ALPA Strike Support
How would you support your family while walking the picket line? As an ALPA member, your 53,000 union brothers and sisters monetarily assess themselves and pay you strike benefits so you can pay your mortgage, your car loan, your grocery bills, your family's most basic needs. ALPA members make this payment possible because they know you will back them during a strike, if and when that time arrives. Can your independent union do that?
With ALPA, you have a built-in infrastructure of a national strike committee and local strike committees, stocked with pilot volunteers and backed by ALPA staff and an $80 million war chest, to handle every aspect of a strike. This support provides you with a paycheck of $1,400 every month you're on strike for longer than 35 days. This check comes to you and your family just like your regular paycheck for as long as it takes to sign a better contract.
This team would immediately activate Strike Central at your MEC and roll out local strike centers at each of your airline's domiciles. Armed with your MEC strike handbook, they would keep you and your families in the loop to build unity and strength within your ranks and with your international union.
With ALPA, if your average pilot income is less than $75,000, the waiting period can be reduced or waived altogether, providing the immediate financial support you and your family desperately need during a strike. ALPA also supports apprentice members and nonmembers who help during picketing events, participate in strike activities, or perform other such duties.
ALPA-Provided Services
- Organizing Pilot-to-Pilot programs to disseminate accurate information between you and your MEC, control rumors, build trust with your pilot leaders, and increase your participation in securing the best contract.
- Implementing Family Awareness programs designed to get your family involved in union issues, establishing two-way communication to build unity and support between your leadership and those who matter to you most.
- Providing the office infrastructure with needed tools and technology such as sophisticated telephone systems at each local strike center -- complete with a staffed Strike Hotline for pilots' questions and high-tech computer programs used to track individual pilots, flight crews, and flights.
- Guiding pilots through the legalities of a strike, including the do's and don'ts regarding actions against the company and its management.
- Creating signs and leaflets to explain the issues for the public's education.
- Advising your Strike Committee on permit requirements and procedures/pilot demeanor during the actual strike.
- Putting pressure on your management through our emphasis on political support and access to key players on Capitol Hill, using unmatched political clout with the AFL-CIO to garner tremendous support and solidarity from workers and unions within and outside the transportation industry.
- Contacting the news media to counter inaccuracies, put additional pressure on your management, and build your credibility with the traveling public.
- Training pilot spokespersons, ensuring that a consistent and clear message reaches your target audiences during the strike
Each Day Is A Different Day
"We made it very clear to our pilots that our focus was never to strike the airline, but we felt our requests were in line with what the airline could produce. And if a work stoppage was required, we could take them there."
- Capt. J.C. Lawson (Comair, during the strike of '01)
