Viewing page 54 of 88
This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.
the growth and reorganization of alpa Forced, in its formative years, to fight at every turn for recognition and respect, ALPA nevertheless progressed. From the first handful of men, meeting behind closed doors, the Association grew in numerical strength and prestige. In 1935, it had 603 members; in 1937, 850 members; 1939, 1,280 members. At the end of World War II, with the great impetus it gave to the development of commercial aviation, the Association's membership approached 5,000 for the first time. In 1949 it stood at 6,446. Today, ALPA's membership in active, apprentice, and supervisory statuses, exceeds 9,500. Its total membership in all categories exceeds 11,500. All during this time the scope, functions and structure of the Association were undergoing transitional and evolutionary changes to meet new demands. ALPA Departmentalized... During the first 11 years of its existence, up through 1941, the Association's staff was composed of the Association President, an assistant, seven or eight stenographers and clerks, and a Washington representative. Under this set-up the Association's president served as contract negotiator, lawyer, engineer, statistician, editor and organizer. The office was a small walk-up over a real estate office at 3145 West 63rd Street, Chicago. During the early war years, there was a heavy influx of new members, a broadening of Association activities, and a whole new host of problems requiring that the pattern be changed. The "one man" concept gave way to executive departmentalization. ALPA's administrative structure was completely departmentalized with professional staff members heading up the many organizational functions. Organization Revamped... By 1946, a new weakness had become evident: ALPA's representative structure was unwieldy and unworkable under expanded demands; many pilots actually had no voice in Association affairs which vitally affected them; what had provided a workable democracy in 1931 was concentrating ALPA government in a small handful of men and opening the door to possible minority rule in 1946. It is to the discredit of no one, merely a trend which perpetuated itself because the Association's growth outstripped the changes in its governmental structure. New staff personnel created another problem: housing. In 1947, the ALPA headquarters had mushroomed out into a series of offices, spotted in a building here and a building there, spread out over a block-long area in the 63rd Street-Kedzie Avenue area of Chicago. The first efforts toward the re-organization of ALPA were made experimentally in 1947 when the Convention abolished the old Central Executive Council, composed only of pilots whose air lines flew into or through Chicago, and, in its place, created the Executive Board. From 1951 to 1953, after considerable study and investigation by pilot committees, ALPA was reorganized into its present structure (see pages 22, 23). Coincidental with the reorganization of ALPA, the Association Building in Chicago was completed and its name changed from Headquarters to the Home Office, indicative of the functional democracy brought about in the reorganization program. [[image - bar graph]] [[caption]] Growth of Air Line Pilots Association from 1935-1954 [[/caption]] — 12 —
