Originally Posted by
NEDude
Hey, that's great! I'll throw my stuff in at United, sounds like a great job! Oh...wait...I can't. You see ALPA allowed its jobs to be outsourced to regional carriers with poverty level wages.
But at least the guys who got hired at United are doing okay right? Oh...wait...I see there are 1500 guys furloughed and United ditched all of their 737s in favor of RJs.
Well at least there are a lot of regional jobs available for those furloughed guys right? Oh...wait...You mean they have to start at the bottom of the seniority list at $20,000/year, and not even having so much as 401k matching?
Well it is nice to know ALPA is working hard for you at least, just like it did for all of the members at TWA and USAirways...
Ummm.....no. "ALPA," which I assume you mean to be "ALPA National" doesn't call the shots. Pilots do at individual airlines. Remember, "ALPA" sucks and therefore that is good, right? We don't want "ALPA National" telling pilots what to do because they suck, right? Pilots tell pilots what to do within ALPA. So if you want to blame anyone, blame United pilots (in this case). And I accept the responsibility for not being able to predict the future in the late 1990's. Nobody at my airline voted the way they did to "screw over" furloughees. They thought that it was best for the airline to provide feed through a regional jet system, and that it would lead to more jobs, not less, at the mainline. Unfortunately, since mainline pilots weren't able to predict the future, the votes cast at United (this example) were incorrect. Hindsight is 20/20, isn't it?
Further, it's kind of a moot point because even if United pilots (this example) had given management the middle finger back in the late 90's with the RJ thing, they would have gotten them in bankruptcy, anyway. The vote to relax scope at United (and other major airlines) just allowed what was going to happen (again with hindsight) about 3 years earlier.
What happened at TWA and US Airways are a subject of another thread and have been beat to death. The problem that ALPA will always have is the following: ALPA is at many major airlines. Bad things can happen to airlines in a capitalistic system- weak airlines die, strong airlines prosper. Capitalism is extremely Darwin-istic. TWA, for example, is an airline that didn't survive, and that sometimes happens with businesses in the U.S. ALPA is at TWA, bad things happened to TWA because it was a losing airline in our free market society, so therefore it's "ALPA's" fault. Again, blaming "ALPA" for what happened at TWA is simple and fun. However, I would argue that TWA was an airline that failed, and bad things happen to companies that fail, and that's not a union's fault. People that suffer need someone to blame for their problems. ALPA makes for a convenient punching bag. If that makes people feel better or for internet posters to make weak points, that's fine. But I wouldn't agree that ALPA was the cause of either airline's demise.