Originally Posted by
iaflyer
I really disagree with this part - the mainline pilots are certainly fighting for wages and work rules - the problem is two-fold.
One, management has figured out that the lower an airline ticket costs, the more people fly. So, lower the price as far as they can, and they'll make it up in volume. So they focus on lowering costs, in every way possible. One obvious way is to lower labor costs (not just pilots, but FA, mechanics, dispatchers, cleaners, etc) by using lower cost labor - ie, regionals. I'm sure if they could, AMR, DAL, UAL - all of them, etc would prefer to get rid of all mainline pilots and replace them with regional pilots, at regional wages of course.
Second, as pilots we have NO leverage anymore. In the past, there was a RLA that let us strike - as was pointed out, NMB (and the President, democrat or republican) is not going to let us strike, or even "threaten" a strike. All it takes it the idea of 70,000 people out of work, all over the country, for either the NMB or Congress/President to say it's not in the national interest for a strike.
Who gave away that leverage ?
Most think it was given away in 1992 when ALPA turned their backs on the first RJ thinking it wasn't a threat, but actually most mainline pilot groups did this much earlier by creating and maintaining an "us and them" environment with their participating regional carriers that began flying they "didn't want to do".
What mainline PILOTS and their bargaining representatatives SHOULD have done then was bring these pilot groups CLOSER so as to prevent them being used against them in the future.
They flunked.
Then, once the drug was in place all they needed was the correct needle.........AKA the 'RJ". Now you don't have innocent little BE-99's and metroliner's flying around but CRJ-900's and E-175's.
Personally, I think you really need to take a sobering look backward on the systemic failure of self-interested pilots and their sloppy bargaining reps to see why the profession of "major-airline pilot" is now hoplessly in the garbage can.
"Leverage" had to start somewhere in infancy and the above was its metamorphasis to the broken-down old man this career has become.
It's a shame too.