Originally Posted by
CaptainNameless
"...our negotiators, officers, and the entire ALPA leadership have assured us that they have achieved as much as possible in return for the re-fleeting of our airline."
So, as a matter of general discussion, in what other industries are the tools of the business used as such massive leverage against the employees who are the specially trained operators?
This is the main failure of ALPA in the last 30 years. Old days... strikes happened and scabs were their solution to keep the planes moving. No need for "real" scabs these days. But if you go to TSA or PSA to fly these planes, that's what you are. You're 21st century scabs. We at XJT have not taken any concessions, but we're still part of this new business architecture that participates in the withholding of aircraft from the pilots who should rightfully be flying them. In another year when XJT will not sign a deal, guess who will get "our" airplanes.
So, today it is essentially a lockout tactic, no strikes these days, but they managed to figure out how to keep the planes in the air using new employees, but no, no scabs doing it, right? Scabs are not really scabs anymore, because there are not really strikes are there? Because management figured out how to hire their "scabs" without needing to deal with those pesky strikes. Someone asked why AAG has given E145s to TSA and XJT. Answer is because they can't do a lockout on Envoy without giving airplanes away to lock them out.
I am a union volunteer for my fellow pilots. But, dear ALPA... you suck for not fighting this garbage. You suck for not trying. Please figure out how. We're losing in days of records profits everywhere except the bottom.
You're forgetting a very important part of this equation: scope. Mainline carriers have scope language that prevents the airline from transferring their airplanes to other carriers. Regional carriers don't have this language; never have. In many cases this is due to having no leverage to get it, since the parent or code share airline owns the airplanes the regional flies.
During the last round of contract negotiations, Compass tried to secure language that tied us to our (at the time) 42 airplanes. This was a non-starter because Delta owns the airplanes and they don't want to be limited in their ability to make moves like AA is currently doing.
A likely response would be, "tell them we won't sign a deal without this scope language." Unfortunately, the mainline carrier will then pack up and take its airplanes elsewhere.