Originally Posted by
ZapBrannigan
Completely agree. This group has never dealt with a furlough before so it is fair to say that there will be pilots who dont draw the connection between picking up open time and how that affects pilots who are on furlough --- but there needs to be some education happening between now and October. Big time!
My last carrier furloughed 169 pilots for about six months (approximately if my memory serves me right). We still had some that picked up open time and cptns that even flew FO trips as we had a mechanism to do that.
We will NEVER have a 100% participation rate but still need to do all that’s possible to make such behavior exceedingly frowned upon by our fellow pilots.
Do not expect SWAPA to contribute to that at all as that kind of mandate would obviously involve potential legal risk to our union. It needs to come from a grassroots effort from the pilot group to paint voluntary open time pick up with folks out on furlough as behavior akin to scabbing.
This talk is premature anyway, but perhaps the seed needs to be planted in people’s minds now. As Zap mentioned, this is uncharted territory (should a reduction of staff happen) for many within our ranks.