And there would not be any problems with senior pilots at an airline who found themselves junior on the national list, and upgrade positions at their airline would be filled from the national list and not the company list?
That right there is a HUGE portion of the problem, Art. The focus has gone from Quality to Quantity (of money, for the shareholders.) It's all a numbers game. If you can't return a 20% year over year profit for the shareholder, your company is a failure. That philosophy is contributing to the downfall of the industry (and US Economy) in terms of quality.
I am a sharholder in about 5,000 companies as far as I can guess. My funds managers buy and sell for me, it is an important part of my retirement since all of my airlines have gone out of business and I have no pension. 20% please, the airlines are happy with 2% or 3% on gross revenue. BTW in the end the consumer determines what an airline's profits will be, quality does not sell, cheap seats do.
It's not an easy position to take, but I'd take long term stability with a company over Dot Com Booms followed by Dot Com Busts.
But what is the real cost? On the whole, the airline sector makes a small portion of the pie. On the Macrolevel, it's the consumer that ultimately pays for their own greed in the form of lower wages.
Written over 200 yrs ago, still applies today. Rule #1 everyone will look out for thier onw best interest in any economic exchange.
I created the pie. The pie doesn't exist without my labor.
So what role does management have in pie making, the pan? the ingredients?, the oven?, the serving spoons. Your labour would be unneeded and unproductive without the rest of the ingredients. BTW how about the ALPA brothers doing it to each other in the proposed NWA/DAL merger, NWA pilots in DTW sounded mighty unhappy about being stapled at 1 to 4 ratio by the follow ALPA DAL buddies.
