Originally Posted by
Mudhen200
Son - I don’t even know where to start or what to say. You are a lost cause. Name calling just makes you look silly. Nothing I have said should make you think that I don’t care about anyone junior to me or that I don’t care about our profession . I have spent years volunteering in ALPA. How many years of your time have you given to ALPA?
You are one of those tuff guys who likes to thump your chest and talk about how bad stuff is and how it’s always the fault of some senior guy or some weak MEC. Your kind never has an actual solution or even a logical rational thought. Nor will you step up, volunteer and work for the betterment of the contract. Just a lot of hot air.
You seem to be hung up on the idea that a strike will cure all that ails you. You see it as some holy grail that will achieve total victory and the best contract, not to mention a super cool battle star on your ALPA pin!
When seasoned pilots explain to you the legitimate, logical, and real reasons on why a strike can not happen at Alaska Airlines, you default to unprofessional silliness.
I don’t care if you believe me. I don’t care if you think poorly of me because I’m senior to you. I don’t care if you think your big balls leading the charge on a strike is all that is needed to improve our contact. I do know that I can’t count on you because you have proven yourself to be rather irrational. I hope that you will mature over the course of your career and become someone that can be counted on.
I use to be a hot head in my youth as well. Thankfully I started to listen and learn. I volunteered, I got engaged, I helped make a difference.
What are you going to do? Unfortunately, you will probably just swear some more, throw out a few more insults, and try to convince yourself that somehow guys like me are the problem.
Meanwhile, the truth remains. There will never be a strike allowed at Alaska Airlines as long as we have the responsibility of providing service in the great state of Alaska.
I know much what you are saying is a rebuke to ASPilot, and for that I will cut you some slack.
However, just as the group-splitters (damn senior guys! Etc.) are damaging to the whole process, the furtherance of the idea that we are in a hopeless situation with the RLA is just as damaging.
“We will never be released to self-help because of...(fill in your reason) ” if you actually read the law and the accompanying court cases, you will see that the RLA’s power in this regard is not limitless. First off, if we did get to a PEB then it is only 30 days, at which point we could resort to self-help.
Getting an impasse declared is also a difficult hurdle I will grant you but still not a limitless one. It’s not a bright line but it is thought to be somewhere around the 3 year mark that you could reasonably expect to go into a federal court and have an impasse declared for you by the court since there is a good chance that a court would find the RLA to not be acting in compliance with the law once we are talking about 3+ year time frames.
So no it is not impossible. If it were as impossible as you say then the logical thing to do would be to vote ALPA out and just keep the 2% a year since that means we have zero leverage.
The part about a strike that a lot of people are missing though, is that it is not the Strike itself that gets the results, it is the WILLINGNESS to strike that does.
Like nuclear missiles. If your enemies believe for a second that you would not be willing to use them when provoked...you would be toast - literally.
My other point is that Joe Flying-Public does not know the intricucies of the RLA, all they might know is that there is labor trouble at Alaska, better buy a ticket on Delta to prevent our vacation being ruined next summer. This fact will get you to a deal sooner if handled properly then would otherwise happen.
Anyway, that is why I actively advocate that strike preparations begin now. We need large piles of cash in reserves as a union, pilots in financial situations that are on board and able to walk off the job for three months in 2022 (2020+2-3 years) without breaking a sweat.
Mutually Assured Destruction.
Nobody wants to, but we have to be willing to.