Originally Posted by
SaltyDog
No recourse when they [SkW] fire you for any reason.
Don D. was fired, but used recourse available to any human in the good ole US of A.... a lawyer. I'm confident that any settlement with Don by SkW would have paid (or will pay) for his legal expenses. Granted, a union may, or may not, have provided Don with a lawyer (if he p*ssed off the wrong union folks, they'd let him sink).
I was also fired from SkW. I'm confident that any union worth that title could have mitigated that in some way. However, the reality is that any pilot union, just like the current SAPA, would most likely be run by captains, who by a straw poll, support my firing (for failing upgrade training). Union or not, there wouldn't be a change here, either. FO's seem to see the policy differently, for obvious self-serving reasons ;-)
SkW is actively firing folks for failing recurrent training. Again, a good union should be able to argue training / downgrade / anything EXCEPT to be fired / PRIA / jobless. And a union with a little money can force the issue in arbitration / court.
SkW had fired another guy in the past two years, local to me in San Diego, during probation. Apparently another carrier's gate agent turned him in for getting into some kind of argument over the jumpseat. No union is going to save this guy either.
SkW fired another guy concurrent to my firing in August 2008 for failing FO IOE on the EMB-120 (also on probation). Seriously, what would any union be able to do there? The answer is nothing. Maybe offer the guy a counter job, or bag handling?
And this gets to a point I made earlier. Whether union or not, there won't be a significant change in firings. There should be, but I doubt there will be. Even the firings that should be won by a union might not be.
A union will offer lots of bravado, and at least a greater possibility that some jobs could be saved, or policies changed that make it easier to fire somebody.
If management gets there way, it will be ALPA because it gives them options with ASA. An in house union would not be in their plans.
It has occurred to me that if ALPA were genuinely concerned about a union at SkW (beyond "we get their dues"), they'd finance the start-up of an in-house union... with no strings attached.