Thought I'd chime in with some of my dissertation from the other Mesa thread since we have a bunch of "informed" Mesa-bashers here too. I love cut and paste technology.
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Originally posted by mckpickle
Sorry, but when one group makes it so much harder for the rest of us why should we? The Freedom air excuse is BS. Ornstien could not have gotten Freedom up and running fast enough to avert a strike.
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I think it's great when people talk about things they know very little about. JO could not have gotten Freedom up and running fast enough? What are you talking about, Willis? It was up. It was running. At the time we voted on our contract in March, 2003 Freedom had already been in operation for four to five months, were on a delivery schedule of two to three airplanes per month, had over a hundred trained pilots, and training ten to twelve additional pilots per delivered aircraft. If we had sent the TA back to the negotiating table Freedom still would have been a major thorn in our side (and yours) only now a much bigger thorn.
If, down the road, our NC and the company came to an impasse and we went on strike, it would have been at least a few months later and Freedom would have been a company of 20+ aircraft and 200+ pilots and still growing, and do you think Mesa Air Group would have any misgivings about moving assets from Mesa to Freedom?
How's this for an alternate (and speculative) history? We Mesa pilots went on strike in the Summer of 2003. A few hundred Mesa ALPA pilots were instantly furloughed. MAG announces plans to transfer aircraft from the Mesa cert to Freedom's at the rate of x per month and lease out the rest. A few months later, Mesa still on strike, Freedom is a company of 40+ aircraft, and that is no position to be in at a bargaining table. Begging, maybe, but not bargaining. Of course, this is only what might have happened internally at MAG. Externally, all of you other regionals would have to contend not with the Mesa contract but with Freedom's. And you all know their contract... there wasn't one. Low pay, no work rules, no anything.
You whine about how terrible it is having your QOL brought down by the Mesa contract? In an obscure round-about-way, perhaps you should be thanking us for agreeing to the contract we have, putting Freedom to bed before the bleeding got so bad that there was an unchecked growing regional of substantial size with both low pay and no union that all regionals would be subsequently compared to during negotiations, getting 100+ ALPA CC Air pilots, who were screwed by MAG, back to work with upward potential, and making the improvements we managed to make (including guaranteed pay raises of 15-30% over the life of the contract) in a horrible negotiating environment.
So, to the critics, you're welcome.
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Originally posted by mckpickle
Actually I know the situation quite well thank you. Freedom had been running with only around 5-6 airplanes when you took your vote. ANd a total of 87 pilots. How do you think MAG was financing these airplanes. If you had gone on strike and or voted that POS TA down the ability to gain financing would have been down the tubes. And listen to JO's Voice mail. He's allways talking about how hard it is to get financing.
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I understand what you're saying. It's a valid point, but you make it sound like our TA vote was a strike vote. It wasn't. A lot more time would have had to have passed before a strike actually came to life. If we sent the TA back, months would have passed, another TA would have come to vote, and then like I said before, Freedom would be a more viable entity. Then the second TA gets voted down, we enter a cooling-off (if the NMB likes us that day and we're lucky) and before you know it it's August or September or later. The trouble with Freedom was that it was not only a phantom threat. It was real. It was happening. MAG was going to fly the 700s and 900s with or without us, and every day counted.
(I need one every once in awhile)
