Century Airlines pilots' strike

The Century Air Lines Strike of 1932 was a strike of pilots from Chicago-based Century Air Lines following a proposal in early February by company owner Errett Lobban Cord to cut wages by up to 40%. The two-month strike was the first in the history of the fledgling commercial aviation industry and also the first significant action for the year-old Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) which represented the 23 striking pilots. Political agitation in the form of congressional hearings and public condemnations eventually forced Cord to relent and sell Century Airlines on April 2 to the Aviation Corporation (AVCO), parent company of American Airways.

The strike highlighted the problems facing the commercial aviation industry as it began to grow and diversify significantly for the first time. Meanwhile, the success of the ALPA in lobbying for political support established it as a significant power in organized labor.

Background

Strike timeline

On January 23, the management of Century announced a new wage scale for pilots which effectively resulted in a 40% cut, to be effective from February 1.[17] After initially agreeing to defer the decision by ten days in order to give the pilots and the ALPA a chance for arbitration, Cord decided on the 9th to refuse any further negotiations and immediately put into action the new wage scale. When the pilots arrived to work that morning they were met by armed guards and were ordered to resign in order to reapply to work under the new pay scale.[18][19] The pilots rejected this request and instead marched to the Chicago ALPA headquarters.

Aftermath

The strike gave the ALPA the opportunity to assert itself as a power for organized pilots in America as it launched campaigns against the strikebreakers. The “Century Airlines Scab List” was printed on the front page of the first issue of the union's journal, Air Line Pilot, in April. David Behncke convinced employers to fire strikebreakers who had been employed and much of the first convention of the ALPA, held in Chicago in October 1932, focused on the Century Airlines strike. By the mid-1930s the ALPA had close to 100% of all commercial pilots in the U.S. on its rolls.[29] Furthermore, the ALPA had established itself as a strong political voice and managed to lobby for improved wage calculations for pilots which took into account both the hours and mileage flown, thus insuring that wages wouldn’t be affected by the development of faster planes.[30]

E.L. Cord became the largest stockholder in the American Aviation Corporation, buying an extra 100,000 shares on top of the 138,000 he received from the sale of Century.[31]

Historical interpretation

Isaac Cohen uses the Century Air Lines strike to draw comparisons with the 1983 strike of Continental Airlines pilots. He emphasizes that the political climate of 1932, in contrast with 1983, made conditions far more favorable for the striking pilots stating, “the pro-regulatory mood of 1932 generated governmental, congressional, and municipal support for ALPA, increased considerably the bargaining power of organized pilots, and, in turn, played a key role in ALPA's victory over Errett Lobban Cord.”[32] For Cohen, the still heavy regulatory presence of the Post Office in commercial airlines in 1932, combined with a political arena that was “becoming increasingly responsive to the demands of organized labor” ensured that significant political weight could be thrown behind efforts to undermine Cord.[33] Robert Van der Linden too underscores the political pressure Cord was facing during the strike and also during the months leading up to it as his attempts to curry favor for deregulation had been met with antagonism. However, Van der Linden argues that the sale of Century to AVCO which ended the strike, rather than being the last resort of a beaten man, had been part of Cord’s plan all along: "Cord, a master of the financial world, understood AVCO's weak position and sought to exploit the situation if his public attempts to secure an air mail contract failed. By early 1932, as it became clear that Cord was losing his public fight, he turned his attention directly to AVCO..."[34] Within a year, Cord had managed to gain complete control of AVCO.[35]

See also

• Air Mail scandal
• United States government role in civil aviation

Sources