Originally Posted by
Baron50
You got me, I guess old people tend to repeat themselves, thanks for bringing it up though, so... let me pontificate. Most of what is happening today is reminiscent of 1985. We had the same type of naysayers then and they made a strong case not to strike. They whined, that the pilots were not ready, we could not win with a Repub President, we would be replaced like the CAL pilots and the controllers, we would kill the golden goose, the 570 was just waiting to take our jobs and unions were obsolete.
I guess judging how we did in "85" is a matter of perspective. Given that in "83" we were drinking gin with Ferris under the wing of the spruce goose and we had just given him our work rules with the blue Sky's contract, it was remarkable that we convinced the pilots to turn on mother United. To take a pilot group out on strike in that environment and bring them back without losing a single job, was, for me anyway, a measure of success. No one believed we would do it, few thought we would be successful. When it was over, United pilots had unity and the respect of our peers. We also demonstrated that if we did it once, we could do it again.
Don't get me wrong, no one wants a strike, it is a failure of negotiations and rarely does it result an economic benefit for either party. Nevertheless, unless management is convinced that a union will stop their revenue stream, they are unlikely to give you spit. That fact has not changed since the industrial revolution of the 19th century, much less then since 1985.
Unity is not just an empty word, tell a manager "you don't care what the issues are, you will do what the union tells you." That drives them absolutely freaking nuts. However, privately, knowing who in your leadership works for you and who works for them is equally important.
Now, aren't you glad that you asked grandpa "hows the weather?"
Baron50
Well Baron like I said before I like that the mec's are at least sounding like they might work together as this is the only was we will have success, especially if we start talking a srike. If it would be one side it would not last 3 days.
Back to 1985 since you live in the past and always slapping yourself on the back on how great that was.
I do agree it was amazing that alpa did get us to go on strike considering all that was going on in the industry and all that was as stake, for that I commend them. It stops pretty quick after that however.
I felt like there was nothing won, please don't keep telling me how no pilots lost there job. We had jobs to begin with to not lose a job to me is not a success. We basically had the same contract offered prior to the strike that we settled on. By the way in case you forgot we also went back to work without some pilots. If you remember we left them to the court system. That was after the famous we won't go back without you comments. What our union meant to say was we won't go back without you unless it gets tough. It took some many months to get back on the property and many years to have seniority restored.
Since you brought up that group, 570, please remember we had some cross from that group also and yes more than the 4 the union always mentions. We also had quite a few from that group work both sides of the fence during the strike, something else that was not supposed to happen. I am not talking about dumpster work I am talking about agree to go to work and then using some lame excuse to delay, not something that was supposed to take place.
Then we had another group in training, the 539 and yes they were there to replace all the pilots. As it turned out they were put in front of only one group as replacments and yes they ended up being union members. Remember alpa talking about who would be considered a sc-- and how it kept changing? If you go to training was then if you complete training and then if you turn a wheeel and then if you turn a wheel after ioe, yea great if you were a sleez bag trying to climb over you fellow pilots.
We also even allowed brown suiters and fleet qual back into the union.
I felt the strike ended as the amnount of brown suiters that were pushing to go back and alpa realizing it would collapse. Nice unity.
As I look around the property and listen I see even less unity at this point and many more "groups" Can they get pulled together, maybe, but not without bot mec working together.
One last comment on unity. When I see some dal folks showing up in this discussion. I am confident that they will bring all of us boxes of donuts if we walk just like 1985. Yes that same unity that was tripping over themselves in the hopes that we never came out of bankruptcy. Oh yea unity, this is some "union" I don't know if you have ever belonged to another union or not but this one always feels more like a country club.