Thread: Will pilot pay ever go back up?
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Old 06-13-2016 | 03:12 PM
  #17  
MaxThrustPower
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Originally Posted by Death2Daleks
MaxThrustPower - thank you for the informative posts. How is it possible that a unionized labor force can have their most effective tool (il)legally removed from them? How did we give the POTUS, and a Democratic one, no less, the power to cripple labor?


Glad you found my postings helpful!

Excellent questions. Maybe you were asking rhetorically? I don't know if I can say the definitive answer but I'll give it a stab.

Like the "golden days" of the airlines are over, it seems unions are struggling to maintain their rightful place in US society. For many decades, unions campaigned against pitiful and dangerous working conditions as well as the poverty wages exploited by the robber barons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They won huge improvements in safe and humane working conditions and better pay. In those earlier days, I believe the general public had a lot of empathy and support for unions, but as conditions and pay have improved, the battle is perceived to have been won and support has waned. I think many people in our society only see unions today as greedy, archaic machines that demand unreasonable contracts and raise costs which are just passed along to the consumer.

Meanwhile, management has continued to refine their "union-busting" techniques and government big-business sympathizers allow negotiations to drag on indefinitely.

Another factor which has hurt union ability to demand better pay and working conditions (and which has actually caused us to slowly backslide over the past few decades) is management's ability to capitalize on the regular downward cycles of the industry to chip away at our compensation. Of course, nowhere could this be seen more clearly than the use of bankruptcies by the legacy airlines over the past 25 years.

Fortunately, airline unions have recently made some progress restoring our lost wages and benefits, but we have a long way to go before we would ever reach the level of compensation we had 50 years ago. It would be nice, but as I pointed out, I think the odds of ever getting there are against us for several reasons. But I do think we will be able to continue to benefit from the industry recovery of the past few years.

I believe it's time for the airline contracts to be removed from the dated "Railway Labor Act" and be placed under a new set of rules more even-handed and applicable to today's airline industry. The RLA no longer serves the best interests of airline employees.
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