Anti union pilots.....I don't get it.

[SKYWRJGUY]

1) Why would Mesa need to fire anybody when their attrition rate is up near 30% (I heard about 500 of 1700 pilots). Of course, with firing comes the cost of hiring and training, so I can see why companies are so eager to fire people: they want to spend additional money in hiring and training replacements, not to mention absorbing costs associated with termination. If all companies fired everybody, they'd be loaded with cash.

"Spoken with plenty of Airways pilots. Most of them are completely ignorant and are just trying to pin blame for their problems on someone else, even though they need to be looking in the mirror to see who it really is who caused their seniority issues"

2) A year ago these guys were probably lauded for being club members, but now they're trying to oust ALPA (or the likes), all of a sudden they're ignorant. For 20+ years they were brilliant, then they got the dumb pill. If management could just fire all them, and hire replacements (consistent w/ [1] above), the company would be rolling in the money.

So long as employees think management is out to get them, management will seem to be out to get them.

 

[Rez O. Lewshun]

So long as employees think management is out to get them, management will seem to be out to get them.

That is an insult to every pilot at UAL and DAL that has taken huge concessions.. which kept those carriers alive and kept your job, if not provided security for your job. How disrespectful and ungrateful.

 

[PCL_128]

For 20+ years they were brilliant, then they got the dumb pill.

No, most union members are completely ignorant about how ALPA works, how the RLA works, what their contract says, etc.... It's not just Airways guys. It's a pandemic.

 

[antisocialist]

Can anyone here give me an example of a successful union industry? Can anyone here give me an example of a non-union industry where highly trained professionals have been forced by management into a "race for the bottom" and are now working for minimum wage? Pilots in general, and union pilots in particular, live in a vacuum. Only in a union industry can destroying your own company be the way to greater pay. God forbid you should actually work harder and smarter for more pay. We wouldn't want a merit system in America, now would we? Can you just imagine a bunch of non-union professionals (i.e. technology, medicine, law, finance, accounting, etc.) sitting around bitching that "management is out to get us!" "We should perform really poorly until they give us a pay raise!" Or any other socialist nonsense that comes out of pilot mouths?

 

[pilotyip]

Unions have a place

Can anyone here give me an example of a successful union industry? Can anyone here give me an example of a non-union industry where highly trained professionals have been forced by management into a "race for the bottom" and are now working for minimum wage? Pilots in general, and union pilots in particular, live in a vacuum. Only in a union industry can destroying your own company be the way to greater pay. God forbid you should actually work harder and smarter for more pay. We wouldn't want a merit system in America, now would we? Can you just imagine a bunch of non-union professionals (i.e. technology, medicine, law, finance, accounting, etc.) sitting around bitching that "management is out to get us!" "We should perform really poorly until they give us a pay raise!" Or any other socialist nonsense that comes out of pilot mouths?

I am a union realist. I am ex-union ALPA and Teamsters, both companies Transamerica and Zantop out of business. I have seen what unions can do and what they can not do. Unions are why we have many of he working rules at union and non-union airlines. From what I have seen unions protect the weak performers. At profitable companies, NJ and UPS, FedEx unions can ensure that management shares with its employees. At marginal companies unions can not make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear. Whenever I see the, militant union talk on this board I go back to my union companies that went out of business and inject a note caution.

 

[Rez O. Lewshun]

Can anyone here give me an example of a successful union industry? Can anyone here give me an example of a non-union industry where highly trained professionals have been forced by management into a "race for the bottom" and are now working for minimum wage? Pilots in general, and union pilots in particular, live in a vacuum. Only in a union industry can destroying your own company be the way to greater pay. God forbid you should actually work harder and smarter for more pay. We wouldn't want a merit system in America, now would we? Can you just imagine a bunch of non-union professionals (i.e. technology, medicine, law, finance, accounting, etc.) sitting around bitching that "management is out to get us!" "We should perform really poorly until they give us a pay raise!" Or any other socialist nonsense that comes out of pilot mouths?

It is what it is.....

One can argue that we are simply hourly blue collar workers.. if that is what we want to be we can do that...

If we want to define ourselves in more of a professional status we can do that too....

Which pill? The blue one?

 

[antisocialist]

Pilotyip,

Thank you for a polite, logical and respectful reply. All too rare from union supporters.

Thanks,
Antisocialist

 

[antisocialist]

It is what it is.....

One can argue that we are simply hourly blue collar workers.. if that is what we want to be we can do that...

If we want to define ourselves in more of a professional status we can do that too....

Which pill? The blue one?

Here's how unions define us as simply hourly blue collar workers: Date of hire seniority lists.

Here's how to define ourselves in more of a professional status: Abolish seniority lists and pay based on education, training, experience, and professional accomplishments.

Why does a furloughed pilot with 10,000 hours and a pocket full of type ratings get paid $19/hour sitting in the right seat at a regional just like a 300 hour CFI? It is completely illogical. If you could move into the a comparable paying position with another company think of the power you would have. If you didn't like your pay and working conditions at airline ABC then you could move to ariline XYZ without starting over. Do you think that if an account manager from Deloitte and Touche crossed over to Ernst & Young that he would have to start over as an intern? That's what our industry does.

It'll never happen in my lifetime but it would have the same positive effect on our industry that it has had on every other industry in the free world.

 

[SkyNation]

antisocialist,

you're speaking with WAY too much sense and insight for this board and the majority of it's audience

 

[antisocialist]

Sorry SkyNation, I just keep thinking I have heard this economic theory somewhere before. Oh yeah, now I remember. Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto, "Workers of the World Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.” It didn't work for Russia and Eastern Europe, and it won't work for us.