Originally Posted by Excargodog

It’s attrition that will force management to the table. As long as they have cheap labor coming in the bottom, they’ll take all of that they can get. And the attrition doesn’t depend upon shafting the newbies. Alaska has an attrition problem and they aren’t shafting the newbies. But attrition drove their management to the table with an offer. Is that the best possible offer? Probably not, but it’s a lot more money than NK pilots are currently making.JetBlue has an attrition problem, without screwing over their newbies. Even Frontier has an attrition problem, without screwing over their newbies any more.

But as long as NK can manage to grow by just hiring more newbies on the cheap, why should they worry much about attrition? Until it’s more costly to replace the people they are losing than it is to pay people to stay, they can afford to stonewall.

I’m not against all rates coming up, that ought to be the goal, but other pilot groups have higher rates than NK without screwing over their newbies. And as I said, give me one example of a major airline where the “we get leverage by screwing over the newbies” model has actually worked. Give me an example, not a hypothetical or wishful thinking, but an example.