SCABS and the industry.

[Hugh Jorgan]

Publishers,

I see again, you fail to answer my questions. You have given a lot of thought to your posts, and I won't begin to pretend to be a businessman, but your first posts in this thread indicated an approval of scabs crossing the line. You haven't said anything here that pursuades me to change my thinking on that subject. Your silence when posed with the direct questions regarding that subject speak volumes. Many factors affect the success or failure of a given business. A scab will contribute directly to the failure of any collective bargaining. Maybe you can show me I'm wrong, but I don't think so.

 

[Publishers]

Thought I did

What I said was that I did not have any problem with collective bargaining but thought the process would work better with in house unions representing all three labor groups.

Secondly, as United showed to some extent, the ability to strike any of the significant carriers today is almost becoming mute. Literally none of them can stand even a slowdown. It is that fact that led to acceptance of a United contract that was killing the golden goose. Furthermore the threat of strike drove the business clients away in droves. A couple of United pilots asked me after the contract was ratified could the carrier pay these amounts.

What I am saying is that if one wants to keep this vicious cycle going, then we need to keep on just like we are. It is what happens when jobs are unionized that were never intended to be. Why don't we unionize astronauts.

 

[MW44]

Publisher,

I'm out the door so I can't respond to your entire post but I'll elaborate on Dave Siegal. His contract had a specific stipulation that said if he got all of the mainline unions to take pay cuts then he was entitled to a bonus equal to 3 times his base salary! Now what are you communicating to your employees with that contract? Sorry guys you poor slobs make 30k per year working the gate but if I can get you to take a paycut I get a 2 million dollar bonus. Whatever idiots put that language in his contract deserve to lose their airline. If the bonus was needed to get him to come over from hertz or continental or wherever he was then they could have tied it to something like employee output or revenue, etc. I just think that there is something fundamentally wrong when the highest paid guy gets a bonus for making the lowest paid chumps take pay cuts. That leads to an absolutely poisonous employee morale and attitude. Airways is a prime example of what sh#tting on your employees will do to the company's bottom line.

your qoute
"The fundamental thing that I am pointing out is that in this industry, labor comes to the table usually at the last moment. By then the coffers of the company have been gone through and either bankruptcy or other situations are dominating the airline. If labor and management had acted together within a few days, there would have been fewer furloughs and more chance for survival. When I say labor, I mean all the unions involved not just pilots. "


That's the game. Management drags out contract negotiations for years to save x percentage and you expect pilots to come running to the table with their checkbooks in hand? Are you kidding me? Just for kicks look at the two airlines where pilots have held out the longest and still have not given paycuts. NWA and Dal. Compare them to Amr, Ual, and Us Airways where the pilots were more forthcoming with concessions. Who has furloughed more? One could argue that by refusing to negotiate cuts the Dal and Nwa pilots have forced their respective management teams to actually manage the airline and increase revenue. What a novel idea!

 

[Publishers]

Not hardly,,,,

there again, I am not privy to the total package and language. Nevertheless, when you go into a bankruptcy, the decisions get made for you. It would not surprise me that he was given the task of extracting wage concessions, lease concessions, bank renegotiations and a host of other objectives as conditons of receiving further funding. It is not a matter of who furloughed who or how many. 9/11 was an extrodinary event that could have destroyed the business, may still destroy the business, and should not be treated as just another labor /management deal.

Trust me when I say that if the shoes that guy was wearing had gone off, pilot /management negotiations would have been the least of the problems.

 

[Eagle-ista]

What?

Publishers...

About the only cohesive thought I get from your posts, and this could be my fault, is that you think pilot unions, and ALPA in particular are flawed beyond use. That all labor groups for an airline should be represented by the same union. And somehow, the airline business would be better off this way.

I humbly disagree.

While ALPA does have it's "warts" as Hugh says, it does in the long run represent the issues of the pilots better than say the TWU, APFA or AFA, CWA or any other labor union, no insult meant toward APA or SWAPA or any other stand alone. The fact that the flight attendants, mechanics and pilots all have different unions serves to prove that they all have different issues that need to be considered during negotiations, or arbitrations if you work for Eagle.

The company I work for has lied, cheated and stolen from all of it's workers. This has been proven by the arbitrations we have won and the compensation we have recieved. While it is normal for opposing groups to differ, in this industry it's normal for fraud and worse to happen. Hence, the need for the union.

Without the Union, Carty would have given himself a bigger raise after 9/11 along with his $400,000 stock purchase. APA caught him at his game and exposed him, forcing him to quit in an effort to maintain some integrity for American Management.

At Eagle, we have over 300 pending grievances. Most airlines don't come close to that, but it speaks volumes about labor relations in this arena.

If a union goes through all the flaming hoops to get to the point of self-help, and votes to strike, then it is truly a failure of both sides to come to an agreement. It is a long and difficult road that must be traveled before a union takes it's pilots out of the aircraft. When that happens, for anyone to show disrespect for the efforts they have made and the sacrifices they are making by crossing a picket line, deserves to be bannished.

You heard of the USAir executives pay incentive for getting a bonus at the expense of the other employees. It's not unusual. Many managers get a bonus if they operate within their budget. Few are as flagrantly disrespectful of the front line laborer as that example.

Contradictions? Maybe. There are many in this business. Where else do you find so many ardent union-members that are anxious to vote for a president that signed a "right-to-work" law while the governor of Texas? We're not perfect, but we're good at what we do. None of us want to bankrupt the companies we work for, but we do want to be paid a wage that reflects the training and responsibility we have. I'd love to see Carty and Mullin fighting over who was going to sleep in a refrigerator box on a cold night in Chicago. I'd love to think that we could all learn from Carnegie Steel and Pinkerton Security. We don't always remember our past and Carty would kick his butt.

I can't imagine a scenario where a weaker or non-existant union would be better for pilots.