Originally Posted by ORDinary

Comparing regionals with unions to ones without doesn't give you the whole picture. Compare the current regional industry to one in which none have unions. The bar, I think, would be even lower. Not by much as far as pay goes, because as you pointed out, even with unions the companies lower the bar via whipsaw. Without unions, who knows, maybe companies would return to the days of upgrades based on "merit" instead of seniority, and then proceed to define merit in some self-serving way. I'm not saying Skywest would have done something like that while all the other regionals didn't either, but take away all the unions and don't you think one of them would try some dirty tactics in order to compete? Doesn't history repeat itself? The race to the bottom would definitely speed up without some unions, and bottom would be lower in a lot of ways that you're not considering. Maintaining unions at other regionals has affected even the non-union ones, in more ways than you are considering.

And of course, there are other benefits a union provides besides contract negotiations. What process do you guys have for contract compliance? Flawed as it is, when the company violates our contract, we (envoy, and anyone else under the RLA) have a process to grieve the violation and get compensated. It takes a while, but I have been paid back quite a few times over the years for contract violations, and have more in the works. We just won a large grievance because the company gave extra flying, out of seniority order, to low time FOs in order get them to ATP mins before the rule change. Everyone in the company who was an FO then stands to receive possibly a few thousand dollars. We also have a grievance award to thank for our current flow to AA. Of course, these are not extra perks, we are just getting what was owed to us, via an arbitrator. I don't know if your company violates your contract often like ours does, but I can't imagine not having a way to at least try to force them into compliance.