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To All Active ALPA Members   -7-   January 26, 1948

against the pilot and the other is for the pilot or any group of pilots to complain against the company and seek redress. For simplification and effectiveness, the procedural steps for both sections are in the "Investigation and Discipline" section. With inconsequential exceptions, the "Investigation and Discipline" and "Grievances" sections in all agreements are the same.

Under the departmentalization reorganization plan of Headquarters, which was placed into effect during the year 1944, and which has worked out so well, there is a Grievance and Conciliation Department. This Department is continuously busy and employs from two to three carefully trained lawyers who constantly work with grievance cases on the air lines and with license revocation cases instituted by the Civil Aeronautics Administration involving the revocation of pilots licenses for alleged violations of the CAR. The grievance-settling parts in the air line pilots employment agreements are conceded as being of the best. Obviously, the air carriers are very much opposed to these sections because they are too fair and square and effective. Irrespective of what our adversaries say about handling grievances under these sections, they afford both the air carriers and the members of ALPA a square deal. The air line companies don't like this kind of an arrangement. It doesn't give them an advantage; [underline] in other words, the whip hand.[/underline] The ATA has been carrying on a very extensive campaign to destroy these two grievance sections in the agreements. They have carried this effort right into President Truman's Special Board of Inquiry on Air Safety and have attempted to take it directly to the White House. Our representatives on this Board -- namely, Bart Cox--AA; Jerry Wood-EAL, ALPA's First Vice President, Bob Buck--TWA; -- and our Washington Office blocked these efforts successfully, but they will always be kept alive by the opposition. 

United Air Lines spearheaded the move for the ATA to wreck and render valueless the "Grievances" sections in the air line pilots agreements. This is the reason United Air Lines was the last agreement to be signed. It was the reason for the sudden strike threat on United during the final days of 1947. United's attorneys proposed a grievance-settling plan for inclusion in its agreement, which they and the ATA hoped to include in all other air line pilots agreements, under which it would take 80 days to process one grievance. Stop and reflect on this point -- 80 days to process one grievance. This was only one of its faults. There were many others. Under our standard grievance sections, if the time limits are watched, it results in the complete processing of a grievance in less than half this time. The agreement was signed with United during the week of January 19, but only after a strike was averted by a narrow margin. More could be said, but in the interest of brevity, this was the most recent hot spot of ALPA's struggle to protect the interests of its members. Let no member of ALPA be fooled. When United Air Lines refused to sign their agreement, unless their impossible grievance section was included, it was not altogether the concern of the UAL pilots -- far from it. It was a well-planned campaign, spearheaded by IAL and directed by the ATA to destroy the grievance-settling machinery in all pilots' employment agreements, including United's. All ALPA member were critically affected.

The achievements of ALPA's Grievance Department for 1947 are as follows: 78 grievances were filed by pilots on all air lines with the exception of the following: Braniff Airways, Inc., Chicago & Southern Air Lines, Inc.; Colonial Airlines, Inc., and Pinoeer Air Lines, Inc., on which no grievances were filed. Of these grievances, 48 went to the first step of the grievance-settling machinery, 40 went to the second, and 28 went to the Adjustment Boards on the various air lines. Percentagewise, ALPA won 70% of all cases filed.

The CAB took license revocation action against 849 air line pilots during 1947. There were 16 requests to reopen cases. 488 cases were carried over from 1946. The total number of cases on the CAB's books for 1947 was 1353. The number of cases disposed of by hearings was 206. The number of cases completed or settled was 272.