Originally Posted by afterburn81

First off. Thank you to the Envoy group for standing up for the profession. We have a good thing going here. Rejecting these ridiculous offers from management shows that we as pilots are realizing that no matter who you work for or what kind of aircraft you fly, you are still a freaking pilot. A pilot that made sacrifices and dedicated his life to his career who is worth waaaayyyy more than they give him credit for. For that they can eat a turd.

Now for the hard work. Failed TA's across the board sends a message. However, this message means nothing if we don't act on it. Envoy management offers a crap contract. It was obviously going to fail. They figure if it fails they can threaten the pilots jobs by saying that they will shrink and give aircraft to other airlines. Really? This was management's negotiating strategy? Notice the success major airlines have and how quick negotiations go at the legacies. They don't have the option of whipsawing each other. They can't just say to the pilot group at United " if you guys don't accept this offer we will award your United flying to the Delta guys".

How do we fix this? We as union members need to work with our reps. Just like a "no furlough" clause to protect you in house we need some kind of "no external transfer of aircraft" clause. Something that eliminates this threat tactic that management uses to get a crappy contract to pass. All regional unions need to come together and work collectively on this. It seems far fetched but management would stop wasting their time and may start to actually come up with something a little more doable in terms of fair contract offers if they knew they had to stop playing games.

To elaborate a little better on what I'm proposing:

Regional airlines bid on CPAs. Pilots continue their employment through awards for new flying / additional aircraft etc. However, we must vow as unified pilots that we will not accept new aircraft orders that were previously offered to another group as bargaining terms. For example AAG offered Envoy a certain amount of aircraft in trade for garbage contract language. It get's rejected by that group and these offered aircraft cannot be flown by another group of pilots that are unified and support this clause in their contract for a certain amount of time. Something like they would be released for another group after 3 failed TA's or 3 years.

Sure it's far fetched and full of holes. Hence why I didn't go to law school. But you get the point. Obviously this whole "one list" thing is a bust and will never occur. But this is a back door approach to that sort of thing. As unified pilots this sort of thing can become an agreement across the industry.

If we ever want to truly stop the race to the bottom we must start to think outside the box. The regional airlines have been a much bigger stepping stone than any of us ever expected. In the future I suspect they will start to shrink. It is important that we do all we can to bring this profession back to something desirable from start to finish. Right now it's a total joke.