Originally Posted by
RJSAviator76
Gents, would someone have the historical airline management/executive compensation graphs available to show overlapping this graph that the original poster put up? It would be interesting to see, but I'm willing to bet that their graph was going the other way over the same time frame.
You want to fix this erosion of the 'profession'? Here are my thoughts:
1) Repeal RLA. This will enable you to strike like every other real union - when your contract is up, without another one signed, you're walking...
2) Take away management's ability to threaten you with pay cuts and make the system allow you to vote with your feet without such drastic penalties. Current seniority system needs a serious overhaul. Again, when we were taking paycuts, they were getting bonuses. Who's the chump?
In any case, it will be a major uphill battle regardless of the direction.
It'll be a tough one because the management has no incentive to reverse this trend because we cannot vote with our feet - for most, it's a financial suicide; and also we cannot strike without getting released by NMB. We all know how long that can take.
+1
Management has likely kept pace (or better) with inflation, though I have no data to prove that. Having said that, we DIDN'T because of the fundamental reasons you mention:
1) The inability to have "portable seniority" is our Achilles heel. It was a good idea back in the days of regulation, but it is an anachronism now, and is a strong disincentive for the top 1/3 of the list to (generally) ever be willing to use the ultimate weapon.
2) Even if you CAN convince the entire group to strike, the NMB hardly ever allows it, and only in the most egregious of cases. One need only look at ASA's 5 year battle, Pinnacle's 5 (?) year, APA's 3+ year etc. etc.
Absent fixing these two broad issues, there is little hope that we will ever again achieve anything relative to what we previously enjoyed.