Why would anyone work against their coworkers?
Unionization is a hot topic at SkyWest headquarters, and management has shown it will do practically anything to keep us from earning our place at the table. Most of us are building our SkyWest AFA union. A few coworkers have sided with management’s anti-union campaign, some of them loudly, and vouch for a company that gives them no contract and no enforceable rights.
It’s tempting to write them off. Don’t. Management’s pressure runs on habits of the mind that psychologists have studied for decades, and it works on smart, experienced people every day. Understanding it is how we bring coworkers home.
The Power of Misinformation
SkyWest management set up and funds the SkyWest Inflight Association (SIA), which claims to represent Flight Attendants but answers to SkyWest. A company-created association lets some of us believe we’re already represented, when in reality it blocks true collective bargaining. Many of our colleagues took roles in SIA only to find that management dictates what SIA does and keeps them from representing anyone.
Others take management’s warnings at face value: job losses, less flexibility, union dues with nothing to show for them. Here is what management leaves out. No Flight Attendant pays dues until our first contract is ratified, and we vote on that contract ourselves, with the dues in plain view.
In a job this demanding, the fear of losing stability is a strong motivator. Management knows it and leans on it.
The Avalanche of Anti-Union Propaganda
Management has hit us hard with anti-union messaging in crew rooms, during CQ training and online. The constant barrage props up SkyWest’s long anti-union culture and makes questioning management feel risky and exhausting.
The repetition is the strategy. In 1977, psychologists Lynn Hasher, David Goldstein and Thomas Toppino found that people rate a statement as more believable simply because they have heard it before. Researchers now call it the illusory truth effect. Hear “a union will cost you” at every recurrent training, and it starts to feel like common knowledge, whether or not anyone ever proved it.
The Mind Games Behind the Message
Repetition is one tool. Management has others, and each one works on good people for a reason. None of this means a coworker is gullible. It means the playbook was built by professionals.
In 1979, psychologists Henri Tajfel and John Turner showed how readily people take a group’s identity as their own. When the company casts itself as the family, organizing starts to feel like turning on your own people. But a family doesn’t write every rule alone and rewrite them when it suits one side. And AFA is no outsider. It is Flight Attendants, from the crew room up.
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky found that a loss hits us roughly twice as hard as a gain of the same size. Management frames the union as the risk and never mentions the risk of standing still. What we “have” is policy, and SkyWest changes policy at its own discretion, follows it when that suits the company and ignores it when it doesn’t. Nobody can hold them to it.
In his 1984 book Influence, psychologist Robert Cialdini described how even a small favor creates a felt obligation to pay it back. A trade approved, a special position, a manager’s praise in front of the crew. The gratitude is real. A favor can still be taken back tomorrow, and a contract can’t.
Leon Festinger’s 1957 theory of cognitive dissonance explains why people who act against the facts often change how they see the facts instead of their actions. Once a coworker has vouched for management in public, changing course can feel like admitting they were fooled, so they dig in. This is why mocking someone almost never brings them over. It hands them one more position to defend.
In 1994, John Jost and Mahzarin Banaji described how people defend existing arrangements, even ones that work against them, because believing the system is fair feels safer than believing it’s rigged. The regional tier is the clearest case. Regional Flight Attendants earn about 45% less for the same job, on flights painted in mainline colors. It has always been that way only because no one has had the power to change it. SkyWest Flight Attendants are the largest group of regional Flight Attendants in the country. Standing together, we have that power.
The message lands harder coming from a trusted coworker than from a manager, and management knows it. So it hands the script to the people we trust most and ties their position to delivering it. They end up standing between management and the rest of us, carrying the risk while management keeps its distance.
Personal Experiences and Relationships
Many of us have built strong relationships with coworkers and managers over the years, and that trust can make management’s word feel safer than the facts. Management pressures lead Flight Attendants and people in special positions, like Domicile Support Specialists (DSS), to push the company’s anti-union line.
No one should have to choose between carrying out management’s strategy and losing a position they worked hard to earn. Our union would protect them from exactly that kind of coercion. Management sets us against each other on purpose, so that questioning the status quo feels disloyal.
The Role of Fear and Uncertainty
SkyWest uses fear to discourage union support, and even hints that you’re safer if you help spread its message. That protection is an illusion. Management often turns on the people who helped it once they’re no longer useful, and today nothing stands in its way: SkyWest has no just-cause standard and no appeals process.
Even now, AFA fights for Flight Attendants facing unjust discipline and termination. With an AFA contract, we’ll have legal standing to challenge unfair discipline and terminations, with just cause, representation and a grievance process behind us. That is job security siding with management can’t buy.
Preconceived Notions from Past Experiences
Some coworkers arrive at SkyWest with an anti-union mindset formed at earlier jobs that were hostile to unions. Those years make management’s rhetoric land harder. They may see unions as unnecessary or even harmful, without ever having seen what a Flight Attendant union like AFA can do for a career.
The Journey from Misinformation to Realization
- Hears the warnings
- Defends the company
- Meets the facts
- Stands with us
Many coworkers who first back management are protecting what they have, based on what they’ve been told. Their views often change once they learn the facts about collective bargaining and the intentions behind management’s rhetoric.
Realizing you were misled can be a wake-up call. A Flight Attendant union like AFA exists to improve our pay and working conditions and to give us a unified voice at the table. SkyWest often copies the wins that union Flight Attendants at other carriers fight hard for, then points to them as proof we don’t need a union of our own. Take boarding pay. SkyWest added it, but only on a temporary basis, with nothing locking it in and none of the protections a contract would carry. Imagine what we could negotiate on our own priorities with our own union in place.
Moving Forward with Empathy
These coworkers aren’t our enemies. They’re fellow Flight Attendants getting through a tough, often hostile environment that management built. Every one who comes around makes our union stronger, and every one will be needed at the table.
Bring Them Home
Coworkers who support management’s campaign do it for real reasons: misinformation, fear, relationships, history. Those reasons deserve to be understood and respected. As more of them learn the truth about our SkyWest AFA campaign, many will reconsider, and every one who does adds to our solidarity.
