Originally Posted by
SCRWDbyMGMT
Throwing ALPA out is the FIRST STEP into establishing a new, stronger NATIONAL UNION with a NATIONAL CONTRACT, ie. 737 pilots at carrier "A" gets paid the same as 737 pilots at carrier "B". (No national seniority, I think it would be too hard to establish.)
We need a National union that has some backbone. ALPA only cares about itself and their own high paying jobs.
I've researched this pretty extensively after hearing the idea from another pilot. What we need is to get rid of the unions. The old union doesn't work in today's dynamic airline environment. And it's going to get more dynamic with more mergers, companies going bye bye and new conglomerate companies starting. Having several unions with each individual MEC's and divisions will not work and mangement knows it. They've been planning their strategies against it for years. Look at the USAirways / America West Merger for instance. Management merged ALL other employee groups via Date of Hire but thanks to ALPA one side won the lottery and the other lost years of seniority and career expectations. Without ALPA the company would have most likely merged the pilot list like all other workers the only true fair way in our business; Date of Hire.
What we really need in this country is a Guild. Similar to the Actors and Performers Guild. Every 121 pilot in the nation would be a member of the Pilot's Guild. This would create in a sense a master seniority list. The Guild would hire, fire, and manage all pilots. The Guild would train all pilots. A company that say needs 100 Airbus pilots would come to the Guild and the Guild would offer the next 100 non-working pilots in seniority order a job at that company. The Guild would set salaries, working conditions, benefits, and all other aspecs of the profession. Pilots would become a fixed cost like an airplane or landing fee and every airline would pay the same for a 5 year Airbus FO. No airline would have to have a training department as the Guild would train the pilots and the companies would pay a training fee for each pilot. The FAA would love this as it would be the perfect form of standardization and safety. Every Airbus 319 crew whether it be Northwest, USAir, or United would be operating the same way. Those that didn't join the Guild and tried to work for companies feelance would be scabs. We would truly have a national seniority list, a huge group with lots of power, and wouldn't feel the need to stab one another in the back to get seniority or a better position. There is much more to the Guild idea and several people are seriously working on this. There is just too much to write on this forum. It's like laying out the engineering plans for a city in one paragraph.
The two biggest obstacles are money and the old unions. Someone would have to bankroll the idea and it would cost to get rid of the old unions. Yes it's a monumental task but face it; the current unions may in the short term get you another day off and a few dollars an hour more, but they don't and can't address the larger and long term issues that will be facing our pilot group in the near future. Think about it.