The big difference being that companies have alternative means of nixing CBAs, but the RLA is all we (labor) have to enforce. By the time any airline needs major concessions from their pilots, their blood thirsty executives have already sucked the golden goose dry, then they’ll simply declare bankruptcy, take a golden parachute, and leave the company to some cronies. Then those new cronie executives will 1113 all the labor CBAs, turn your pension over to the PBGC so you get pennies on the dollar for retirement plan; meantime those new executives will reward themselves handsomely, before the company even returns to profitability, because they’ve been “doing such amazing work to turn the company around.” But you, lowly pilot, will have to wait nearly a decade, or at least 5 years after profitability, to jump through all the RLA hoops to force your company to pay a market rate contract for your services.

I believe AMERICAN had around 10 billion in cash when they last declared bankruptcy. It’s only been getting easier for them.

My point is that it is a completely lopsided system, which exists solely to remove self-help (strike) leverage from transportation unions under the guise of “protecting interstate commence.” It’s utter political bullish!t and was probably written by a major railroad’s private contract attorney in 1926. ALPA should have amassed enough size to successfully campaign for an amendment to the RLA, but not a full re-write. We have a long history of stalled negotiations by airline management, and very few strikes in the last 3 decades. Now is a very good time, during a time of peace for legacy pilot labor groups, to push for an amendment to the RLA. Reasonable time limits for the RLA process must be established.