ALPA Calls on Virginia Legislature to Reject Governor Spanberger’s Anti-Worker Airline Crew Carveout from Paid Sick Leave Law

Midnight Amendment Strips Flight Crews of Protections Guaranteed to Every Other Virginia Worker

WASHINGTON, D.C.— The Air Line Pilots Association, Int’l (ALPA) today urged members of the Virginia General Assembly to vote down Governor Abigail Spanberger’s proposed amendments to House Bill 5, which would strip airline pilots and flight attendants of the paid sick leave protections that the legislature deliberately extended to them. In a last-minute move made without consulting legislators or labor representatives, earlier this week, Governor Spanberger amended the paid sick leave bill while inserting language to exclude all “crewmembers” from the law’s definition of “employee,” a carveout that airlines and their lobbyists pursued aggressively throughout the legislative session but failed to secure.

“Every worker in Virginia should be able to call in sick without fear of losing their job or their paycheck,” said Capt. Jason Ambrosi, ALPA president. “That absolutely includes thousands of pilots and flight attendants based in Virginia who carry passengers and cargo safely to their destinations every day. Paid sick leave is not a perk. It is a public health and aviation safety issue. Crew members should not be pressured to fly while ill. The Virginia legislature got this right. Its members should stand by their work and reject these amendments.”

The governor’s action is particularly striking given her own words. In announcing these amendments, Governor Spanberger said she “reject[s]” the idea that Virginia must choose between being “pro-worker and pro-business.” Yet her airline crew exclusion does exactly that, choosing the financial interests of airlines over the health and safety of aviation workers. The very legal arguments that the airline industry used to lobby for this carveout were rejected by the Virginia legislature, but Governor Spanberger overruled them.

“Gov. Spanberger went behind closed doors, cut a deal with airline lobbyists, and at the eleventh hour stabbed Virginia’s aviation workers in the back. She talks about being pro-worker, but when the airlines called in a favor, she answered. A Democratic governor doing the bidding of companies to strip working people of rights that her own legislature fought to give them is what anti-union governance looks like,” added Ambrosi.

Governor Spanberger’s amendments return to the Virginia legislature for a vote on April 22. If lawmakers vote down the amended bill, the original version, which covers all airline crew members and provides the stronger worker protections that both chambers passed, automatically returns to the governor’s desk. ALPA urges every Virginia legislator who voted to protect aviation workers to hold the line.

Founded in 1931, ALPA is the largest airline pilot union in the world and represents more than 80,000 pilots at 42 U.S. and Canadian airlines. Visit ALPA.org or follow us on X @ALPAPilots.

CONTACT: ALPA Media, 703-481-4440 or Media@alpa.org