I too was once at a company (as another type of professional - not a pilot) where I got all the perks and high pay. In fact, I negotiated my own salary at > BJ year 3 pay.



However, airlines need Union representation because pilots do not stand up for themselves the same way other professionals do. Pilots will never walk away from a bad deal nor will they recognize a bad deal when they see one (e.g. the current TA, post language disclosure). Most pilots at BJ come from a former personal experience of being beaten down and whose sense of "normalcy" has been recalibrated to your average service industry job. Management has successfully defeated pilot employee groups. Part of the problem is that anyone can become a pilot - there is no discrimination based on academic merit or testing. The FAA standards are not terribly hard given enough time. So, employers know that if they don't want to pay top dollar for a 4.0 GPA, Part 141 flight school grad or a military pilot, they'll pay sub-minimum wage for the guy who never graduated high school but got a pilot's license. We don't have a professional organization that controls standards. Doctors have that which is why they control doctor supply/demand/pay. ALPA is a half-solution replacement for the absence of a professional organization.



Unless pilots learn to be professionals like lawyers, medical doctors, scientists, engineers, etc., we will continue to need unions.


Albeit I'm a big time ALPA supporter, I'm also highly critical of it. They are WAY TOO SLOW and EXPENSIVE for the inadequate results we get (e.g. the current TA). ALPA has imposed on itself this whole bureaucratic process that is all artificial and not required by law. For example, they could have mass online conversations via IRC to write out a contract with all members electronically/virtually present. Once we write our dream contract, then we could present that to BJ, with only us knowing what elements of the contract proposal are make or break requirements. That way, after the first meeting, we would instantly know if we need to immediately start with informational picketing.



Remember, the mediation process is entirely voluntary! Appeasing a mediator is a self-imposed restriction for some arbitrary cause. According to the RLA, we have so many different ways to accomplish negotiations. ALPA is just mind-stuck on the way they've done for eons, which is vastly inefficient. Please read the RLA - it leaves it up to the Union and the Company to come up with a method of "negotiation". Also, every step of the RLA is *voluntary*.



So continuing on in my hypothetical example, if we give them our full proposal at meeting #1, they could read it entirely and come back with revisions at meeting #2. If they don't, the informational picketing continues. If they simply don't agree with our verbiage, or we don't agree with their amendments, then we've reached an impasse and we ask to be released for strike. Our goal is to negotiate on the expendable items but never to compromise on "requirements", which are only known to ALPA big fish as determined by ALPA members. There's no legal requirement to do things sentence by sentence, year after year.



The Railway Labor Act Simplified



ALPA is a necessary evil and I support them. They just need to abandon their dinosaur, lack of thinking methods so they can deliver results at Internet speed.



This communique is for entertainment purposes only. It does not implicitly or explicitly acknowledge employment with any air carrier nor is any relationship implied. This communique does not represent the opinions or policies of ALPA or JB ALPA and does not represent the collective pilot group, ALPA, nor does it imply collective bargaining, advocacy, or workforce actions intended to disrupt operations.