More seats more money

• General News
• 7th January 2013

These days, when you set out to achieve an improvement in working conditions in the airline industry you have to be prepared for the long haul.

For more than a year we had been trying to get Skywest to agree to a higher pay classification for pilots who fly their new 75 seater ATR planes. The Fokkers they normally pilot are only 55 seaters.

We’d been back and forth in meetings with the company and eventually ended up arguing the point in the industrial courts.

At this first Fair Work Australia hearing Skywest successfully argued that, technically, we hadn’t followed the disputes procedure.

Not to be deterred we went back and dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s. etc.
Then we met again, several times, with Skywest’s CEO and HR legal eagle but still no resolution.
We decided to give it one last shot and meet them for the last time. But prior to this meeting we briefed our lawyers Slater & Gordon to prepare to go to court and argue our case.

Throughout the last-ditch meeting with the company we appeared to be getting nowhere and told their managers our lawyers were now involved and we’d see them back in court.

This was the breaking point. Out of the blue the Skywest HR bod asked me if we would consider a 2% increase for those flying the 75 seaters.

I said, if that was an official offer and they put it in writing, we would take it back to our members.
After getting the OK from their Board, which to their credit they did quite quickly, we got the 2% offer in writing.

The offer was put to the pilots who voted overwhelmingly in favour. Phew!!!!

Skywest also agreed to backpay the increase, which was. A significant win in a tough and a tight industry with very fine margins. Well done to the Skywest Air Pilots Association.