The Allied Pilots Association, which represents flight crew at American Airlines, has slammed the termination of two high-ranking union leaders at Berkshire Hathaway’s private jet company, NetJets, as an ‘egregious’ and ‘unwarranted’ act of intimidation.
Over the last few years, the Warren Buffet-controlled private jet company has had a pretty uneasy relationship with the NetJets Association of Shared Aircraft Pilots (NJASAP), and both sides have filed a number of lawsuits against each other in an ongoing war of words.
Things came to a head earlier this month, however, when NetJets terminated the Vice President and Strategy Group chair of the union which represents around 3,400 NetJets pilots.
The termination of the two pilots – a 23-year NetJets captain with an “unblemished professional record” and an 18-year Captain who is also described as having a “spotless” record – came just months after NetJets agreed to $1.6 billion in contract improvements during mid-term bargaining.
According to the NJASAP, NetJets made moves to terminate the two pilots in late May when the pair were called in to review board meetings to interrogate them about union activities, including informational picketing events and demonstrations, during the mid-term bargaining.
“These union leaders were not terminated because of anything they did as NetJets pilots, but because of their role in supporting contract negotiations,” slammed NJASAP President Captain Pedro Leroux on Monday.
“These union officials were aggressively interrogated about lawful, protected activities,” Captain Leroux continued. “In a word, NJASAP members are outraged by the company’s egregious conduct.”
In June, NetJets filed a ‘surprise’ lawsuit against the NJASAP accusing the union of defaming the airline after it raised concerns about safety, maintenance and pilot training which date back almost a year.
The lawsuit came less than 12 months after the NJASAP sued NetJets over allegations that senior managers had interfered with the union’s ability to communicate information about ongoing contract negotiations.
NetJets works under a shared ownership basis, or as it describes it, ‘fractional’ ownership, in which customers effectively become ‘owners’ to take advantage of NetJets’ private jet services.
Much of the dispute between NetJets and the NJASAP centers around a public website that is run by the union and used to raise safety concerns and share their point of view in contract negotiations.
Despite the recent terminations and lawsuits, Leroux says he still wants to reset labor relations with NetJets.
“NetJets must replace adversarial tactics with a sustained, good faith commitment to resolving our differences,” Leroux commented. “Otherwise, the parties will continue to waste time, money and energy on managing a feud rather than fully capitalizing on the growth potential in our industry sector.”
The essence of labor unions is legalized extortion. If these guys had genuine safety concerns, they could have raised them to the FAA if they felt that NetJets wasn’t listening to them. Looks like that didn’t happen. Instead, they opted to try to publicly smear the company via a website. The rights extending to unions does not go quite so far as allowing defamation/libel as a negotiating tactic., as the fired union reps learned. The Union boss claiming that they were “lawful, protected activities” does not make them so. I’m pretty sure Berkshire’s lawyers analyzed this before the firing decision came down. Also, good luck to those sacked when it comes to getting hired by another carrier after pulling these kinds of stunts. They’d better have saved their ill-gotten union gains (aka wealth transferred from the paychecks of other pilots).
The essence of labor unions is collective bargaining you fucking scab. Every one of you anti-union douchebags rides the backs of organized labor. Do a little research about what worker’s rights we like before the unions.