Originally Posted by
CaptCoolHand
In leu of the Midwest situation, what would the UAW do if GM, Ford, or who ever fired all the workers. Then the next day brought in a whole new group to do the same work for less money in different factories? This isn't a political jab, but where's the govt. now for these workers? The employees that have given 10-20-30 years to this company, and now some kid will fly the route at a fraction of the price. Where is ALPA? Is there nothing that can be done for the employees of Midwest? Where is the press on CNN about this? Blows my mind.
This whole situation should disturb all of us in the airline industry to the extreme. How fast can you be undercut to fly the public around for $20 tickets?
What would the UAW do? What would the local machinists 575 do?
Doesn't matter. Nothing the unions will, or can, do will matter as long as the FAA (US Government) maintains it's position that all airlines are equally safe. The airlines contribute to the problem because their lawyers won't let them advertise safety.
When one thinks about it, the FAA sets the standards for our job. If a pilot reaches that standard level, the FAA blesses everything he/she touches with "one level of safety". At that point, there is no difference in a companies eye, or in the flying public's eye, between Chesly Sullenberger and the Colgan Captain who didn't know how to recover from an inadvertent stall. They were both blessed by the US Government as being competent and qualified airline Captains. End of story.
Your UAW scenario does not apply because your hypothetical would be for replacing all of the workers at a production facility. If Midex were to dump ALPA tomorrow, and fly the Midex airplanes with non ALPA pilots, that would be replacing the workers at a production facility. In that case, the Gummint would not allow it to happen. What were looking at is nothing more than outsourcing, and nothing can fix that as long as the product is seen as interchangeable. See the first paragraph.
What I wish would happen is that John Prater would use his relationship with Obama to gain pilot certification status for ALPA. If ALPA were to be able to bless a pilot in the same way that Bar Associations bless lawyers and the AMA blesses Dr's, then we would have the ability to control our careers. Until then, the marketplace will rule. Either directly for non-Union carriers or indirectly as we are seeing at Midex.