Originally Posted by
TrinityDawn
The fact of the matter is that this is simply a proposal from the MEC to the company. Nothing official has been released yet, and I doubt language has even been crafted. The truth is that this will NEVER be approved by AAG. We just spent two years being beat down by Jerry Glass and Dougwiser over a few dollars a block hour. When the union tried to get Endeavor-style bonuses to retain experienced F/O's, Envoy management including Pedro were all for it...and AAG management quickly made it clear it would never happen. "Why should we?" they said. "You have flow to AA! That's all you need to attract new hires!" The ONLY thing AAG cares about is who is the lowest bidder. Paying new-hire pilots anything other than first year pay after sinking 30k into them for training goes against everything we have learned about the "new American" since the hostile takeover. AAG has zero incentive to do this, because the last thing they want is for pilots to think their experience is a valuable commodity.
Personally, I think undermining seniority is wrong. With that being said, what SHOULD happen is ALPA pushing a national seniority list at ALL the ALPA carriers, but we saw their true colors when they willingly approved PSA's back-stabbing of Envoy.
Eaglefly/Thrustlever/Lord Hummugus can ***** all he wants about certain members of our MEC apparently trying to screw other regionals for Envoy's gain, and I might even agree with him to some extent, but the original sin STILL resides with the APA for allowing ANY flying to be done outside their list. They allowed this regional model to exist through their greed. Once the camel was in the tent, they spent decades and countless negociating capital to reclaim scope and mostly failed. The reason the regionals are failing now is because management became far too greedy for the regional business model to succeed. By the time they understand what they've done, the regionals will be dead.
Labor portability is what we truly need in this industry to force airline management to deal with supply and demand once again and raise pilot salaries across the board. This proposal might be a step in the right direction despite the short term pain, but it won't happen at AAG. What's more likely is that within 5-10 years, the regionals simply won't exist anymore.
So your argument here is that because it won't be approved, the concept wasn't embraced by a union or its pilots ?
I'm not arguing against "portability" per se, but pilot groups specifically targeting OTHER pilot groups to gain at their expense. If street hires were available, this scheme would be neither necessary nor proposed, but we no WHY it is. It IS, because Envoy ALPA is worried they'll be a loser without it and they are willing to prevent that even if they must create other losers in the process of trying to win.
...and THIS is where "unionism" is now at in this segment of the industry ?
It's become nothing more then a rotted house filled with rats of various sizes all feeding on each other (or planning to) and it's become quite pathetic.