Are you talking about what your company is doing right now with the AT guys on the 737? Why different pay on same plane type? Shame on you and your union for agreeing to that. That is outsourcing. If not, tell me why? You can't.
Bye Bye---General Lee
Really?
You keep saying "tell me why." Then people keep telling you why. Then you pretend that no one ever said anything about it, so you can keep pretending that you have an actual argument.
AirTran pilots get the payscale that their union negotiated for the type of flying that their airline does. That's how much salary can be afforded based on that airline's business model. It's that friggin' simple. That the airline now has a new owner doesn't change the type of airline that it is, nor how much expenses can be borne by the business's revenue plan. Are you really that dense?
Everyone who has a Southwest ID gets paid from the same payscale. Everyone who flies a plane that says "Southwest Airlines" gets paid from the same payscale. If anyone even puts a friggin' four-foot diameter
sticker that says "Southwest Airlines" on a
different airline's plane, their pilots get the same pay; or else we grieve it.
And win. That precedent has been set. An acquired airline has an outsourced feed with RJs? It's terminated ASAP: just as soon as the already-sold tickets were honored, it's gone. That precedent has
also already been set.
The current codeshare with AirTran is solely to capture money during the transition to an all-SWA fleet, to help fund future growth based of ROIC. It has a limited lifespan based on the absorption of AirTran, and ends at the end of 2014, along with AirTran as an airline. SWAPA
allowed this one-time codeshare waiver solely to facilitate this absorption. Your airline (and others) do numerous outsourcing codeshares as a
primary tenet of their business models--to avoid paying your higher wages to
all the pilots who carry
your passengers. It is permanent and enduring, and without it, these companies' business model would not work.
The previous near-international codeshare with Volaris is over. That type of codeshare was limited to that one company,
by name, and to 2% decreasing to 1% ASMs (as opposed to 40-50% ASM outsourcing that legacies do). And it was only for minor flying that we weren't ready (or legally allowed) to do. Now it's gone, not to be replaced by
anyone.
To pretend that any of that is even remotely similar to what most other airlines do (incl yours) is laughable. And by "laughable," I mean that every time you make that same inane argument when you have nothing else to say, people laugh at you.
Got it yet? Probably not. I'm sure that next week, you'll pretend once again that your same tired schtick is somehow
again an unchallenged new argument, in an attempt to deflect from any criticism leveled about codesharing or outsourcing done by any other airline. Certainly there are valid criticisms one can level about Southwest Airlines. But codeshare, outsourcing, and scope are not on this list.
Please, General, do us
all a favor--think up some new material for your comic routine.
Bubba
