Even for new hires? I thought that probationary pilots were not afforded union protections.

You assume a mutual exclusivity between the two because?

My shop (ALPA) is highly involved in new hire training. You are covered by the contract from day 1.

SkyWest does have a training review board...

Really OO has a ton of programs, HIMS,WAC, pro standards, ect... only thing we lack is National support...

Yes, thanks ALPA

Probationary Pilots (typically new hires within 365 days from DOH) are afforded all the rights within the contract (they enjoy all work rules pay rates, etc, in the contract) except for one, they are unable to send a disciplinary grievance to arbitration. Meaning, they can grieve anything, but can not make their case before and arbitrator to keep their job.

The problem with many of these programs without a union is that there is a conflict of interest. When you have one entity financially supporting another entity which has different constituents and therefore sometimes divergent concerns, the one side supporting the other has all the leverage.

If you want national support, you need to have a successful representation vote overseen by the NMB. Then all these programs that pilot unions came up with (HIMS, ASAP, FOQA, LOSA, TRB, pro standards, known crewmember, CIRP, aeromedical, P4P, pilot assistance, etc) will be fully funded and defended with only your pilots’ interest in mind.

A lot of these seem to have been put in place at OO around the '07 drive in an effort to stop it from succeeding (I wasn't here then, so I could be wrong). Seems to just be a band-aid. Hopefully ALPA is successful this time around because I feel we are really missing out on a lot of great resources. A group of 5,000 pilots could really be influential on the national level when it comes to representing the regional side of the business.

Agreed. There is power in numbers.

I know plenty of people at smaller airlines have had experiences with ALPA (in their opinions) not being overly helpful etc... But I ask, how many of you were working for airlines with the numbers we are talking here? ALPA isn't stupid...they won't bite the hands that feed them, and 5000+ new hands is a lot of food and plenty of reason to do all they can to be a positive force for SKW and in turn the regionals.

That being said, after the pay package it seems all the folks who were pushing hard for a union have quietened. I for one would like to see ALPA get on board at SKW and think the positives outweigh the negatives, but it just seems like people who were for it have stopped caring so much about the drive. Suspect SAPA will be all the representation we have for the foreseeable future.

*Just an opinion before anyone starts coming after me with torches and pitchforks*

Not going to argue with that, but I would ask - why ALPA in particular? At the regional level, from what I've seen on other sections here, ALPA isn't universally loved and in fact a good argument can be made that ALPA is exactly the wrong group to represent any regional because it is a conflict of interest with their representation of mainline pilots.