AVIATION: Dropping the Pilot

As founder and for 20 years boss of A.F.L.’s gold-plated Air Line Pilots Association, Chicago’s David L. Behncke did well for his 6,000 union members. Once a crack pilot himself (United Air Lines), Behncke helped block airline salary cuts during the depression, reduced pilots’ flying time from 140 hours a month to 85, won raises that have brought top pilots’ salaries to $15,000, lobbied in Washington for better air-safety regulations.

In the union paper he edited, Behncke never failed to tell his pilots how much he had done for them. “To be perfectly honest,” Behncke once said, “I never made any mistakes, even in the beginning.”

1,000-Word Telegrams. But some of his union members disagreed. In 1947 they complained of Behncke’s dictatorial methods, tried to unseat him in union elections. Behncke won, largely as a result of a 5½-hour speech—”the best,” wrote Editor Behncke, “the Old Man has ever made.” But he lost some power. A.L.P.A. set up an executive board to check him.

In negotiations with United Air Lines this year, the pilots got fed up with Behncke’s dragging, nagging way of doing things. They finally bypassed him as bargainer, picked Union Vice President Clarence Sayen, the 32-year-old pilot who shortly before had negotiated a contract with Pan American World Airways. Said one union member: “We’re sick and tired of Behncke’s thousand-word telegrams giving the world 24 hours to get out.” Behncke was furious. He fired Sayen and two other union officials. But the executive board countermanded the orders.

Sweatshop? Behncke was also having trouble with the union’s own employees; they complained that they were working long hours under sweatshop conditions, and that their wives didn’t like it. Hardworking Dave Behncke made a harder answer than any airline boss ever made to a union negotiator. Snapped he: “They can shoot their wives, they can divorce them, but when anyone works for me I want him where I want him when I want him, and if he doesn’t like it he can work for someone else.” The union’s office employees chose another course: they organized a union and appealed to NLRB.

Last week A.L.P.A.’s executive board had enough. In a session that broke up at dawn, the union’s directors kicked Behncke out of the presidency, retired him on a pension of $15,000 a year, equal to his salary as president. A.L.P.A.’s new president: Clarence Sayen. Cried ex-President Behncke, who threatened to take the whole matter to court: “Illegal Putsch!”