Originally Posted by echelon

Why does this absurd idea that there will ever be a strike at a major airline, let alone the one that's counted on to deliver essentials to all the sh!thole nowheres in the state of Alaska, keep getting perpetuated? It will never happen (legally). Stop giving it attention like it's something that is realistically possible in this country in this century . And captains, I'm tired of hearing about how much you're contributing to your "strike fund," as if the strike that will never happen in the first place would last more than an hour.

And if they do just buy Hawaiian, then don't we just get sodomized with yet another arbitrator-awarded wet dream for the company JCBA?

What nobody (and yes I've asked this of our elected representatives) seems to be able to explain is what the company's motivation is to negotiate at all. ALL of the urgency is on our side of the table, and ALL of the leverage is on theirs. Attrition from the bottom of the list has never been enough of an issue, even in the midst of record hiring at the other majors, to present an action-worthy data point to the company. There will never be a shortage of regional pilots who would settle for any step up from their current shop, and as long as we have bases in PDX/ANC/SEA there will be locals who apply and who probably don't care that commuting to our schedules is a death sentence (or at the very least, grounds for an inevitable divorce). The long and the short of it is that we have virtually nothing with which to force their hand. As much as I'd love for the company to be terrified of our custom-wrap RV and all our unity cookouts, I just don't see it.

Somebody change my mind.