BEHIND every aerial drone is a human operator. Thousands are civilians, working for contractors such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Civilians may not fire missiles, but they fly spy planes and fix them when they break down.

Andrew Lohmar, for example, piloted ScanEagle surveillance drones for the American navy for over five years. He was stationed in Iraq, on ships and even on an oil platform in the Persian Gulf. When his two-man team provided reconnaissance for the rescue of American hostages from Somali pirates aboard the Maersk Alabama, a container ship, in 2009, they worked around the clock for five days straight. Small wonder that a 2011 study by the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine found nearly half the operators of spy drones suffering from high levels of stress.

“There were times you saw things that you did not really want to, including people dying,” says Mr Lohmar. “Other times brought home the fact that the people on the other end of the lens were human beings too, such as seeing a ‘bad guy’ playing with his kids.”

A new collective-bargaining organisation, the Association of Unmanned Operation (AUO), aims to represent civilian drone operators. (Military ones are barred from joining unions.) Sam Trevino, the AUO’s president, frets about long hours and falling pay. Newly-qualified drone pilots used to make well over $100,000 a year, but as America’s wars wind down and the sequester bites, wages have slipped and discontent among operators has grown. Mr Trevino says the AUO is poised to win recognition at one large drone contractor, and hopes to organise workers at others soon.

Drones are not used to spy on Americans in America, says Mr Trevino. If they ever were, he says, his organisation could “stand together” and protest. The world has grown accustomed to drone strikes; a drone operators’ strike would be something new.