Originally Posted by milky

Organizing and unionizing does not mean that your job will be better or your company stronger. There are many examples. UAW is a great one.

While F/As do an important job, the arguments here about what they do are still examples of jobs that are not really skilled/professional labor. A bouncer blocks people from entering a door. I don't think anybody would argue that bouncers are anything but unskilled labor. There are many basic jobs that are given basic first aid training and taught how to use a defibrillator. The truth is that somebody can walk off the street and within a few weeks be fully trained to do the job of FA.

Just because you have a lot of coworkers that do the same job as you does not mean that you should be able to hold your company hostage. I believe there is enough competition on both sides of the equation to keep things mostly balanced. There are many companies at which you can be a FA. So, if you don't like the work rules/pay at your company, there are other places to work. The FA can be trained easily enough that the airline should be able to replace a fair enough FAs with whatever the market will accept for pay that they should be able to keep the pay at 'market' price. Just because people are willing to do your job for less money does not mean you should be able to unionize to protect your paycheck. That's bad for the company. It's bad for the country.

By the way, I feel the same way about pilots for the most part. The market has told pilots what they are really worth. Many are finally accepting it and making decisions based upon reality. Some are still clinging to their blame of evil management trying to keep labor down. Unionizing can be a great way for a labor group to fix gross inequities in the market. But, you guys keep complaining that your 'brothers' are screwing you by picking up open time and working on their days off, etc. That's not your brother screwing you. that's your brother telling you that the market of labor is willing to work more hours for less money. It isn't what you want to happen. It isn't what you want to hear. But, it's reality.