Originally Posted by Cleared4appch

In defense of the unions, they do offer significant protections regarding work rules. Yes, in years past, the unions were absolutely worthless when it came to negotiations for increased pilot pay. Hopefully it never ever goes back to that, and I don’t think it will get to the point where they will drop the wages to what they were prior to about 2015/2016. Cost of living is a lot higher now. If they do cut wages, it might easily go back to what they were right before they hiked the rates in 2022, maybe even lower than that.

For work rules, they do help protect pilots. There’s rules for the company on just about anything. Hotels for instance. They have specific standards on where they put us. Management can’t just behave like a Wild West crap bag part 91/135 operator, and drop us into a sketchy truck stop motel which is in a moderate to high crime area with drug dealing and prostitution going on, and say “deal with it, if you don’t like it, you can go work somewhere else.” Even regionals have always been pretty good at booking us in decent to even good hotels, even before they hiked the pay rates. If there is a crime that has been committed in an area near or in the hotel, that was previously low to no crime, they move us to a different hotel. This has happened on several occasions at my shop, and i always felt like they are looking after us when they book different hotels to keep us away from sketchy areas.

At my shop on reserve, on your last day on a stretch of reserve days, if nothing is assigned to you by 5:00pm, you have ‘early release’ and can go home early, even if you were originally on reserve until midnight that night. This helps commuters a lot.

Those are just one of many examples.