One of the biggest reasons I was excited to work for B6 was that it was non-union. However, after being on the line only a short time, I am now a 100%, bag-tag-dragging, bracelet-wearing, cruise altitude-selling, yes-voting, ALPA advocate.
While I don't have much 121 experience, I've got a bit of union experience from the management side. Been through negotiations, grievances, and a strike.
But more importantly, I've got a pretty solid BS detector, and though both the ALPA and ELT sides are spewing out a good bit of exaggeration and disinformation lately, when it comes to the ELT, that detector has been going off louder than a geiger counter in Fukushima.
Bottom line, I'm voting for my fellow pilots. If DAL continues class dates as expected, I don't have a dog in the fight. But if we blue pilots vote down ALPA this time, those of you who stay are done. The ELT will be encouraged to direct this relationship like it's never done before. You think the PVC in the current iteration is impotent? Wait to see the next version.
ALPA won't come back. An in-house will be a joke.
Those great pilots, and I think there are a lot of them, who will stay at B6 for a variety of reasons I can understand will, for the next couple decades, be stuck flying with a combination of:
- Quality, continually-rotating new hires who show up then get hired away by someone else.
- Barely-qualified pilots looking to build experience and get hired somewhere else… who will either stay unqualified, or get hired somewhere else.
- Pilots who have something in their past that will keep them from getting hired somewhere else
- "Special hires" who are just biding time on the line before they get their job at LSC
Now, I think the union is going to get voted in, so hopefully the above nightmare won't come to pass.
But, you've got to understand that the negotiating process will be significantly different if ALPA gets voted in by 51% vs 75%. So, like Bill Cosby's rendition of Noah, the question you should be asking yourself if you're a fence-sitter is…
"How long can you tread water?"