“Allegiant needs to invest in their people and their pilots.”
So says Tyler Heavey, a captain with Allegiant Airlines for the last six years.
He told me he loves his job. But he doesn’t love the way the company has treated him and his fellow pilots.
“Allegiant was one of the only airlines to actually furlough its pilots” during fall 2020, the height of the COVID pandemic, Heavey said. “They wanted significant concessions [from workers]. And when that didn’t happen, then they chose to furlough over a hundred pilots.”
That included Heavey, who was out of work for months.
“Really flips your life upside down,” he said of that time.
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Tyler Heavey, a captain for Allegiant Airlines based in Des Moines, appears in a screenshot from a video call with Iowa Starting Line’s Amie Rivers. (Amie Rivers/Iowa Starting Line)
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Heavey is one of around 40 Allegiant pilots based in Des Moines, and one of around 1,400 Allegiant pilots at 22 crew bases across the country, who unionized with Teamsters. They’ve been working without a contract because they’ve been negotiating their last one for the past five years.
It doesn’t help that the union—because labor law is different for airlines—can only negotiate with a federal mediator. That’s been happening just two or three days a month, Heavey said.
“So it’s very hard to make progress,” he said.
That progress, he said, was simple: Give Allegiant pilots what pilots of other airlines get, so that good pilots stop leaving, something Heavey said was happening “every single day” because of money and respect.
“Everything that we’re asking for, and I guess you could say demanding, is what our peers have,” Heavey said. “ It’s industry standard.”
Allegiant has said it has offered an immediate 50% average increase in hourly wages that will rise to 70% over the life of a new 5-year contract.
“It sounds nice, but that still would put us nearly 30% below our peers, and that’s just in hourly rates,” Heavey said. “ We’re already overworked and underpaid, and they want to continue that.”
He said other sticking points for workers include not getting paid for the entire time a pilot was at the airport, and the company’s threat to “basically undo seniority.”
For all those reasons, around 40 captains, first officers, and flight attendants stood for hours in a solidarity picket last month at the Des Moines airport to get attention to their fight, joining a national Allegiant picket.
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Still from a video of Des Moines workers striking at the Des Moines airport on Nov. 18, 2025. (KCCI)
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A strike was authorized by the union a year ago, with 97% in favor. But Heavey said he hopes it doesn’t come to that.
“We care deeply about this community. But if Allegiant continues to do this, we are gonna continue to lose qualified pilots,” which could mean Des Moines losing routes, affecting travelers, he said.
“We take pride in flying them safely to their destinations,” he added. “ We are a part of the community. We want to have a nice, reliable product for our customers, and we also want to be able to grow. And without a contract, that is not possible.”
Heavey knows Allegiant can afford it, pointing to a failed resort venture that cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars.
“It just seems like their priorities are everything except their pilots and their people,” Heavey said. “That’s all we’re asking for.”
Share your thoughts.
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Amie Rivers
Newsletter Editor, Iowa Starting Line
Member, COURIER United (WGA East)
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UnityPoint nurses likely win union: With a vote of 871-666, despite 251 ballots being challenged, the math is mathing in favor of the 1,776 Des Moines-based nurses getting to unionize with Teamsters. “Exhausted but EXCITED and THRILLED!” overnight recovery nurse Dawn Balek texted me the day after the vote. The union says those ballots are for workers hired after the Aug. 13 election cut-off date, which should not count; UnityPoint is arguing to the National Labor Relations Board that they should.
- Union endorsements: The Communication Workers of America Local 7102 in Des Moines endorsed West Des Moines City Council member
Renee Hardman for Iowa Senate District 16. The special election will be held Dec. 30.
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Starbucks strike at one month: Workers unionized with Starbucks Workers United have been on an escalating strike—adding new stores to the strike list each week—for one month now. Two of Iowa’s four unionized stores, in Des Moines and Iowa City, joined Dec. 4.
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Iowa farmers say ending ACA tax credits will hurt farm economies. Around 27% of farmers in the US get insurance from the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace, and Iowa farmers warned their premiums will rise by thousands of dollars if enhanced tax credits aren’t extended. And proposals by Republicans have so far seemed geared toward making the ACA worse.
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Tomorrow is the last day to apply for $12 billion in bailout money for row crop farmers hit hard by President Donald Trump’s misguided trade wars, which economists estimate have cost farmers $55 billion.
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The US House says Trump can’t take away collective bargaining: The Protect America’s Workforce Act, which brings back collective bargaining at the federal level that Trump tried to eliminate via executive order, passed the House 231-195—including “yes” votes from two of Iowa’s four Republican congress members (Miller-Meeks and Nunn). Unions are urging the Senate to pass it; you can sign your name as a supporter here.
- What’s not helping the nurse shortage: Limiting how much prospective nurses can borrow on their student loans to get an advanced degree because the administration doesn’t consider such nurses “professional.”
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Integrated DNA Technologies layoff coming: The Coralville company said it would be laying off 4.7% of its workers, which a reader last week told me would amount to 136 people laid off. IDT had no immediate timeline for the layoff, and there was no WARN Act notification as of this writing.
- Voting on a union: Forty full- and part-time drivers and monitors at Durham School Services in Urbandale voted on whether to unionize with Teamsters Local 90 on Tuesday; no vote total was posted to the NLRB website as of this writing.
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Networking Imaging Solutions in North Liberty is closing and laying off 140 workers by today. Read more here.
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Superior Tube Products in Davenport is closing and laying off 26 workers by Friday. Read more here.
- Wells Fargo in West Des Moines is laying off 63 workers by Dec. 26, 26 by Jan. 2, 14 by Jan. 23, and 25 by Feb. 6.
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Bauer Built Manufacturing in Paton is closing and laying off 62 workers by Dec. 31. The company says “a large majority” of workers will be offered jobs with Kloeckner Metals Corporation, which bought Bauer. Read more here.
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Mason City Clinic in Mason City is laying off 147 workers by Dec. 31. Read more about a potential WARN Act violation here.
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RELCO in Cedar Rapids is closing and laying off 34 workers by Dec. 31. Read more here.
- RTX in Cedar Rapids is laying off three workers by Dec. 31.
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Toyota Financial Services in Cedar Rapids is closing and laying off 54 workers by Dec. 31. Read more here.
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It’s usually the workers at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder—with the most to lose—that end up fighting the hardest to raise up the working class.
That’s what I took away from labor journalist Kim Kelly’s book, “Fight Like Hell,” a comprehensive look at the various fights that shaped American labor history.
What I quickly learned: Companies have never voluntarily given workers anything other than the bare minimum. And marginalized people have always been at the forefront of the fights for more.
From Black women laundry workers fighting for better pay in the Reconstruction-era South, to Jewish mill workers fighting for better safety standards in the wake of a deadly New York City fire, to queer flight attendants fighting for sexual harassment protection, it’s the workers themselves who are standing up, even if they lose (and they do, a lot).
Kelly’s book also explores the labor fights of those we might ignore, including sex workers fighting against exploitation, and incarcerated workers who are forced to work for pennies on the dollar or else be punished with solitary confinement.
It’s a great, very readable book, filled with inspiring (and heartbreaking) tales that made me wish I had even a little of these folks’ courageousness.
Have you read it? Share your thoughts on it.
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Thanks for reading. This newsletter was written by Amie Rivers. It was edited by Paula Solis.
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