Originally Posted by
flensr
Didn't you pay attention to what happened to Spirit? The restraining order against the pilot group was based on 500 pages of internet postings by about 10 people saying "fly the contract". Federal law has plenty of "features" implemented since 9/11 to permit them to pull your IP address from the forums, and therefore get your actual identity to be discovered during legal procedings.
If they can go after one person, they'll go after everyone, personally.
Don't be stupid, but then again it's probably too late, an archive of your post is probably already in the pile ready to go before a judge to prove a concerted and coordinated effort for illegal job action. That's exactly how it went down with Spirit, and the stack of forum posts that led to the TRO is public record so everyone can see how stupid "innocent" forum posts by just a handful of people can get used against everyone.
Yup.
From the "Complaint for Injunctive Relief" filed by Spirit managment against the Spirit MEC May 8, 2017:
Some Spirit pilots are also promoting refusing open time flying and intimidating pilots who pick up open time flying by denigrating those pilots on the Airline Pilot Central Forum (“APC”). APC is a publicly-accessible forum for pilots, generally grouped by airline, where pilots discuss a wide-range of topics pertaining to their employment, such as the currently ongoing contract negotiations. In approximately the past week, the posts on the APC Spirit blog/page have encouraged pilots to refuse open time and have begun to threaten/harass pilots who do pick up open time flying. These posts expressly tie the refusal to pick up open time to obtaining leverage in the ongoing CBA negotiations with Spirit.
The complaint goes on for more than two pages quoting Spirit pilots posts from APC as evidence.
In response to the complaint, the court issued a Temporary Restraining Order enjoining Spirit pilots from engaging in any kind of concerted work action. Worse, it stopped the mediation clock and significantly reduced the danger to Spirit that their pilots could possibly get released in the foreseeable future. That dramatically decreased their leverage. It also put Spirit ALPA in danger of paying out substantial fines if their pilots continued to engage in illegal job actions.