[YOU ARE WRONG! No bankruptcy judge can make you go to work!
True. But he can fine you into oblivion. Or you can have a mass resignation of pilots to get around the order to work. Neither are realistic solutions.
If the pilots decided to unify and show solidarity, you'd see real power! United we stand divided we fall! We have fallen pretty far because of a lack of unity.
That's true, but there is no unity across the industry. And even if we were able to cobble something together, there would always be another JetBlue, Allegiant, Skybus, Virgin, etc., to come in and undercut you.
Take a lesson from the teachers union in Detroit who were ordered back to work when they sought self help. They continued with their self help and paid their fine!
Unfortunately there's a difference between pilots and teachers. With respect to the teachers, there isn't a ready, willing, and able supply of people willing to work for less than half the going rate of a teacher's salary without a pension. If there was, I imagine that strike would have turned out differently. With pilots, there are plenty of guys willing to work for far less than the going rate, back then and now.
Living in fear of protecting what you've worked so hard for? Why do airline personel live this way? I say again, if the termination of pensions wasn't enough to unite the pilots in this country and stand up for what is right, then we are in trouble! Management knows there are suckers out there that live in fear and wont take a stand. ALPA, NPA, SWAPA, APA. One voice is great power!
That's all well and good, but unfortunately not realistic in the U.S. airline industry. Look no further that all the people on this forum who think ALPA lost their pensions or their jobs, as if it was part of some grand plan to screw over their members. And guys on this forum are probably slightly more educated than the line guy that doesn't even get bad information from an aviation forum.
And I wouldn't say most guys live in fear of anything. In my opinion, the problem with today's union guy is this: we have to be good unionists, and we have to be realistic businessmen. Let me explain using my airline's bankruptcy as an example.
Let's say the UAL pilot group going through bankruptcy was 100% absolutely unified. So unified that it scared the crap out of everyone- management, bankers, and the other employee groups. We were so unified that every other employee group on the property had to take a cut, but when it came for us to give up our share, we said not only no, but he11 no. Everyone was so intimidated by our strength and unity that everyone took cuts except us. The UAL pilot group, in reality, gave 1.1B/year in concessions (pay, work rules, pensions) to the company. But because we were 100% absolutely unified in this example, we didn't give up one dime. No furloughs. Nothing.
Good, right? That's what a theoretical perfect union is all about, right? Well, here's where we have to be good businessmen. Now let's say that despite our unwillingness to take cuts that the banks actually gave us exit financing so we could exit bankruptcy. It wouldn't have happened in real life, but let's say in this hypothetical that pilot unity scared the crap out of the banks and they gave us exit financing anyway and UAL exits bankruptcy.
So here's UAL exiting bankruptcy in Feb of '06 with 1.1B dollars of extra pilot costs per year because the pilots would give up nothing. Take a look at the 8K's filed since we have exited bankruptcy. We're barely profitable. For the most part, that's true for just about all the legacies. Now add 1.1B in extra costs to our bottom line- or anyone's bottom line. We'd be in a deep hole with about 2-3 years to live maximum while we burn through cash. Sure, we're making industry leading wages with a pension and good work rules (good pilot's union, right?). But it's totally unsustainable. The LCC's would smell blood in the water and we'd be dead. Any legacy would be. 10's of thousands of people would be out of a job. Did ALPA do a good job being a "strong 100% unified union" in this example?
So UAL ALPA is totally screwed. So is US Air ALPA. So is DAL ALPA. Or whoever ALPA. They can agree to either be 100% unified and take no cuts whatsoever and watch their airlines slowly die as LCC's totally undercut them and put ALL of its ALPA members out of a job, or they can furlough, take cuts, lose pensions, and adapt to the new LCC reality of crappy pay, crappy work rules that require less pilots on the property, and no pensions.
That's why it's pretty annoying to me when guys say they hate ALPA for not "saving their jobs" or "saving the pensions" or "not standing together" or "insert issue here." As if ALPA (or any union for that matter) could somehow keep ANYONE's pay or work rules or pension or job in the new LCC environment that, in my opinion, reached a critical mass in the late 90's. So you guys can bash ALPA, call it "alpo" or whatever, but I don't see how these legacy jobs/pay/workrules/pensions could have been saved nor how it is ALPA's fault that they weren't. Rant over, I guess.
Just like asking a democrat for the solution to world problems (PC version)
