Airtran pilots overwhelmingly voted to authorize their leadership to call a strike yesterday.  More than 96% of eligible voters made that decision and there is a picket line at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, WI where Airtran is holding its annual shareholder’s meeting. 

The pilot contract became amendable in 2005 and pilots have been negotiating since then for better pay, healthcare and other things.  Their goal is to be paid on par with Alaska Airlines’ pilots, an airline of similar size. 

While a strike would still be many months away, this is the last thing Airtran needs and, frankly, I’m a bit suprised to learn that negotiations have been going on that long.  Which leads me to the belief that we have a broken union system among airlines under the Railway Labor Act.  I don’t believe negotiations should simply take a few months and I do believe they could take as much as 2 years.  However, 5 years is too long. 

Contracts don’t “expire” for airline unions.  They become amendable after a certain time.  That means that airlines cannot abritrarily impose terms on unions after a contract expires.  That does strike me as fair.  However, it also means that airline management has a vested interest in drawing out these talks as long as possible.  A dollar paid tomorrow costs less than a dollar paid today. 

Both parties should have a economic incentive to see these negotiations completed in a reasonable time limit.  I do think that 2 years is enough and I wonder if we should amend the law that requires binding arbitration after 2 years of negotiations.  Mandate that arbitration must deliver a decision within 6 months after that 2 year limit.   Why?  Because neither the airlines nor the unions really want binding arbitration.  It results in contracts that no one is particularly happy about and that means an incentive to engage in meaninful negotiations in a timely manner. 

Airlines should already have an incentive to see these negotiations concluded.   When these negotiations last for that long, both sides become “hardened” into their positions and that only raises risk for the airline.  Once that airlines’ risk goes up, it often affects its stock price.  Strikes affect revenues in a bad way and bad labor relations affect revenues in a bad way. 

However, when it comes to pilots, it is time to re-orient these contracts away from total compensation.  It would be better to find ways to encourage new hiring and better quality of life over a numerically higher compensation rate.  If an airline can grow and hire, that only means success for everyone involved.  Achieving better quality of life in these jobs would lead to happier, more productive pilots who want to work instead of engage in conflicts over compensation.  Happier, more productive pilots mean a better chance for success as an airline.

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