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To all Active ALPA Members -15- January 26, 1948

propaganda. Some actually help spread it. This line of propaganda all follows about the same pattern. Mr. Behncke gets up in the morning feeling bad, picks up the phone, and what does he do -- calls a strike, of course. Mr. Behncke hates Mr. X of XYZ Airline mentary, but that's the kind of stuff they put out. And that's what it is -- just plain stuff. In the first place, neither ALPA's President nor any other ALPA official has the slightest authority to call a strike. It can only be called by pilots on a particular air line and then only after they have voted on the question, by secret ballot, of whether or not they desire to strike. That is the procedure under Title II of the Railway Labor Act, covering air line pilots and all air line employees. Any other strike would be illegal. Headquarters cannot as much as circulate a strike vote without the approval of the Master Executive Council on the air line affected.

The TWA strike was completely UNAVOIDABLE. The strike was more against all air lines to break up their well-organized move, sponsored and directed by ATA, to destroy all air line pilot employment agreements made with the companies individually than against TWA. The air lines were all tied together, closely knit, and well organized with plenty of money; and the TWA strike was for cause TWA to deal individually with its pilots as has been the practice and procedure in the air line industry right from the beginning. This is the long and short of the "why" of the TWA strike. The TWA strike was in the interest of all air line pilots. The pilots of the air lines other than TWA received more benefits without being on strike than did the TWA pilots. The TWA pilots stood the brunt of the flight against the entire industry represented by ATA and, at the same time, realized less money resulting from the TWA Arbitration Board Award than did a great many of the other pilots of other air lines who negotiated higher rates of compensation with their companies shortly after this award; an inequity only recently rectified by the sighing of TWA's agreement on December 18, 1847. In the interim, nearly all the other air lines, beginning immediately after the end of the TWA strike and their rates of compensation bargained up by ALPA. (See page 4 of this letter.) That's the real story behind the TWA strike.

The AOA strike was brought about by the company, after everything in the agreement had ben agreed to, and the final draft was actually being typed in the compony offices, by bringing in an unsettles grievance case relating to regularly scheduled air line pilots standing reserve on their time off between trips, thereby doing away with reserve pilots. There was nothing the AIA pilots could do except to strike to cause the removal of this grievance case from the contract-making proceedings and to force the utilization if the grievance-settling machinery in the agreement to settle it where it had previously been filed for handeling by the AOA pilots. That was the pure and simple, stripped-to-the-bone reason for the AOA strike, plus the endless stalling tactics of Airlines Negotiating Committee to prevent the signing of the AOA agreement. Had the AOA pilots not stood their ground, the companies would have had an excellent precedent never to sign an agreement unless it was on a conditional basis amounting to, "Meet any conditions we lay down completely foreign to any of the provisions of an agreement or we won't sign." A malign form of coercion. Again, the AOA pilots struck on a principle to protect all air line pilots.

The big cry of AOA was that we surprised the company. They said they were without notification of the strike until the pilots refused to take out their trips. The fact of the matter is that the secretary of the national meditation Board called the company after talking to me the day before the strike was set to begin.