But the vote also rep­re­sent­ed a broad­er vic­to­ry for orga­nized labor, because it is the first time a union has won an elec­tion at Jet­Blue since the grow­ing com­pa­ny began oper­a­tions in 2000.

The final vote was 1,734 in favor of ALPA, 56 write-ins for oth­er unions and 639 opposed to union­iza­tion, for a pro-union total of 74 per­cent, accord­ing to the union. Turnout was unusu­al­ly high, says one union orga­niz­er, with more than 95 per­cent of the 2,543 eli­gi­ble pilots tak­ing part in the Nation­al Medi­a­tion Board-super­vised election.

A union orga­niz­ing cam­paign among some 2,500 pilots at Jet­Blue Air­ways won a big vic­to­ry this week after the votes were count­ed in an elec­tion that will bring in the Air Line Pilots Asso­ci­a­tion union ( ALPA ) to rep­re­sent the Jet­Blue avi­a­tion workers.

Jet­Blue cur­rent­ly has a total of about 15,000 employ­ees, so the elec­tion results may spur spec­u­la­tion that the ALPA vic­to­ry is a step toward union­iz­ing the company’s flight atten­dants, mechan­ics, bag­gage han­dlers and oth­er workers.

Capt. Gus­ta­vo Rivera and Capt. Rocky Durham, two lead­ers of the pilots union orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee, issued a state­ment April 22:

Today, Jet­Blue pilots have vot­ed for ALPA rep­re­sen­ta­tion so that we have the abil­i­ty to improve our pro­fes­sion­al careers. As com­mit­ted as we are to our objec­tives, we also want to work with man­age­ment to ensure we con­tin­ue to con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to Jet­Blue’s success.

In a state­ment to In These Times, ALPA Pres­i­dent Lee Moak stressed the impor­tance of the win for Jet­Blue pilots and the labor move­ment as a whole:

As for the future of labor, much was made of the UAW’s nar­row loss at Volk­swa­gen in Ten­nessee. ALPA won an over­whelm­ing vic­to­ry among a sig­nif­i­cant­ly larg­er work­force locat­ed through­out the coun­try. ALPA’s vic­to­ry is at least as sig­nif­i­cant a sign for the future of labor as the UAW’s loss, because it showed that when work­ers look care­ful­ly into the ben­e­fits of union­iza­tion and are pro­vid­ed a choice in a fair elec­tion free of out­side inter­fer­ence, unions stand a good chance of winning.

For its part, Jet­Blue, which had vig­or­ous­ly opposed any union­iza­tion, offered only this terse state­ment from Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Dave Barg­er: ​“The Nation­al Medi­a­tion Board will autho­rize ALPA as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive body for Jet­Blue pilots, and then both Jet­Blue and ALPA will orga­nize nego­ti­at­ing committees.”

Barger’s tone—described as ​“churl­ish” by avi­a­tion author and blog­ger Chris­tine Negroni — reflects a deep antipa­thy to unions by Jet­Blue man­agers, accord­ing to one com­pa­ny pilot who spoke to In These Times on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because the Jet­Blue pilots have not yet formed their first offi­cial union lead­er­ship com­mit­tee to speak for the new ALPA mem­bers. Ear­li­er union dri­ves among the pilots were defeat­ed by vig­or­ous oppo­si­tion by com­pa­ny man­agers in 2008 and 2011, he says, and that oppo­si­tion con­tin­ued in this lat­est elec­tion. That atti­tude may make for a painful process toward reach­ing a first union con­tract, and the Barg­er state­ment appears to con­firm fears that the com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue to fight the union at every turn.

At issue in con­tract nego­ti­a­tions will be bet­ter pay and improved work­ing con­di­tions, as well as long-term issues such as career pro­tec­tions and con­tract enforce­ment, the orga­niz­er says. He cit­ed a sur­vey from the inde­pen­dent air­line con­sult­ing com­pa­ny Kit​Dar​by​.com, pub­lished at Huff­in­g­ton Post this week, that showed Jet­Blue dead last among 12 major air­lines in total com­pen­sa­tion for pilots. Of the 11 com­pet­ing air­lines cit­ed, all have pilots rep­re­sent­ed by unions, many of them by the 50,000-member ALPA.

High on the list of demands will be improve­ments in health insur­ance, the pilot says. ​“What we have now is a Wal­mart-style insur­ance with high pre­mi­ums, high deductibles, and high out-of-pock­et expens­es. … It’s the worst in the [air­line] indus­try,” he says. He cit­ed a recent case in which a vet­er­an pilot had to out more $10,000 in child­birth expens­es because the Jet­Blue health insur­ance plan would not cov­er the basic costs.

The pilot-orga­niz­er cred­it­ed the union vic­to­ry to a long series of mis­steps by com­pa­ny man­agers. One of the first, he says, was a wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed video in which Jet­Blue appeared to brag about manip­u­lat­ing the pilots dur­ing the 2011 union elec­tion. The video shows Jet­Blue man­age­ment dis­cussing an award from the Pub­lic Rela­tions Soci­ety of Amer­i­ca for the company’s efforts to defeat ALPA. It includ­ed a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the MWW Group, a high-pow­ered pub­lic rela­tions firm that assist­ed in the anti-union campaign.

​“That video was an impor­tant part of the cam­paign. It showed that the company’s claim that it val­ued a direct rela­tion­ship with the pilots was a façade,” he says. ​“Jet­Blue always likes to claim that it is dif­fer­ent from oth­er air­lines … but the pilots get angry when they see that they have been manipulated.”

Oth­er issues that helped build sup­port for ALPA were JetBlue’s delay in promised pay improve­ments, the company’s refusal to talk with a pilots’ com­mit­tee about sched­ul­ing and relat­ed con­cerns, and the poor qual­i­ty of the health­care plan, the orga­niz­er says. ​“They made a lot of mis­takes. They forced us to unionize.”