Rotorcraft
Unions-Yea or Nay?
Next to fighter jocks, helicopter pilots are probably the most iconoclastic flavor of aviators flying today.

Next to fighter jocks, helicopter pilots are probably the most iconoclastic flavor of aviators flying today. That’s why the issue of unionization can be so sensitive. Both Petroleum Helicopters Inc. and Air Log have unionized pilot workforces. Both made the transition in widely different ways.

At Air Log, while the move toward unionization wasn’t exactly welcomed by senior management, it was not all that actively resisted either. Organizers of the Office & Professional Employees International Union (OPEU) found the going fairly easy in the late 1990s when a simple majority vote by its pilots selected that Washington, D.C.-based union as the Air Log pilots’ authorized representatives in collective bargaining. Since then, conditions between labor and management have been cordial, with no job actions threatened.

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