Who's to blame?(mgt vs labor)

[bobbysamd]

Good faith and bad faith

The biggest problem is the sour relations that exist and the fact that there is no mutual trust among any of the parties.

You would think that in this day and age of bankruptcies and furloughs both sides would see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel and make it a point to start up honest negotiotiats. It says something that the past was so bad both sides cant even do that. I dont know if any of these companies can get themselves out of the woods until they start trusting each other.

(emphasis added)

Agreed. But, it is a chicken-and-egg problem, and here's why.

It seems as if the moment the ink is dry on a new labor agreement that management tries to find ways around it. I'm sure a management type will argue the opposite. It could be taken either way; the long and short of it is while the sides might have negotiated in good faith that good faith goes out the door the moment an agreement is effective. So much for trusting each other.

Read airline history. It seems that management always tries to cut labor costs and wring out more from pilots. On the other hand, wring out too much and safety is affected. Two examples: stand-up overnights and the AA LIT accident. How many hours were those pilots on duty? Then, I heard a story where a flight landed short of its destination because, according to the cabin announcement, "union work rules" wherein the crew would have busted a duty day. Probably the pax didn't understand. So, management tries to find a way around that.

And, again, so much for trying to deal in good faith.

 

[208pilot]

To PCL whatever:

You seem to be in a minority. Most of these posts seem to indicate that people believe United brought their troubles on themselves. How that airline can't do what it takes, be it paycuts , more reliance on RJ's, whatever to make money again is a disgrace. I'm sorry for what happened to the this country and the people on those planes on Sep 11 but I'm not sorry for United right now.
And I do enjoy my job, I will never fly anything bigger than what I am now, but I would never work at some Majors even if I was god's gift to aviation like you. United, US Airways top the list!

And PS I work in the Guard on some weekends driving trucks for peanuts too but I'm just as proud of that.

 

[AOPAPILOT]

Management And Labor

If the Labor side owns 55% of the stock, how did United get into so much trouble without Labor smelling a rat? Who were the Labor representatives siting on the board? Did Management hide all that was going on at the time? This did not happen to Unitedover night. History has a funny way of repeating the past mistakes. I would tend to blame both sides. Both sides need to agree on bad decisions and retake control.

 

[Publishers]

point made

The point that because there are record profits, the pilots should get more is right on target. Many of these airlines had been poor performers compared to other businesses for many years. Now they finally have a good year and the pilots should get more.

Wrong-- the pilots should get whatever is a decent wage for the job they do. Should a receptionist get more because the company had a good year or should she get a good wage for performing the job of receiving.

This thinking is why we are always in trouble. The % of return is the question. The one and only reason for this company to exist at all is to provide the shareholders a % of return equal or better than they can get elsewhere.

How did UAL stand on that issue?

 

[sf3boy]

Even when times were good before Sept '01, United's management had troubles. How many millions of dollars were sunk into the failed hotel and rental car venture? The corporate-fractional flight program? Running minute long tv ads during the world series in '01 constantly? Full page ads in national papers?

Money that could of been spent elsewhere to ensure that you stay in bussiness. Those ads do nothing. Everyone that has electricity knows that United flies passengers.

Yeah, I guess all the employees should want to work for free since they had so much do to with this mess.

 

[Birdstrike]

They don't work for free. They get paid according to their contract. What management does with the rest is management's business...and the shareholders.

 

[PCL_128]

They don't work for free. They get paid according to their contract. What management does with the rest is management's business...and the shareholders.

Exactly. And when profits are good pilots will and should negotiate for a better contract. If the company's making more money, the people that keep it running (labor) should get more money.

Publisher, people like you are the reason why labor has such a dislike of mgmt. You think we deserve nothing for our hard work when the company is doing good. That's BS. We keep the company going, we should be compensated when the company is making better profits. Just to show I don't have a double standard about this, I also think that mgmt deserves to be better compensated when times are good. If they help to bring in more profit, they should get more money for their good mgmt. Unfortunately, there's lots of hard working labor out there, but not very many good managers.

 

[sf3boy]

After much thought, maybe the answer is for the unions to say ok, you guys win. Captains get paid 40k and FO and FE's get paid 25K per year. Call it good. See if airlines can operate when noone applies for a job that requires you to be away from home 20 nights a month, millions of dollars worth of equipment and people under your watch.

Management has to manage and pilots have to fly. If management did not want or could not afford to pay the wages of the employees, they would not have signed the contract. They did not negotiate their contract with the idea that if things are going really good, this is what we can afford to pay. They signed an agreement saying this is what we can afford, period. If UAL management did the former, then they have not attended or passed one single business class.

 

[Publishers]

Profit sharing

I believe that SWA has a profit sharing program that deals with when things are good. I also believe that UAL was owned by the employees who would have benefited from the success of the airline.

Now would you be making $400k a year if I was running an airline without a union, no. Would you be making $40k a year, not any more likely.

The distance between what the few remaing so called majors pay at the top and the rest of the flying world is considerable. It has become, up to now, like the lottery. You get in and it is like some kind of entitlement program.

There are a ton of people who spend massive amounts of time away from home. You are going to have to make a real stretch to get me empathetic with my 767 driver buddies. They laugh about it as we play golf only they play a good deal more than I do.

 

[Birdstrike]

Posted by PCL_128:

"...when profits are good pilots will and should negotiate for a better contract. If the company's making more money, the people that keep it running (labor) should get more money..."

I guess that's why this issue will just keep going round and round. Not everybody sees it that way. Some think differently. Not wrong, just different.

If I own a company and pay an employee a wage to work for me then the profits or losses are my business. In good times, I may or may decide to give raises, but it's my decision. I can certainly understand the need to keep good employees by paying them well but I may choose to not increase salaries because I have other uses for the money; expansion, dividends, rainy day fund, etc. I don't have to keep raising pay 20+%. I can say, enough.

So conversely, I guess your argument would have to be that in bad times "the people that keep it running" should get less money then, right?

A better model might be a good median wage that survives the peaks and valleys instead of the mismatch between the regionals and the mainline that we have today.

Pass the Johnnie Walker!

 

[PCL_128]

Posted by PCL_128:

"...when profits are good pilots will and should negotiate for a better contract. If the company's making more money, the people that keep it running (labor) should get more money..."

I guess that's why this issue will just keep going round and round. Not everybody sees it that way. Some think differently. Not wrong, just different.

If I own a company and pay an employee a wage to work for me then the profits or losses are my business. In good times, I may or may decide to give raises, but it's my decision. I can certainly understand the need to keep good employees by paying them well but I may choose to not increase salaries because I have other uses for the money; expansion, dividends, rainy day fund, etc. I don't have to keep raising pay 20+%. I can say, enough.

And this attitude that it's "my business" is what inspires labor to fight so hard for pay increases. It's just the attitude you have that annoys us so much. It's not just your money as mgmt, it's the company's money. As part of the company, I deserve a part of the increased profits. Afterall, where would you be without all of us in labor doing the real work?

 

[PCL_128]

Re: Profit sharing

I believe that SWA has a profit sharing program that deals with when things are good. I also believe that UAL was owned by the employees who would have benefited from the success of the airline.

Now would you be making $400k a year if I was running an airline without a union, no. Would you be making $40k a year, not any more likely.

Unfortunately, for many airline owners, the 40k is much more likely. In fact, even lower is probably what they would be going for. Look at New York Air, the alter-ego airline that Lorenzo started up by raping TXI of it's aircraft. His goal was to create a non-union airline where he could pay people as low as possible. This is the attitude of most people in mgmt. They never learned from Frank's mistakes, and they never will. JetBlue is the big exception: the non-union airline that treats their employees very well. Sure, they aren't making 250k a year, but they still make a very good pay rate, have good schedules, and have a good relationship with mgmt. You see, they trust each other. They haven't been stabbed in the back repeatedly by mgmt. That's the way things should be.

The distance between what the few remaing so called majors pay at the top and the rest of the flying world is considerable. It has become, up to now, like the lottery. You get in and it is like some kind of entitlement program.

There are a ton of people who spend massive amounts of time away from home. You are going to have to make a real stretch to get me empathetic with my 767 driver buddies. They laugh about it as we play golf only they play a good deal more than I do.

And those 767 drivers spent many years on reserve, with sh*tty schedules, with low pay, etc... They took many years to get to that pay rate and to that many days off. You act like all of us have it so good. The reality is that most of us work pretty hard and have to work decades to get the days off and pay you keep referring to. Those 767 guys deserve everything they get.

 

[Birdstrike]

Houston, We Have A Problem...

Psted by PCL_128:

"...Afterall, where would you be without all of us in labor doing the real work...?"


Give me a break. What do you think you are, a brain surgeon? We're pilots and our name is legion...and therein lies the problem. There are to many of us looking for work and Pan Am, et. al, is cranking out more all the time.

There is a new generation of pilots who read the full page glossies in FLYING who won't instruct and will work for much less than you with your holy grail of "contract advances" , PCL.

Where would I be if I were management? I guess I'd look for the best pilot I could hire for the least amount of money. And right now, I'd say the pickings were pretty good.

You can be annoyed all you want at mgmt. UAL is bankrupt and we need a new paradigm. Your remark that I quoted above ain't gonna get us there. That kind of remark is for skilled labor that is in short supply and can't be replaced. Neither is true of us.


Indiana Wants Me, Lord I Can't Go Back There

 

[MsFan]

Good debate here, I like the argument that Birdstrike has made. At some point pilots at the majors might need to say "I'm making (90K, 110K, 150K, whatever the case may be) to work about 2 weeks a month flying airplanes. I think I can get by on that." I admit I'm a fuzzy cheeked youngster in this airline business stuff, so I haven't had time to turn in to the old, bitter union guy. Yes, we deserve to be well compensated for helping a company make a profit. But who says that making (90K, 110K, 150K, whatever the case may be) is not well compensated? To say "I need to make the absolute maximum that Management can afford" is to invite the mess we're seeing at UAL. It's not like Management is trying to pay pilots 36K a year while they're making record profits. I'm not saying that pilots shouldn't try to make the best wage we can. But at some point we need to appreciate the fact we're able to make some pretty damm good coin at this job wiithout demanding 20% pay increases every time our contract is up just because the company had a good year.

 

[FastCargo]

Points to ponder

An interesting discussion...here's my .02...

First, has anyone been reading on the message boards (NON flying boards, Yahoo, etc) on the reactions to UAL filing bankruptcy? The majority of opinions have been of the "To hell with United, service sucks, prices too high, etc, etc" There hasn't been a whole lot of sympathy about pilot givebacks either. Unfortunately, your typical 'person on the street' opinion about mainline pilot salaries gets about as much sympathy as a baseball player's strike. A company is in the business to make money, and it does so from it's customers. If the customers won't support the company, that company can't survive.

Second, exactly how hard does a mainline airline pilot work? The first day I showed up at my company, one of the chief pilots basically said that we all had already done our hardest flying. From what I have seen so far, he's correct. In the earlier days of flying, when GPS, weather sats, widespread radar coverage, extensive safety regulations, etc. didn't exist, the safe conduct of a flight was HEAVILY dependent on an experienced and seasoned crew. The aircraft weren't as reliable and ergonomic (sp?), CRM didn't exist, and TCAS was a gleam in an engineers eye. Now, most mainline aircraft, and a lot of regionals, have the most advanced and reliable systems onboard, along with advancing ground support. Accident and incident rates, even after deregulation and the explosive growth of air travel, are lower than ever. Mainline flying is T/O, fly, land, the majority (if not all) planned by the company. In other words, should pay continue to increase if the actual effort of the job has declined? I'm not talking about a person moving up the ladder...but does a 777 captain work as hard now as a 707 captain did back in his time?

Personally, I don't need or want an 'industry leading' contract (God, I am TIRED of hearing that term). What I want is stability in my job, which means a company that can save up when times are good, to weather when times are bad. If that means I don't make 'industry leading' wages, that's okay 'cause what it does mean is a steady income. There has to be a compromise between 'effectively less than minimum wage' and 'wringing out every last golden egg'...

Okay, back to work...

FastCargo

 

[cl-65link]

I'll repeat what I heard at an ALPA meeting earlier this week, with regards to United and their ESOP,"I believe you must either be an owner or an operator", ie management or labor. This from a person in ALPA, who works out of the main office in DC, and has first-hand knowledge of United and USAir's current problems.