Originally Posted by Lewbronski

OTOH, what a lot of pilots don’t appreciate is how much leverage the Alaska pilot group had that they did not exploit. I get that their contract was terrible but it’s also a reflection of decades of them not understanding how to play the game. This is the pilot group, after all, that agreed to arbitration if they couldn’t reach an agreement with the company on the terms of their contract by Dec 15, 2004. That arbitration ruling led to the infamous “Kashtration” that slashed pay rates by an average of 26%. They ended up where they were mostly as the result of blundering unforced errors.

Though management and not the pilot group filed for mediation (why?), their SAV was encouraging. They had momentum. Like the rail workers who entered mediation just a couple of months after the Alaska pilot group, they also had nearly perfect timing.

An important event occurred at the end of 2021 that virtually no airline pilot mentions or even seems to be aware of. The NMB went from a Republican majority to a Democratic majority. That change in political composition of the NMB is most likely what allowed the rail workers to be released from mediation into a cooling off period after only a few months instead of the much more typical few years. The one NMB member who voted against releasing the rail workers in June 2022 was the lone remaining Republican on the Board.

Had the Alaska pilot group wanted to, they likely could have ended up in a similar spot as the rail workers with a release from mediation this past spring/early summer, then a cooling off period, then, most likely, a PEB lasting into late summer or early fall.

In terms of impact on interstate commerce, the rail workers pack a much bigger punch than the pilots of Alaska Airlines. They had the potential to severely snarl national supply chains at a most inopportune moment. If they could get released, Alaska pilots, with their much smaller ability to throttle back commerce, could also have been released.

The rail workers intentionally pushed for a release from mediation so that their PEB would be wrapping up near the peak of the mid-term election campaign season for maximum effectiveness while Democrats are still in control of Congress.

Had the Alaska pilot group played the game similar to the way the rail workers played it, all through the busy summer travel season Alaska would have had to deal with the “book-away phenomenon” of passengers hearing stories and rumors of Alaska pilots possibly going on strike soon. That effect would have grown as the date of a possible legal strike grew closer.

It’s important to note that railway management capitulated on day 59 (of 60) of their PEB with just hours remaining before rail workers could have walked off the job. What would Alaska management have done?

Two GOP senators attempted to introduce legislation in the last week of the PEB to block a strike and force the rail workers back to work on management’s terms if the PEB expired without a TA. Sen Sanders from Vermont, however, blocked their attempt. Something like that probably won’t work out so well for labor over the next couple of years if the GOP regains control of either the House or Senate or both.

So, yes, the Alaska pilot group’s SAV was great. Compared to their previous contract, they made gains. But that’s not saying a lot. And it’s saying even less given the nearly ideal conditions they allowed to be frittered away.

Why were the rail workers able to take full advantage of their leverage while the Alaska pilot group stopped short? There are a lot of reasons, I’m sure. I don’t know what all of them are.

But being pretty familiar with the Alaska pilot group and super-familiar with the SWA pilot group, one thing we both have in common is a huge preponderance of “kool-aid drinkers.” That has certainly played into why SWA has perennially ended up with lagging contracts.

One dynamic that it (kool-aid-ism) seems to fuel is a sort of willful ignorance on subjects like what I’ve discussed above - you know, subjects that, if mastered by a majority of a pilot group, could make that pilot group “dangeruss” (as in the Russell Wilson Super Bowl glory years sense of the word).

Many, many pilots, though, seem to adopt some degree of a mindset, even if unspoken or somewhat ill-formed, of “Man, I can’t believe the company pays me to do this job.” There’s an unspoken, maybe even unrealized, feeling that the pilot owes it to the company to not fight too hard or ask for too much. That’s a problem when it comes to actually having the will to go the distance to raise the bar and obtain a truly industry-leading contract.

BTW, notice I didn’t mention the purported pilot shortage even once because, if it exists at the major airline level, it isn’t our strongest leverage.