Vote Ed Sicher

We need to start with more transparency at APA.  When our members are better informed, we will make better decisions.  Enough closed door meetings.  Enough secrecy.  We need to know WHAT our union is union and WHY our union is doing it.  It is unforgivable that we can inform management what our wants at the negotiating table without also informing our members what we are requesting at the negotiating table.  We need to proceed by admitting the old way of doing things may not be the best way of doing things.  Adopting better policies and practices that are effective at our brother and sister unions is a start.  Only after we admit there is a problem at APA can we set out on a course of action that allows us to solve that problem.  Finally, we need to get “back to basics” at APA.  It’s all there in our founding documents, we just don’t stick to them.  We need our union to work towards IMPROVING pay benefits and work rules, not passing pay proposals across the table that put us behind inflation.  We need to ensure the protection of individual and collective rights of our members and insist on prompt and expeditious hearings and grievances.  Instead we have had grievances languor for 10 or more years without allowing them be heard.  We need to further scheduling with Safety in ANY practicable manner instead of allowing management to optimize our schedules into unsafe and fatiguing sequences that don’t allow our pilots sufficient rest or the ability to schedule themselves away from flying they don’t want.

• APA should lead the industry in all measures. Somebody has to be #1, why not us?
• Industry-leading compensation is not just a taking point, it needs to be a union mandate!
• Demand improved work rules and a better quality of work life.
• Benefits are not an afterthought – they are a health necessity for us and our families!
• Insist on management scheduling in accordance with our contract. Repeated violations cannot be tolerated.
• Build alliances with other labor unions and legislators that advance our cause!
• Earn back membership confidence in our union leadership. Leaders can’t only transmit; they also need to receive.
• Management does a good job worrying about management. The union needs to do a better job of worrying about the membership’s needs rather than fixing management’s problems, let alone their self-inflicted predicaments.

I grew up on the southside of Chicago, the son of second-generation Italian immigrants, who worked their way out of poverty through hard work and good-paying union jobs. My parents and grandparents knew the importance of education and hard work and instilled those values in my sister, my brother, and me.