2006-2007. Things slowed down in 2008 and flying was reduced...then we had extra pilots.

 

Yes you are right. That was what I actually ment. During 2007 and early 2008 we hired pilots to cover expansion beyond 2008 and that expansion never came

 

We are still understaffed on the Brasilia for us FOs with hardly any reserve coverage during the busy months. At least thats what I get from CS when I try to drop a trip.