Flying The Line: CHAPTER 16

Chapter 16
The Sayen Style

Was Clancy Sayen ALPA’s “accidental” president? He would be 62 during this half-centennial of ALPA’s birth if he had not died as a passenger in a 1965 airline crash. In a sense, Sayen was a victim of the Behncke ouster. As ALPA’s executive vice-president, second in the administrative hierarchy when the Old Man went down, Sayen was almost obligated to pick up the pieces—nobody else could. There is absolutely no evidence that he sought Behncke’s job, that he played anything other than an inadvertent part in the movement that unhorsed Behncke, or that he was ever anything but a perfectly loyal ALPA employee. But the legacy of the Behncke ouster—bad feelings, legal expenses, and lawsuits, some of which weren’t finally settled until 1958—inevitably fell to Sayen.

Such a legacy was a pity, for Sayen had a history of achievement in every field he entered, whether it was education, politics, or flying. Had he not chosen to leave Braniff temporarily for the new ALPA executive vice-presidency in 1949, he no doubt would have obtained a captaincy, risen steadily in ALPA’s affairs, and eventually become a formidable contender for the presidency in his own right. These things were already apparent by 1949—that’s why Behncke chose him.

Clarence Nicholas “Clancy” Sayen came out of the Michigan forests, the son of a lumberjack who had never benefited from an education, but who nevertheless permitted his son to continue in school when he might have easily insisted that Clancy go to work to help support the family. Sayen’s boyhood was rigorous, but it included lots of hunting and fishing, things any healthy boy who didn’t live in the North Woods might have envied. The only untoward incident of this idyllic youth came when he was 10 years old: the first two-thirds of his right index finger were lopped off in an accident. It proved to be no handicap. Sayen went on to become a standout high school athlete. After graduating in 1936, his path seemed to lead directly to college. But the need for a job (and perhaps a bit of postadolescent desire for adventure) led him aboard a Great Lakes steamer instead. By the time the gales of December swept across those inland seas, Sayen had gotten his fill of that life, and he was off to college. He played football, basketball, and baseball at Northern Michigan University in Marquette. But he was no mere jock—Sayen also wrote regularly for the school newspaper, maintained a solid A average in his courses, and developed what would prove to be a lifelong taste for the academic life. Upon graduation, he married his college sweetheart, Marjorie Alvord, and set off to make what everybody assumed would be a considerable mark on the world. Dark, intense, and articulate, carrying his 180 pounds on a compact six-foot frame, Clancy Sayen looked like a winner.

Sayen’s career as an airline pilot was short. He started to work for Braniff in June 1944, after learning to fly in the Civilian Pilot Training Program. Before going with Braniff, he had put in a stint as a flight instructor for a local flight school in Kalamazoo, Mich. It was a significant period in Sayen’s life, for he was discovering what he liked best—teaching. His students were naval aviation cadets, mostly older men who had already attended college. Sayen liked the contact with them and liked the atmosphere of the classroom, even if it was the cockpit of a trainer.

While flying copilot for Braniff, Sayen earned a graduate degree in geography and climatology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. To write his master’s thesis, “Commercial Aviation in South America,” Sayen also studied economics at the graduate level and taught himself Spanish. He was an impressive graduate student, the kind senior professors like. He seemed more a colleague than a student. Academicians prized Sayen’s ability to communicate clearly in writing. His article “Commercial Aviation in Texas,” published in Texas Geographic magazine in 1946, was a model of research and clear expository writing. So, while working full-time for Braniff, Sayen was already establishing himself as a person of rare academic promise. His department chairman at Southern Methodist, Professor E. J. Foscue, hired him as a lecturer in 1946. For the next two years, Clancy Sayen scheduled his trips around a classroom assignment teaching undergraduate meteorology courses.

By 1947, Clancy Sayen faced a major career decision. He had found a home, both emotionally and intellectually, in the university, but he obviously could not pursue a full-time career in college teaching unless he quit flying. The geography department at Southern Methodist would schedule evening classes for him because he was so promising, but they could not accommodate him forever. To rise in academic life, Sayen would have to pursue a doctoral degree, a demanding, full-time course of studies that would require as long as four years. Sayen liked flying, his fellow pilots thought highly of him, and although the money wasn’t all that good for a copilot in 1947, it was already better than the salaries of some professors. Sayen was 28 years old, and he didn’t know whether to follow his heart or his pocketbook. Perhaps this dilemma explains why Sayen began devoting himself to ALPA work on the local level. It was a kind of halfway house between academic work and flying. He was elected copilot representative in 1946, attended the convention in 1947, and began attracting considerable attention.

The other delegates noticed Sayen largely because he almost single-handedly picked apart one of Behncke’s pet projects, a pilot’s amendment to the Railway Labor Retirement Act. Behncke had been slow to move on pensions. For many years, his favorite rationale for high salaries for pilots was that flying was so dangerous, and the physical requirements were so exacting, that no airline pilot was likely to survive to anything like a normal retirement age. Behncke had often expressed the opinion that nobody could continue flying much beyond the age of 40.

By the late 1930s, this thinking was already obsolete. Many people over 40 flew, people for whom retirement was becoming something more than just an abstraction. ALPA had no retirement policy at all until the 1946 convention met belatedly in February 1947. Behncke argued strongly for inclusion in the federal rail workers’ plan, which would require a fixed monthly payment and was, in effect, a tax like Social Security. A pilot would have no residual interest in the federal pension system. Dealing with a consultant named Murray Lattimer, who was apparently connected to the Railroad Brotherhood’s pension system, Behncke introduced the idea to a mixed reaction. The nation was reeling under the first great postwar inflationary assault triggered by the Eightieth Congress’s dismantling of the wartime system of price and wage controls, and a federally guaranteed fixed pension plan like the one Behncke favored had severe drawbacks. Young Sayen spelled out these drawbacks. He was so persuasive that the convention voted to put off further consideration of the Behncke–Lattimer plan. The convention did vote sufficient funds to hire a pension expert to study the question.

We must remember that this same convention saw Willis Proctor’s challenge to Behncke and the creation of the new office of executive vice-president (much against Behncke’s will). Quite naturally, a number of senior “movers and shakers” (such as Jerry Wood and Slim Babbitt of Eastern Air Lines [EAL]), were eyeing the available talent for this office. Henry Weiss, who was increasingly involved with ALPA’s legal affairs, remembers clearly the impression Sayen made:

Clancy proved extraordinarily adept at rationalizing difficult subjects such as the pension proposal Behncke was pushing. He had the knack of making these questions comprehensible to pilots. He struck me as quite brilliant, really a man of extraordinary intelligence. I have often thought that this might have worked against him somewhat in the long run. He thought so quickly, grasped an argument, and reduced it to its essentials so fast. His brain was faster than his heart. I guess what I am trying to say is that he could be quite abrupt with people who were not as smart as he was, who didn’t think as clearly or see things as quickly as he did. There were some pilots who saw him as more of a professor than a pilot, and I think that hurt him politically. In that sense, he was out of step with some pilots, but by no means all of them.

The plain fact about Clancy Sayen is that he was not the kind of man who suffered a fool gladly, and consequently he made enemies. His air of intellectual superiority didn’t help matters either.

A number of people were pushing Sayen for the new executive vice-presidency after 1947. As we have seen, Behncke opposed the creation of the new office, and dragged his feet filling it. William P. Kilgore’s temporary appointment, begun in March 1947, lasted over two years. Not until May 1949 did Behncke finally choose Sayen from a large field that included several people who had been nominated but had no interest whatsoever in serving. Sayen desperately wanted the job. He was bored with being a copilot, Braniff was not growing, and Sayen wanted to work temporarily at what he hoped would be a more intellectually challenging job. He expected several more years as a copilot, and he hoped to kill at least a couple of them doing something more interesting than grinding back and forth between Dallas and Chicago in the right seat of a DC-6B. In early 1948, he had even applied for a federal government position.

After a considerable hassle with Braniff (which wanted to allow him only a three-month leave of absence), Sayen got permission to work for ALPA for a year. In August 1949, Sayen arrived in Chicago to assume his duties on a probationary basis at a salary of $8,000 per year. Sayen had been earning only $4,500 per year with Braniff.

Behncke’s inability to delegate authority was infamous. Still, ALPA was becoming so big that he simply couldn’t do everything himself, no matter how hard he tried. So Behncke found himself leaning more and more on Sayen, particularly for the routine things he didn’t like to do. Sayen rapidly developed into a capable executive assistant, working closely with Wally Anderson, who was very experienced. Together, Sayen and Anderson began a quiet revolution of efficiency in such mundane areas as bookkeeping and routine announcements and mailings to the councils. Behncke took a great personal liking to Sayen as the months passed. He often called Sayen into his office for “educational talks.” Although some people might have regarded these bull sessions as a waste of time, for Behncke they were therapeutic.

By February 1951, Behncke was writing letters of high praise to Sayen, informing him of his reelection to the executive vice-presidency. Sayen had cast his lot totally with ALPA by this point, formally resigning from Braniff. His presence accounted for much of ALPA’s effectiveness as Behncke declined in his final months.

Henry Weiss recalls Sayen’s work during this period:

I remember clearly that in the final months of the Behncke presidency Clancy just about single-handedly kept the ship afloat. Dave was closing avenues of negotiation and compromise, while Clancy kept working, very adroitly and diplomatically, to keep them open. There were certain issues where, if Dave thought something was not in the cards, he would just shut off contact with management, have absolutely no discussions with them. Clancy was developing relationships with airline management during this time. They were beginning to see that Sayen was a man they could deal with, while Behncke was not. With Sayen, they could work out difficult issues to everybody’s mutual benefit. With Dave, it was confrontation—total victory or total defeat.

Now, I do not for a moment want to give you the impression that Clancy was undercutting Behncke. Clancy was a genius at explaining issues, at rationalizing them, a very adept negotiator. Frequently he would subordinate his own views to Dave’s even when he was completely in disagreement with him, and argued Dave’s case very creditably and effectively—much better than Dave himself could have—so what I’m trying to say is that Clancy was loyal to Dave, completely so, I believe.

The Behncke ouster was very hard on Sayen. Not only was he living on a shoestring, frequently supported by what amounted to charity from his friends because ALPA’s finances were tied up in the courts, but also he had to contend with Dave Behncke’s enmity. There is ample evidence that Sayen was fond of Behncke and was hurt when Behncke tried to blame Sayen’s alleged personal ambition for the ouster. Sayen was hurt less because the allegations were untrue than because Behncke was obviously a man who needed help, both psychologically and physically. But there was nothing Sayen (or anybody else) could do to reach Behncke. So Sayen concentrated on righting ALPA’s listing ship, negotiating contracts, and settling grievances. There is some evidence that Sayen stayed with ALPA at this point only out of a sense of obligation. He was 32 in 1951 and obviously still interested in other career choices. His file of personal correspondence bulges with letters to his former professors, both at Northern Michigan and at Southern Methodist, in a wistful tone that indicates his career uncertainty. The lure of academic life was strong for him, and he was always a ready volunteer as a guest lecturer.

The first challenge facing Sayen was the 1952 convention. Despite the widespread support among pilots for Behncke’s ouster, there was no consensus that Sayen should replace him. Historically, ALPA had been a captains’ organization, and copilots were distinctly second-class citizens. Sayen was never more than a copilot, and moving directly into the ALPA presidency without ever having occupied the left seat was anathema to some pilots. Until 1938, copilots had the privilege of paying ALPA dues and not much else. After that, they received half a vote, but they could not serve as chairmen of either local or master executive councils, and there could not be more than one copilot on any ALPA standing committee. The discriminatory policy went back to the dawn of commercial aviation, when captains looked upon copilots as interlopers out to steal their jobs. By the end of World War II, the copilot was obviously not merely an apprentice, but a necessary member of the crew. Indeed, on some airlines, stagnant promotion lists made the career copilot a possibility. Recognizing this, ALPA dropped all discrimination against the second man in the cockpit, but residual prejudice against Sayen because he was “only a copilot” lingered for a long time and eventually made quite a lot of trouble for him, particularly on American Airlines (AAL).

Clancy Sayen faced his first challenge at the 1952 convention where Behncke formally “resigned” in return for his pension. Although a majority of delegates believed Sayen deserved a full term in the presidency because of the superb job he had done during the Behncke ouster, a substantial minority was determined to replace him. In a portent of trouble, the opposition to Sayen centered in the AAL group. The AAL pilots were strong critics of Dave Behncke, and they alone were responsible, many old-timers think, for driving Behncke into a defensive shell. “The American pilots got after Dave so hard on this mileage limitation thing after 1950,” says Jerry Wood, “that he had several sick spells.” In short, the AAL pilots entered the Sayen era already believing that their share of control over ALPA was less than fair.

In 1952, these vague and inchoate resentments surfaced in the candidacy of H. Bart Cox of AAL. Cox had had a long and distinguished career in ALPA. He had worked on virtually every important technical committee, and in 1947 President Truman had selected him to serve on the presidential commission on air safety. Bart Cox was a pilot’s pilot, a man who was widely respected, and if ALPA had needed a figurehead president, one who would preside symbolically while a corps of dedicated technicians ran ALPA, he would have been an ideal choice. But 1952 was such a crucial year for ALPA, coming as it did upon the heels of the Behncke ouster, that the consensus was that a figurehead president wouldn’t do. Whoever headed ALPA after 1952 would have to be a full-time executive who knew as much about administration as he did about flying, the delegates concluded.

“Clancy was a little reluctant to move into the top spot because he had never flown as a captain,” remembers Jerry Wood.

He was just a little ill at ease because he knew there was a wave out there in the membership that the place should be filled by a fellow with considerable experience. Because I was first vice-president and I had been flying for 24 years, Clancy tried to talk me into taking it. He very frankly told me that he was getting an adverse reaction, particularly from the pilots on American. I told him that in the past it might have been true that you needed pilots running things, but with the coming of more complicated equipment, more complicated negotiations, we had to have someone with more of a business and economics background. I argued that the pilots should be there as a backup to the president, to provide him with experience and guidance. The airlines weren’t being run by pilots anymore, so why should ALPA? He wanted the job and was willing to take it, but he was a little concerned. He said to me, “You take it for a term, and I will stay on as your executive vice-president.” I convinced him that wasn’t the way to go, that he should become president. Actually, I wasn’t the only one trying to convince him; there were lots of others. The decision to run Clancy against Bart Cox was a group decision. He was strongly supported by the TWA [Trans World Airlines], EAL, and PAA [Pan American World Airways] pilots.

I think the AAL pilots felt somewhat resentful toward us for that, but that goes back a long way, too. AAL was pretty much the mainstay of ALPA in the 1930s, and they more or less got used to the idea that they were the dominant airline. Even as early as 1944—and this is not generally known—Bart Cox had some tentative ideas about running against Dave. Two or three of us took Bart to dinner in 1944 and told him, “Maybe later, but not now.” The war was going on, and frankly Dave was doing a pretty good job. Then, of course, in 1947 Willis Proctor came along and did what Bart threatened to do in 1944. I think some AAL pilots resented that we had put a stop to Cox’s challenge in 1952.

Although Bart Cox’s candidacy in opposition to Sayen was the centerpiece of the 1952 convention’s politics, there were far more important matters afoot. Chief among them was finishing formally the reorganization of ALPA’s governance begun by the special investigating committee during the Behncke ouster. The Executive Board had mandated the investigating committee to study ways of “democratizing” ALPA’s structure. In the past, Behncke tended to rely on a few chosen insiders on each airline. This was hardly a conspiracy on his part, for the truth was that the average airline pilot then (and probably still) wasn’t overly interested in the day-to-day running of ALPA. Behncke tended to do things undemocratically because that was the way most pilots wanted them done—so long as there was no fuss, there would be no bother about whether things were done “dictatorially.” The investigating committee probed these questions before recommending a series of changes designed to allow more direct participation in ALPA’s governance by rank-and-file members.

Dean Barnette of Hughes Airwest, the junior member of the investigating committee, remembers the dilemma of “democratization”:

Everybody is in favor of “democracy.” When things go bad people say, “Give us back our democracy.” ALPA is the same way. Unfortunately, my experience with that committee was that we found that people had not gotten involved in ALPA because they didn’t want to. The deeper I probed, the less I found that Dave Behncke was a dictator, although he had certainly manipulated the bylaws to make his position more secure. Often we found that important changes in the bylaws had been made on the last day of the convention at midnight when everybody was tired and didn’t fully understand what was happening. But that was really the way people wanted it; they just didn’t want to be bothered.

Nevertheless, Sayen felt obligated to ruthlessly “democratize” ALPA’s structure, even though it would require years of work to bring this ideal to fruition. At the 1952 convention, Sayen told the delegates that a complete revision of the ALPA Constitution and By-Laws would require many months of careful study. The goal of this revision, he insisted, was “positive control by the membership:”

That, however, imposes a great responsibility. Sometimes I wonder if the members are entirely ready to live with democracy. It takes more participation and alertness. Decisions by the majority have to stand despite the disgruntled member who calls the national officer in the middle of the night and says, “My council is completely wrong, they don’t know what they are talking about, and you have to do something about it.” We cannot have democracy and have government by influence. Some members aren’t yet ready to live with democracy, but I think the vast majority are.

Young Clancy Sayen had no way of knowing that his battle to democratize and “reform” ALPA would never really end.

The most pressing task confronting Sayen was contract negotiations, and not just on current equipment. It was obvious that jet equipment was coming. Unless ALPA did a lot of advance spadework, the professional airline pilot would enter the jet age at a grave bargaining disadvantage. Sayen was instrumental in the creation of what would ultimately be ALPA’s single most important tool for coping with jets—the jet pay study committee.

The necessity for pilot involvement in the development of jet design criteria and operating standards was already apparent by 1953. Sayen promoted the activities of ALPA pilot committees and staff engineers who met with government representatives to present the pilots’ viewpoint before certification of the first jets for U.S. commercial operation. By 1955, the emphasis of ALPA’s concern had switched from operations to the impact of the jet transition on pilot pay and working conditions. A resolution to form an official committee to study the jet pay question was recommended by the Executive Committee meeting in January 1956 and approved by the Board of Directors in February. By March the “Turbo-Prop and Jet Study Committee” (TPJSC) had been formed and had begun preparing a report that became the most important issue of the 1956 convention. Eight pilots with wide experience served on the TPJSC: Jerry Wood (EAL), Tom Latta (AAL), Ed Tappe (United Airlines [UAL]), John Carroll (TWA), Dick O’Neill (Northwest Airlines [NWA]), Grant LeRoux (PAA), Charley Barnes (UAL), and Bobby Rohan (National Airlines).

TPJSC prepared a 124-page report that each of the 247 delegates received when they arrived in Chicago for the November 5–12 meeting. TPJSC had employed a respected consultant, the economist S. Herbert Unterberger, for advice in its report on wage theory, collective bargaining, and the relative economic status of the airline pilot of the future. Professor Unterberger attended the convention, and two full days were taken up considering the TPJSC report, with Unterberger himself answering questions at length.

Economist Unterberger provided mathematical rationales for increasing pilot compensation based on the concept of increased responsibility. As Unterberger correctly pointed out, salaries in American industry are directly related to unionization and the strength of the bargaining agent. By 1956, a considerable number of airline pilots felt they had fallen behind badly, in a relative sense. “I don’t think pilots are making enough money, and I feel even more strongly about economists,” Unterberger said to laughter from the delegates.

Unterberger made clear to the delegates that wage increases had to be gradual and steady—not all at once, even for jets. Following his advice, TPJSC had recommended abandoning the “ultimatum system of negotiating” and gearing the new system to existing reciprocating engine equipment. This did not mean that pilots would abandon the strike threat. The AAL pilots, who were openly hostile to the report because it did not provide a big enough initial raise or enough time off, argued that they were 85 percent in favor of “throwing down the gauntlet” to management. As John Carroll of TWA (who would later contend for the ALPA presidency in 1962 after Sayen’s resignation) said, “I am a member of this committee, I participated fully in all its meetings, and I subscribe to all its findings. I tell you frankly that no one can say that I am not in favor of using a strike vote and, if necessary, a strike. Believe me, that is not implied [in the TPJSC report].”

The 1956 convention approved the complex formula for negotiating jet contracts. The delegates knew it would be difficult and time consuming to return to their local councils to attempt a full explanation. It would be far better, they thought, to have members of the committee explain the report. Jerry Wood has vivid memories of the first “road show,” the cross-country trip he and other members of TPJSC took:

One of the most difficult problems was making pilots see that the increment method, where you get paid a unit of pay for a unit of work, was the way to go. There were so many ideas about having flat salaries or having it all tied to the payload of the airplane, all kinds of crazy ideas. I say crazy because they wouldn’t work. Some very sincere and intelligent guys would advance them, but they hadn’t had a chance to think them through. We had to demonstrate that the structure could accommodate any amount of money that would be negotiated, based on increased responsibility and productivity. We had some charts which projected an initial jet pay scale of $35,000 a year, based on speed and weight. This looked like a pretty impressive increase to people flying the DC-7, which paid about $16,000 a year.

Despite the careful work, not everybody was satisfied with the report. The AAL group was particularly upset and, in a first hint at the split that was to come in 1963, appointed its own jet study committee. “They came out with an awful shallow job of investigating things,” Jerry Wood says. “They just sat down and wrote out their feelings. It was about eight pages long. We had spent time, visited every factory—Lockheed, Douglas, Boeing, Consolidated. The American pilots were just pretty much against everything unless they could run it, but they eventually voted for it.”

One of Sayen’s hallmarks as an administrator was careful follow-up. It was one thing to negotiate a fine contract, but it was another to make sure that management adhered to it on a daily basis. Likewise, it was one thing to form a splendid negotiating tool like the TPJSC report, but it was quite another to keep it continually updated. To that end, Sayen oversaw the creation of a permanent successor to TPJSC, called the Wages and Working Conditions Policy Committee, to conduct “further and continuing evaluational study” of wages and working conditions. Its seven members, appointed by the Executive Committee, reported to both the president and the Board of Directors. In January 1957 the Executive Committee appointed Jerry Wood of EAL, Carl Cochran of Ozark, Dick O’Neill of NWA, John Carroll of TWA, Ed Tappe and Charley Barnes of UAL, and Jack Christie of the headquarters staff. All but Cochran had served on TPJSC. These ALPA heavyweights would, over the next few years, lay down a solid corpus of doctrine that has guided contract negotiations ever since.

Some of the most enduring work of TPJSC was in the area of crew complement. What were the crew complement issue’s origins, and why did the men who ran ALPA in the 1950s consider it to be crucial? Clarence Sayen would back his Wages and Working Conditions Policy Committee to the hilt on crew complement, even to the extent of nearly getting ALPA thrown out of the American Federation of Labor and handing the AAL dissidents the weapon that they would ultimately use as an excuse to secede from ALPA.

Clancy Sayen beat back the challenge of yet another AAL pilot in 1956, this time Wiley Drummond, but it was almost his last victory.

“They had become paranoid about Sayen,” says Roy Dooley of his fellow AAL pilots. Dooley explains:

From about 1955 on they were convinced Sayen was out to get them, and the crew complement thing was a big part of it. They were just using it to take an action that the leadership group, Shipley, Cox, Drummond, the rest of them, had already determined that they would take. Drummond always wanted to be president of ALPA. I knew him well, flew copilot with him. He had worked hard for ALPA, and he thought he deserved the presidency in 1956. The trouble was he hadn’t counted his votes, hadn’t done his homework, and that was typical of the American leadership. So he didn’t get rid of Sayen, and right after that he jumped in bed with management as the vice-president of flight. Keep in mind that management was doing everything it could to get the AAL pilots out, because they knew Sayen was sharp and smooth at the same time, and he could really turn them inside out.

Management didn’t like it, and the good old country boys running the AAL master executive council didn’t like it either. They were always somewhat more militant in the 1950s about striking than any other pilot group. They liked to pass hairy-chested resolutions, and they were very exasperating to deal with. That wasn’t Sayen’s style. Oh yeah, he was gonna have trouble with them over crew complement, that was sure.

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