Originally Posted by
justjack
That's awful- but I agree. This is certainly how management has negotiated with pilots since 9/11. "You don't want to give up 20 plus years of retirement benefits, OK we shut down the company- and you get nothing. Take it or leave it."
There are times when you have to be willing to sacrifice for the sake of your future and that of the profession. No AA pilot walks away with nothing. The B-fund is owned by the pilots and will be distributed to the pilots, minus certain sales expenses, whenever the fund is terminated. APA will not defend the B-fund so it is gone regardless of what happens with the current negotiations. If the pilot is over 50 and has 10 plus years of service they will receive an annuity however small it may be, for the rest of their lives if the A-fund is terminated. Yielding to threats has not benefitted the AA pilot group or any pilot group over the last three decades but has served to embolden airline management and provided the fuel to fly the airline pilot profession into bus driver status. If pilots had a real union, one voice with one contract, this would all be irrelevant. Unfortunately most airline pilots do not have a clue how a real union would work, confuse a national union with a national seniority list, which is not a requirement for a national union, and most importantly, pilots are basically ignorant of their history. Do you pilots know when ALPA was formed? Do you know the who, what, and where of ALPA’s creation? Do pilots know when the RLA was written, for what it was written and when and for what is was last amended? If every pilot had at least this basic information they may not be so ready to accept and go along with the status quo. Every pilot needs to know their history because without this knowledge pilots will be content to continue to relive their past to their individual peril and the destruction of the profession.
Last edited by Night Hawk 6; 10-11-2012 at 06:44 AM.
Reason: spelling