Worse than crossing a picket line. Flying the EMB 190 for 55 dollars in the left seat and 30 in the right seat is worse than a scab. Just look at the jetblue payrates. Good luck. I hope you have fun flying with the real midwest express pilots and try explaining to them why you under cut them and destroyed their airline.
First, flying for lower pay is NOT worse than being a scab. Wait until you work for an airline that strikes and your co-workers abandon you. Then come here and tell me which is worse.
Secondly, NO ONE is flying the 190 for $55/hr left seat. I know that our rates that apply to the 190 (they were never "190 rates") are low. The problem is that the rate that applies to the 190 also applies to 76 seat aircraft. When RAH was flying 50 and 70-ish seaters only, no one singled us out for low rates because our rates were on par with most other operators of 50 and 70 seat airframes. Our rates WERE industry standard given where we came from and when. Yes, I know Fokker F28 pay in the 80's was better. Et cetera, et cetera. We all know our rates need improving. And we are currently pursuing every legal option available to us to improve our pay rates. I honestly don't feel ashamed working under the first non-concessionary contract of the post 9/11 era. Its old, its outdated, and it is being ammended. The process takes time, especially in the modern era. When this contract was signed, contracts did not take 4-5 years to negotiate. They do now. Improvement is not going to be here soon, but it is coming. We are doing everything we can. If you are able to appoint some labor-friendly judges to the bench, be my guest. That would help us out greatly. If you can't appoint new judges, then I guess you are just going to have to wait.
And as for explaining to Midwest pilots why I undercut them...get bent. The rates I am paid were established seven and a half years BEFORE Midwest and RAH first crossed paths. When these pay rates were established, not one single person, at RAH OR Midwest, ever thought that our pilot groups would be pitted against each other. In 2003, CHQ was a nobody. Getting E170's was akin to getting CRJ 700's, which was the expansion hope of all the regionals at the time. And in that time, not a single regional ever tried to acquire and/or strong arm a major carrier. What RAH management has done in the past year is untried, unproven, and probably unwise. Eight years ago, no one saw this as a potential outcome. There was never an intent to undercut a major airline's work group. So stop making this out to be some intentional act by RAH pilots. Threats like scope were addressed in our current contract because those were the known and likely issues at the time. Had we ever though that we would be directly replacing a major airline, our contract would have addressed that, and our pay scale would have been structured differently.
You have a brain. Give it a minute to do its job BEFORE you spew garbage. You might be surprised how rational you could sound.
