Originally Posted by
FMGEC
First: IF they do this...and it's a big IF... there will be very little change in day-to-day operations at the airline. Atlanta HDQ will still be clicking, and there will still be a Stars and Stripes on the side of the airplane.
Second: Why so quick to run to ALPA PAC for help on this? Their continued support for politicians that vote for higher taxes on those that produce, as well as making "evil big business" pay "their fair share" only assisted in creating this problem. ALPA PAC is fighting their own creation. Keep the growth-of-government crowd out of Washington and let the earners keep their earnings. No more wealth redistribution.
There needs to be a focus on whether ALPA wants to be a big-time "Jimmy Hoffa" break your knuckles socialist sympathizing labor group, or whether they want to be a trade-based lobbying power for a specialized industry. In summary, highly trained and skilled pilots do not belong lobbying with unskilled 3rd shift janitors in a meat packing plant.
Ok- I'm ready... Let the slaying and insults begin...
Emphasis added.
The very job of a union is to redistribute wealth from the company to its members through collective bargaining over pay, benefits and work rules/conditions. Extracting things that companies would not pay of their own volition is by definition the redistribution of wealth, even if one can argue that such redistribution has been earned.
When you have an employee number and can be swapped out of your job for any one of hundreds/thousands of people who can do the exact same job, you are hired help, same as that 3rd shift janitor. The amount of skill, experience, education, etc. you have is irrelevant because you are part of a fungible and very much interchangeable pool of workers.
In short, neither you nor anyone else in the piloting profession is all that special as viewed by their employer.
You don't have to like unions to appreciate the necessity for them. You also don't have to like them to reap the benefits they negotiate because a union has a duty of fair representation to tend to the interests of all its members, even the members who don't like it.