Free enterprise, competition, capitalism, financial management.
Gentlemen - the roller coaster is coming to end of the track and the free ride is over - not saying that it was an especially enjoyable experience.
USAirways is just "playing the game". This is high stakes poker. CHQ said "no" to J4J if I read all the news correctly. The WO's don't want this shoved down their throat. The Mesa guys are talking about it, but their undercurrent is to say "no".
So then you look down the road to RDU and see an airline company that's going flat on its back after the 9/11 money runs out. What if you buy them out? They will do anything for a buck or to save a job right now. J4J sounds perfect to Midway mgmt. They stay afloat and they make their new customer very happy.
The USAirways message to all of the WO's and partners is this: "play ball or get cut out". CHQ says no but is buffered by the new Delta Connection contract. But they arent going to feel too good if USAirways says "sorry, we no longer need your services - Midway will be getting your lines." Mesa will get the message and play ball. So now USAirways has J4J working and turns to the WO's: "Are you guys going to play ball or do we cut you out (they ask)?"
It's a good hand with a bluff and a call to boot. I applaude USAirways business accumen but this stuff is hard to take when you are a union member. With the old contract with US Airways ALPA, the company in Crystal City had no wiggle room to stay in business - they were hosed - couldn't get smaller jets to compete with everyone else - they need this J4J contract to work so that they can get labor costs and fleet costs down.
As to us and our look to ALPA. Well as an old business man, I figured their game out a long time ago. My local MEC has one charter and one charter only - maximize the number of dues paying members. Period. They are almost a business. They need income and it is completely derived by increasing the size of the membership. Ergo, anything which creates more jobs is a plus. There is no loyalty to seniority. There is no loyalty to major vs. RJ. There is no real requirement for them to look out for your best interest (other than they have to create just enough incentive to "keep" you as a member - i.e. not voting them out).
J4J creates jobs. It gets people off of furlough, it keeps USAirways from going under, it creates all those "other" seat positions that will sit in the 300 RJ's that still have to be delivered.
I'm sure in the larger plan, US Airways still has a place for one "prop" carrier. Heck, somebody has to provide service for Hagerstown, MD and Cumberland, MD. Are you going to run a 50 seat RJ in there? No. The same for hundreds of small communities. So you keep one of the WO's (let's say ALG) with their Dash fleet and you spread them out to all the "small" towns and cities. (US Airways practically has a monopoly on that stuff anyway.) Then you have your 300 RJ's and the rest of the Airbus and 767 fleet. Nice blueprint if you can just keep those pesky pilots from creating a single group that would raise salaries.
This is business at it's best (but also it's worst). The organism which is a corporation wants to live and grow. It does this by lowering expenses and raising income - the best business model is to deliver a "quality" product for the lowest cost to produce at a perceived premium or "luxury" price. A corporation lives to maximize the wealth of a stockholder. Employees are an expense and always will be.
So don't be surprised by what you see. It's just the business model at work. Your response should be to remind your union that their charter is not necessarily to keep making more dollars by inviting in more members but to represent the members in COLLECTIVE bargaining for the good of all. Their job should be to maximize YOUR wealth by fighting for strong contracts and protecting your jobs. This will take cooperation by all pilots under the same union.
I've watched Philly teachers get every thing they want every September by simply working together and not showing up for the first day of class. I watched as the trash collectors in Quebec told the citizens just exactly what they wanted. Ever look to England and what exactly an english coal miner gets in the way of compensation? We need to start studying strong unions and then become one.
You may fire away. I'm just the messenger, though. Business is business and employees can either represent themselves or elect to have collective bargaining. This is how the world turns.
