Release #: Vol. 84, No. 8
October 01, 2015

Our Union: ALPA’s Individual Enterprise

By Capt. Tim Canoll, ALPA President

“It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject; the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual,” said Alexander Fleming, the pharmacologist who revolutionized medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic.

Our union’s success rests on the enterprise, thought, and engagement of each of our members. It’s true that collective action forms the heart of unionism, but every collective action begins with an individual act. As individual members, our pilots play an integral role in choosing our leaders, ratifying contracts, determining priorities, and advancing our union’s goals.

As you will read in our state of the industry article (see page 20), our industry and our profession are encountering profound challenges but also striking opportunities. This climate means only the most enterprising effort will move us forward. It is each ALPA pilot’s readiness to engage in the sometimes difficult but essential action that gives our union the ability to stand out in its numbers but also to stand up for what is right.

One such challenge is ensuring the safe integration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). ALPA recognizes the societal and economic benefits they offer, but UAS must meet the safety standards currently required of every other airspace user (see page 26). Each ALPA member has a responsibility to act by reporting potential UAS collisions. This is a call to action for every pilot, because each report provides critical data to make the airspace safer for all of us.

Similarly, our union’s pilots are converging on Capitol Hill and Parliament Hill—literally and through e-mails—in calls to action on critical safety, security, and professional issues that demand lawmakers’ attention and response. As Canadian pilots recently did in opposition to temporary foreign workers, now every U.S.-based member is needed to make a difference in four priority areas:

Improving the safety of shipping lithium batteries by air. New international policy that ALPA helped drive makes shipping lithium batteries by air safer, but more work must be done. Our union is asking Congress to give the Department of Transportation secretary the authority to issue lithium battery safety regulations and not be limited by international standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization.

Making certain the current pilot pay shortage is seen for what it is and that important safety improvements remain in place. While certain airlines have attempted to link improvements in pilot training and qualifications and fatigue prevention to a fabricated pilot shortage, the facts show that qualified pilots are not only applying to but are also staying at those airlines that have offered fair pay and benefits as well as a path for career advancement. ALPA is communicating to Congress that these safety regulations have significantly improved the safety of our industry and must remain in place.

Installing secondary cockpit barriers on all passenger airline cockpits. In 2001, Congress mandated that reinforced flight deck doors be installed on airliners, but the cockpit remains vulnerable when the door is opened during flight. The secondary cockpit barrier is a light-weight, low-cost, and high-impact layer of aviation security that would safeguard the cockpit during these times. ALPA believes that Congress must enact legislation to require that all passenger airliners be equipped.

Repealing the health-care excise tax. Across the United States, 40 percent of employers expect that at least one of their health-care plans will be affected during the first year that the Affordable Care Act excise tax is imposed beginning in 2018. The group health plan tax will drive up costs for U.S. employers and may prompt them to reduce employees’ benefits or to negotiate for plan reductions. ALPA is calling to repeal the tax.

ALPA fuses individual enterprise with collective engagement to the benefit of our members and all who depend on air transportation. Every time an ALPA member answers the call to act, our union moves another step forward in realizing the change that will revolutionize our industry and our profession.

This article is from the October 2015 issue of Air Line Pilot magazine, the Official Journal of the Air Line Pilots Association, International—a monthly publication for all ALPA members.

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