Originally Posted by
FirstClass
Ideally, I think regional airlines should go completely union less. Here is my arguments why.
- The company doesn't abide by your contract anyway, save your money (for that matter any regional airline)
- There would be no organization to sue in the event that one or more pilots decided to be sick (unsanctioned work action). Who would remind the pilots to fall back in line? Nobody.
- It's an employees market right now, supply and demand leverage
- I hypothesize the union is nothing more than the enforcement arm of the company's wishes. Imagine the company having to deal with employees as individuals instead of collectively. The ensuing chaos would force the company to reconsider a variety of practices.
- Regional airline pilot unions have had decades to figure out proper wording of contracts yet they still pass contracts with vague wording open to interpretation after all these years, why?
For these reasons, I believe the company needs a union more than the pilots need a union. Further, I hypothesize that the company would fear losing the union and their control.
Essentially, what I'm trying to do here is get you to imagine what it would be like for the company to have to deal with the pilot group as individuals instead of as a collective group.
Guess you can always ask the guys at SkyWest. They are the only non-union regional carrier in the Country that I know of. They have a pilot representation group comprised of elected pilots, but I think SkyWest pays for the expenses, not the general pilot group. Personally I am anti-union, I know they had a huge place in the labor world back when they originally surfaced to keep work places safe and keep pay above 10 cents a day, but in today's day and age with all of the labor laws in place and everything, I would much rather work with a pilot representative group than a bunch of people who are essentially being representatives just to make money. Not to mention, can anyone honestly say that a large airline union really cares about representing the regionals, where they get much less money, as much as say DL where they take in a much larger $$$ amount? Just my 2 cents.