Originally Posted by
JohnBurke
That is irrelevant and nothing more than fantasy. Nothing whatsoever to do with this discussion.
Republic isn't going after students who fulfill their obligation. Republic is going after students who fail to fulfill their obligation.
If United and a student enter into an agreement, and that agreement includes giving service to United after training is done, and the student gives service to United, then United isn't going to sue the student for fulfilling the contract.
If a student fails to attain pilot certification, or is not up to the standard such that the student can pass an interview or checkride, then an agreement might include a statement that requires other service (instructing, sweeping hangar floors, gate agent, etc), or it might not. The relevant details are in the language of a given contract.
Republic is suing those who failed to abide the contract. You're offering an imaginary scenario that is the exact opposite, such an inference does little more than muddy the water.
The agreements are most likely similar, since the same people come up with this stuff for all of Corporate America. These students most likely didn't understand what they were actually getting into, and that they basically signed up to be indentured servants of Republic.
United is doing the same thing that Republic did in this case, just at a larger scale. United knows they're not going to find enough people to keep filling their RJ feed and Manhattan-EWR drone pilot positions they envision, so what better way than to promise people who don't know any better, a job flying a 777, when in reality they're signing themselves over into indentured servitude to make sure the bottom of United's operation stays viable. They're all up to the same old tricks, just rebranded to make it look like they're trying to help someone.
Companies or organizations don't give out scholarships to universities with a legal contract that the graduate has to work at the company when they graduate. Yet, the idea of training contracts became accepted in the aviation world when jobs were hard to come by and pilots were desperate. Now, the same concept is just being re-hashed for initial training. Republic knows that the ship is sinking and they need to do anything they can to force whoever they can to stay onboard and go down with it. United also knows they're going to need people to fill all the sh1t jobs in the future, so they're applying the same concept.