Originally Posted by
IA Moose
Yeah won’t need to worry, they don’t want to fly for us either. Anecdotal but only 1 guy I flew with in the AF chose to come to SWA over the past 3 years. I’m guessing more than a dozen inquired but went elsewhere.
Side note: I’m surprised by how many people assume former mil means retiree. It’s got to be a minute proportion that are actually receiving pension payments. The rest of us are just quitters like me and definitely have a learning curve when it comes to company-union dynamics…but we’ve got skin in the game same as everyone else.
Not to stoke the whole mil/civ thing, but I've flown with at least as many clueless civilian guys as I have military guys.
Regardless of background, if a guy is going to "get it", he/she has to put in the work to understand how the whole negotiation process in the US airline industry works. It's not rocket science but it's not something you can figure out simply by studying the RLA flow chart for an hour or two or by listening to the mouth-breather next to you pass on the myths that he/she picked up from who-knows-where. You actually have to put in a little bit of work to understand how it works and why we don't need to just settle for less. With multi-million dollar careers on the line along with the well-being of our families, it seems like a no-brainer to spend at least as much time learning to understand how it works as you put into winning at fantasy football or mastering the ins-and-outs of a BGE. But that isn't what seems to actually happen.
We are not in mediation right now more than two years after opening negotiations. Most guys don't understand why that is problematic. Many probably believe that's actually a good thing.
Since we opened negotiations right when covid hit in March of 2020, perhaps some of the still-accruing delay in filing for mediation has been justified due to the once-in-a-century pandemic. Pandemic or not, though, being more than two years deep into negotiations without filing for mediation is difficult to understand. The clock has yet to start ticking on the at least 2.5 to 3 years we would likely need to be in mediation before we could pose a credible threat of being released into self help. That's concerning, especially when coupled with one of our rep's recent comments in a blast describing the RLA as "sugar in our gas tank." United had failed to file for mediation after 3.5 years of talks when they produced their turd of a TA. Maybe they held a similar view.
A full contract rewrite that produces industry-leading gains will require an enormous amount of leverage. Using the power offered by the RLA to help achieve that does not box out any of the other avenues for achieving leverage that we also have available to us. It amplifies them.
We can still picket as much as we want. We can still pound the table about the pilot shortage and the operational meltdowns. We can still issue press releases and have our leadership appear on CNBC and Fox News to let the public know what's going on. We can still pick up as much or as little open time as we want (of course, while abiding by the law). Why on Earth would we not avail ourselves of every ounce of leverage available to us, especially when many recognize the leverage provided via the RLA by the threat of self help as the strongest leverage available to a labor group?
I know, I know...many of us think, because we heard it somewhere from someone once upon a time, things like:
- But the mediator will put us on ice forever!
- The President will never let us strike!
- Congress will shut us down!
There are answers to all of those concerns but most guys have no idea what they even are. And so, resignedly, they think we just have to keep folding - that we'll punt today and move the ball down the field next time - that the deck is stacked against us.