“$3000 per day! That's what we send to IBT, day in - day out. Every day that we delay, we just add to the coffers in DC.”
NJASAP Leadership
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Wait just a minute, folks.
Before we join the ranks of dis-organized labor, let’s slow down and consider something other than our own parochial interests. While it’s easy to say that we are sending $3000 a day out of our direct control, it may be a little rash to say that we receive no benefit. The IBT has many locals and many concerns. It is fighting for the wages and working conditions of more than just 1108. While we may not see our $3000 per day working within our own walls, it would not be true to say that we’ve received no benefit.
A juggernaut is rolling down the streets paved by organized labor. This juggernaut’s siren-call is “keep your money in-house and fight your own battles!”
This call is reverberating throughout the airline industry, and I suppose elsewhere as well.
Before we further fragment labor we need to carefully analyze if our long term goals are really best served by disassociating ourselves from organized labor. Are we succumbing to the allure of short term goals by sacrificing long term strength and labor solidarity?
When the ALPA represented the majority of airline pilots, the APA and then the SWAPA gleefully pulled the plug and saved themselves a bundle by “going it alone”. For awhile this worked, but as more and more airlines are dropping ALPA, its strength has been sapped and we are seeing labor falling further and further behind in political strength and having fewer and fewer friendly courts.
Is it a mystery why the 121 guys are making less than 50% of what they were making a few years ago? It took the ALPA years to build the political base it enjoyed, but it took only eight years for it to become impotent.
Ladies and gentlemen, we do not operate in a labor-management world of our own, long-term. Yes, today, we are enjoying the fruits of a management that cares about the company, the customers and the employees. We really don’t need anything but a loose association to represent us. However, when RTS is dead, gone and forgotten and the “money boys” come, just as they did to USAir, Emory, United, Delta…who will we turn to when we need some horsepower? Ourselves? Try those “strong union” tactics against a vicious management backed by courts staffed and paid for by big business! Watch the injunctions come down and the individual pilots fired. Watch the bankruptcy court take everything you’ve worked a career for! Ask me how I know.
Think our little union is tough? Ha!
When the NetJets’ pilot scope clause is violated and foreign pilots are flying “our” planes because cabotage is pushed through, will the IBT be there when we need some “big guns”?
Is the IBT ideal? NO! Is the ALPA a panacea? NO! Do they need to change? Yes? Are we going to change them by going it on our own? NO!
Before we throw out what has taken years to build, let us look before we leap! If Bill Olsen wants to start a new national union of pilots that will include every pilot who earns his living by flying, this may be a great first step. ALPA’s formula is badly broken; the IBT maybe worse. But if Bill Olsen is merely trying to save $3000 per day by abandoning organized labor, he had better think before he leads his trusting sheep over the precipice.
I can't imagine that the NJ pilots would elect to remain with the IBT, especially after Hoffa's letter to the pilotgroup. To give you just one example among many aggravating ones...Hoffa gave credit for the 2007 IBB contract to the Teamsters when the national wasn't even aware that negotiations were taking place. (bet 1108 would have heard from them if the dues were late) Then after learning of the NJ pilots' success they failed to give them even one word of credit/congratulations in their monthly magazine... 
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