It is always a mistake to make an industrial point backed up with a safety argument. This is a clear principle behind all of the positions ECA takes. But however hard we seek to separate the two areas of our work, there are always occasions when they uncomfortably co-exist.

Next week ECA will host a press event with our cousins from the USA, ALPA. We will jointly make a clear argument about jobs: Appropriate industrial relations structures must be included in the package of legislation or agreements which provide for economic liberalisation. If they are not, then we risk the loss of the competitive edge which made Europe and the USA the most economically successful continents and risk reintroducing the industrial turmoil associated with the establishment of those rights. Our rich history clearly tells us that workers will not stand by and see their jobs downgraded and their work outsourced to countries with cheaper labour markets without a fight.

But there is another effect of not supporting independent professional representation in key workforces such as flight crew, and that is the loss of their enormously important contribution to aviation safety. IFALPA and IATA are the only permanent observers to ICAO, and their contributions are much greater than the word 'observer' implies. ECA dedicates the majority of its effort and resources to supporting EASA (and previously the JAA) rulemaking tasks, supplying experts and 'front line' experience to ensure the goal of an ever safer industry. I do not believe it is a coincidence that the two continents with the lowest aviation accident rates are the two continents with the most active professional pilot associations.

So if professional pilot associations are undermined, both safety and industrial abilities are undermined:

• The ability to support and improve the industry's fantastic safety record, to address our members' safety concerns is undermined – a loss not only to professional pilots, but to passengers and all others in the industry, too.
• The ability to support good personnel management methods, representing our members' industrial concerns; and the consequent loss of effective change management and social cohesiveness is also undermined.

These are two separate and distinctive arguments – we will never mix the industrial and safety concerns – but nonetheless they stem from the same source: the concern that social regulation is lagging behind economic liberalisation and the whole industry will be poorer because of it.