Originally Posted by
forgot to bid
FRONTLINE: flying cheap: interviews: gordon bethune | PBS
Really? You think $16,000 a year as a starting salary for a first officer is enough?
Can I tell you how they get to that, just so that the public knows? Every three or four years, there's contract negotiations between labor groups and the company. The company says: "We can afford to pay this much money. This is total dollars. How would you like to allocate it?" The union who's negotiating on behalf of its members allocates that money in a way that can get ratified by the vote of the pilots. You know who's not there? The people you haven't hired yet. You know who always gets left, because the captain wants $2 more? And everybody says, "Well, you know, my first year we didn't get paid anything either, so tough **** for them." ... The reason it's $16,000 a year is because that union wanted that money somewhere else, and that's the way it works.
It's the union's fault.
Well, you only get so much money. How much would you like to allocate?...
Where this is most directly applied is to the sale of our flying to the regional carriers.
Since new hires don't vote ... .
This act displays a failure of ALPA leadership to grasp the basic concept that their power is a direct function of the number of pilots they represent and the percentage of flying they control. They arrogantly assume they will always be a relevant majority until ...
oooops.
Interest based bargaining just threw fuel on that fire. The unrepresented pilots got sold. The junior First Officers were told to divert their wrath to the regional pilots (who were not at the table). Some are just now beginning to wake up and realize what they were in bed with.
One theory floating around ALPA National was to take control of Section 1 back from the MEC and NC to avoid the long term damage to our union caused by outsourcing.