Amerijet Pilots and Flight Engineers on Strike
Despite a five year attempt to secure a contract, the pilots and flight engineers of Amerijet International (Amerijet) have now gone on strike effective at 12:01 am on Thursday morning. The crewmembers of the Ft. Lauderdale-based all-cargo airline have been attempting to negotiate for a first contract since early in 2004. Over 5-1/2 years, they have faced management-based attempts to decertify the union, unilateral wage and benefit cuts and increased pressure to remove the legally elected union from the property.
Earlier in the week, the NMB, along with the union, continued to urge management to respond in good faith and come to an agreement. Late Wednesday night Amerijet management broke off further negotiations and walked out of the NMB-sponsored contract talks.
Amerijet's insisted on a five-year contract without any raise in the last 20 months of the contract's term. The company also refused the union's demand to restore severe wage and benefit cuts that the company imposed earlier this year, during a previous NMB-directed negotiating meeting in Washington, D.C. The Amerijet pilots and flight engineers had been working at the same pay rate since 1999 and then suffered a unilateral 10 percent wage cut in March 2009. It is a pay rate that is not only at or below the poverty level, it is almost identical to the pay of the regional pilots who were killed in the crash of Colgan Air 3407 in Buffalo this year. Amerijet does not provide basic sanitary facilities on the airplanes and does not provide food and water to their pilots and flight engineers flying long, hot and exhausting duty days throughout the Caribbean and South America.
According to Daisy Gonzalas, Business Agent at Local 769, Amerijet operates an air cargo link to many Caribbean islands and nations, carrying vital goods such as perishable products not produced in the islands.
Although so far some 727 flights have been operated by management pilots and a few who have crossed the picket line, a number of pilot groups including Capital Cargo pilots, ABX pilots and Atlas and Polar pilots, as well as freight companies such as Roadways, ABF Freight, Yellow Freight and UPS, are honoring the picket lines and refusing to deliver freight to Amerijet.
