These are two separate issues. Like I said, you may make a case against why you feel a merger wouldn't be good for the pilots. But I'm talking about our ceo's penchant for making his employees work against each other. He touted the synergy benefits of an ASA/xjt merger that would only have compounded with a merger of all three. If he wanted all of us on the same team pulling together in one direction, there was nothing that Skywest pilots, ASA pilots, xjt pilots, or any front line employee could've done about it. So the fact that you may not feel it's a good long term viability solution doesn't mean that our CEO doesn't bow to the whipsaw culture. You get what I'm saying now?

Leverage? Yeah we may not have much but the fact that we have a contract does give us some leverage. For example, there was no discussion about EFBs possibly being used to reflow. Conversation didn't even come up, let alone the MEC deliberating it. The reason why? Leverage from our contract that doesn't allow them to even consider it. Also, after the TA vote, management told us it was a mistake to ask for concessions and so they are no longer asking for them. And now they have actually improved the xjt contract (slightly) and we are working together to negotiate a cost neutral PBS. That is just a couple of small examples of leverage solely from being union. So there is leverage to be had. Is it as much as we would like? No, of course not. There will always be outside uncontrolled influences that may impede that. And that goes for mainline pilots as well.


Pilot unions dont make business decisions or run the company. Short of a prolonged strike, they have nothing to do with management's ultimate decision to shutter a company or shrink it. If you think that pilot unions have that much power, then I don't know what to tell you.

They purchased 4 airlines, 3 of which have been money losers. They also have been doing stock buy-backs(for many years), which is considered by most to be a very poor use of corporate capital.

I have no idea why skywest pilots are so anti union.


Unions have done some wonderful thing for many pilot groups.

We're about to have EFBs given to us with mandatory notification and we have ZERO say about it. Is that cool to you guys?

The company has only played nice in the past because it was a significantly smaller company in a very good financial place.

Now it's a giant company that owns other companies and is only worried about the bottom line.

We as pilots need protection from the company, but also more importantly, from other workers within skywest. We need the union so the company can blame the union when we get a new pay package and other workers don't. When we get better insurance than other workers, or better 401k matching, or better FMLA, or better vacation accrual, or better moving expense reimbursement.

You name it, and it could be improved and the company just has to "blame the union" to other workers and that's fine. Right now we can't really get anything much better than other skywest employees.

Not saying we are better than other employees or more important, but giving rampers the same 401k match as pilots is a little crazy. Or in this case, giving us the same as them because our 401k match is nothing great.




Anyway, I am absolutely pro union, as to whether or not it would improve things, y'all can discuss. Until the senior guys start getting more and more screwed a union drive wouldn't work here, but that might be closer than we think

There are a lot of Skywest pilots that would go for a union, but when they get on here and see post by people like nevets bashing us for riding their coattails. Post like that help nothing or no one. There is a lot of Skywest work rules that xjt would love to have, and there could be improvements.

No notification. Thats all some out of control rumor...

I worked for an ALPA carrier and it was fine. Before ALPA, not fine. It seems like everyone here is completely fear mongering over having representation. It's really not a bad deal.

This argument holds no water. There is 3500 pilots at SKYW and the senior pilots make up less than 10% of that, with say 60% of that 350 being on the no ALPA side of the fence. Insignificant.

Notification is off the table for now, but it was absolutely wanted by the company. The original proposal had it in there and SAPA removed it after feedback from the pilots. A serious question, where did you get that it was just a rumor?? Do you read the SAPA website? They wanted notification included on the EFB and the reflow policy implemented.

You do realize that he was talking about how we are tied with pay and benefits to the other employee groups right? If we want a higher per diem, we can't get it because the flight attendants would get it. If we want higher 401k, we can't get it because all employees would get the higher 401k. If we had a union, we could ask for this and be separated from the other employee groups. Pilots don't care what other workgroups get, but we are tied to them for everything we ask for.

Would love to know the numbers of those participating in the 401k that are not pilots.