What should die is the way we stubbornly remain locked in a system that in no way works for the reality of the era.
Originally Posted by
Night Hawk 6
The current system of labor representation has worked so well that today's pilots are working much longer, for less pay, with even fewer medical and retirement benefits than pilots received over thirty years ago. Maybe it is time, actually it is way past time, to consider, no, create a new way of doing business. The politics, tactics and technologies have changed dramatically since ALPA was formed in ---- (How many of you actually know when ALPA was formed?) yet ALPA is almost unchanged from its earliest design.
We're still playing with a system that was designed for (and worked reasonably well under) a regulated airline system. News flash: Airlines have been deregulated since 1978! That's 35 years!!! When did we start to fall behind? I'd put it somewhere in the mid to late 1980's - about the same time managements figured out they could use our system against us. Yes, there have been a number of winners since then, but the reality is that is when the Lorenzos and Icahns began picking us apart. It's very much like the Martin Niemoller quote, "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Socialist." It wasn't too big a deal when the Continental got it, it was just the Continental. Then it was just Eastern. Then PanAm and TWA, and so on. United was at the top of the heap, then they weren't. Then Delta, then they weren't. USAir, American, Northwest, and so on.
Bit by bit, we've ultimately been losing ground over for at least two if not three decades now. As the old saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result - I can find no other way to look at how pilots continue to do business than this.
I don't image creating a national seniority list would be as difficult as it was to create a pilot union in the first place - the real question is whether the current pilots have the mettle to do so. Sadly, it appears that the fortitude for such an undertaking is almost completely lacking, hence why I suspect until some outside force intervenes we will continue to see the decline of the airline pilot profession.