The leaders of the United Air Line units of the Air Line Pilots Association announced yesterday their intent to call a strike vote among the combined pilots of United and Continental Airlines.  The two airlines merged last year to create the world's largest airline. 

The pilots of Untied and Continental are dissatisfied with the slow pace of negotiations for a combined agreement.  For United pilots, those negotiations also reflect their effort to obtain a new agreement over the 2005 bankruptcy concessionary agreement the pilots entered during United's lengthy bankruptcy. (United spent over two years in bankruptcy--far longer than any other airline.)

The two pilot groups still maintain separate leadership for now; but the elected leaders for both Continental and United joined in seeking authorization to call a strike vote.  Said Capt. Jay Pierce of the Continental ALPA Master Executive Council:

"There has been more than ample time to reach agreement on a new contract. While a strike is never the pilots' preference for the path to reaching agreement, we are more than willing to use every tool at our disposal, including exercising our ultimate leverage and legally withholding our services. ... With the agonizingly slow pace of negotiations, management has left us with little option."

The pilot groups asked the National Mediation Board last week to release them from mediation, which would initiate a final 30-day "cooling off" period for a last-minute settlement before the pilots could go on strike.  No date is currently set for the strike vote.

The NMB announced this week a proposed rule in runoff elections and solicited comments over the next 60 days about the proposed rule.  The Board proposed to amend its election rules for runoffs elections to conform to the requirements of the recent FAA Reauthorization Bill that mandate a change in NMB runoff rules. 

Previously, the NMB would combine the votes that all labor organizations on a ballot received to determine if a majority of employees voted for representation. It would then certify the union getting the most votes among those organizations. The US Supreme Court approved of that NMB policy 75 years ago in its Virginian Railway decision.

In 2010, the NMB changed its election rule to adopt a new ballot form. Iinstead of the old form that only listed the unions running in the election, the ballot now lists the unions and a "no union" line.  The Board also changed its rule for how many votes were need for a union to win the election. Previously, the NMB required that a union get 50 1% votes of all employees in the bargaining unit (even those who didn't vote).  The NMB's new rule only required a union to get a majority of votes cast in the election.

The FAA Reauthorization Bill forbade the NMB from combining the votes of all labor organizations to determine a majority.  Instead, it mandated that the NMB hold a runoff election between the two highest vote getters--even if one was the "no union" line. The NPRM would implement this rule change.

The FAA Bill also changed the "showing of inter interest" requirement for employees to get a union elections from the 35% of employees asking for an election under the old rule, to requireing 50% of employees to ask for an election.  The NMB requested comments on whether this 50% requirement should apply in the situation where two companies merge and separate employee groups may be combined. Currently, when two employee groups combine, the NMB will hold an election if a union represents a group that makes up at least 35% of the total group.

The comment period runs until July 16, 2012.