Originally Posted by
Gundam
Yea, that's what I'm talking about. In the past, when unions were actually strong, and used to do more than add a couple percent to 401k contributions, they created legislation like a 40 hour work week. People just point to the RLA like it is a force of gravity instead of a rule put in place to heel labor. When you have real power you make rules, and pilots (especially at the top) seem way too comfortable to ever actually make lasting or visionary change the way corporations do when they literally write legislation that is put into bills. The lack of political power will always show itself in a weaker negotiating position.
Eh, I'm not going to suggest that pilot labor unions have always been right or have had the vision to not go down certain paths that have later proven detrimental to its membership (case in point: the entire FFD segment), but I think placing most of our hope of improvements in our lobbying power in DC is short sighted at best, primarily because management is always going to have a better funded set of lobbyists. Sure, perhaps reforming pieces of the RLA would be beneficial to 121 pilots as a whole, but you also have to consider what management is going to try and put into those bills.
For example: one of the features of the RLA is that all employees of a particular craft (read: pilots) have to be on the same seniority list and CBA system wide. What do you think would happen if a bill amending the RLA weakened any of those provisions? You think the hired guns at F&H wouldn't LOVE to work in that world where separate domiciles meant separate CBAs and system seniority lists? You the 'whipsaw' is bad now, any changes to those permissions would be open season. In many respects, better the devil we know than the devil that some management lobbyist comes up with.
The reality of the last 5-7 years (particularly at the regional level) is that broader macro-economic conditions (pilot demand and high barriers to entry to the profession) have done more for compensation (again, mostly at the regionals) than the prior 20 years of pilot union lobbying and negotiation. Certainly, things like the ATP rule and 117 have helped, but I think a lot of what we're seeing is that for a time prospective pilots saw the high cost of training, and measured it against $24.02 first year pay (my first pay rate at my current employer) and said no thank you. At the Legacy level, even at AA we can point to mid-contract raises outside of Section 6.
If I were King over at ALPA PAC (and whatever APA's equivalent is), my #1 goal would be making every international passenger airline that operates to/from US soil comply with 117, then ensuring that foreign airlines don't have the opportunity to operate 5th, 8th, or 9th freedom flights that originate or terminate in the US. It's things like that that'll be FAR more productive than imaging that amending the RLA has no downsides.