Originally Posted by
OOfff
that makes everyone who has ever touched an RJ a scab
I expected that.
1. Most RJ companies were union, namely ALPA
2. Duane Wuerthless, president of ALPA advocated the RJs go to the regionals since they were “commuter replacements”.
3. ML pilots didn’t want the RJs and in the late 90s and early 2000s had no interest in them. A ML pilot literally told me “how can I expect my reserve buds to come to Delta and start on an RJ when I started on the -9.”
4. RJ didn’t “take” anything but were given what ML didn’t want.
Regionals were given the RJs with the full blessing of ALPA and ALPA ML pilots and it never became an issue until after 9-11 and ML started to furlough. Then they either wanted the planes for themselves but it was too late, or wanted to staple the RJ guys so they could flow down and bump RJs guys to the street, literally a year after they said RJ guys were not worthy of a staple.
I merely stated afl-cio’s position. To me personally there’s more to being a scab than picket lines and struck work because there are additional actions that are designed to damage the union and union workers. The RJ situation wasn’t designed to damage the union, it was a whipsaw for labor costs.