Originally Posted by
globalexpress
Air Service to Small and Rural Communities | U.S. House of Representatives
All through RJSAviatior....in particular GJet and proprunner....
ALPA IS DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Click the link above to see what your "lazy" union is doing. Who's sitting there, front row, (yesterday) saying over and over to people in the Aviation subcommittee that it is an ECONOMIC problem and NOT a pilot shortage? Lee Moak is. That's what your ALPA dues pay for- the head of the largest pilot union sitting in front of the PEOPLE THAT MATTER, in front of the SUBCOMMITTEE THAT MATTERS, telling them that the profession is in turmoil, that there shouldn't be flags of convenience, that standards shouldn't be lowered, and that pay needs to go up. He TELLS THEM that. Click the link and watch.
Notice that Moak of
ALPA is invited to those meetings. Not the APA. Not USAPA. Not the IAM airline division. Not SWAPA. Not the SkyWest pilot council. Moak is there, representing us. And this isn't the first time if you have been paying attention.
It doesn't end there. Don't you think Moak has the ear of the very important members of that subcommittee? Hearings like these are "dog and pony" shows. The real business gets done behind the scenes. Moak knows the players (notice the camaraderie he shares with the subcommittee members). They know him, and he knows them. That doesn't mean ALPA gets everything it wants. That doesn't mean ALPA can stomp its feet and cross its arms when it doesn't get its way. It means we can INFLUENCE what's going on. That's what you pay for with your dues money.
Premade form letters, easy point-and-click-and send e-mails are nice, but quite frankly, pilots couldn't be bothered to even do something that simple.
From another one of my later posts:
After reading the testimony of Lee Moak, I have to say, he couldn't have done a better speech. About time.
I do however, stand by my view that ALPA blew a huge opportunity. Imagine having 51,000 pilots contacting the US House of Representatives with their thoughts? That would have driven home the point that Mr. Moak is trying to make and reminded the Representatives that people, not companies, vote these Reps in or out of office.
As far as pilots not being bothered to do something, you are unfortunately correct. After long duty days and exhausting commutes, management depends on the status quo of the exhausted state of pilots to keep pilots from even thinking about raising issues. They want exhausted sheep who will do what they are told and not raise a stink.
Think about it, it starts at the interview. We all dress the same, look the same, and pretty much give the same stupid answers to their "jump through our hoop" interview system to get into this glorious career, only to slowly rise in the ranks while we starve.
Just when we can afford to pay off some of that debt load after years with the company, the company is declared bankrupt because labor cost is too high, and another company with the same assets is started with another name, yet seems to have the same managment. And if you jump through their interview hoop one more time, then you might be lucky and get hired to start over at F/O year 1 and get to starve all over again.
In the meantime, ALPA has given away more seats on scope so that the management will be "pals" and keep more pilot jobs. Yet every dang time they agree to this, it takes more pax away from mainline and gives them to regionals. When you have a lower passenger load, you don't expand mainline flying. When you don't expand mainline flying, you don't hire pilots. So then you have years if not decades of mainline hiring stagnation, locking regional pilots into regional Hell for the remainder of their careers.
WHEN THE HELL IS ALPA AND THEIR PILOTS GOING TO FIGHT SCOPE? I'll tell you when, when they transferred all the mainline flying to regionals, and converted all the high paying jobs to slave-ation wages, that's when. And you'll be stuck in a job where there is no more carrot to be dangled, because those jobs are history. Not enough people are speaking out. It reminds me of the following from WWII:
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
So ya, you have a point, ALPA was there. But they could do a hell of a lot better job of uniting pilots and organizing them then they are doing. If they made it easier for pilots to do that, then maybe pilots WOULD make an effort to fight. ALPA isn't doing it! They are doing just enough to let them say, "We tried". And I wonder if this isn't the real dog and pony show, if the union hasn't been paid off by management. If they wanted pilots to be heard, then this was the chance. Which is why I said they blew a great opportunity when Moak went to the hill.