This is totally off topic but as that seems to be the norm for this site, I'll go with the flow.


The real trouble is that pilots are willing to work for a place like Southwest when it starts up. If we had a union with real meat to it, which is forbidden by the RLA but which works fine in Germany and France, I wouldn't have to fight for QWOL issues. Southwest pilots work harder than UAL pilots, but that is the battle being fought philosophically, politically, and in reality across our nation for the last 3 decades. Karl Marx recognized that capitalists allowed a totally free hand will treat their workers as close to slaves as possible and only through the combined efforts of organized labor can we counteract the overwhelming force massed against the workers of the world. As a global society we have the means to feed and clothe everyone many times over. We no longer need to work 80 hours a week or remain away from home 18 days of the month in order to feed our progeny. I for one look for continuing progress in labor contracts which give workers the choice of how much time they want to work and how much time they want to spend with their family. Contracts that force workers into being more "efficient" are regressive in my mind, but that runs counter to the entire ethos of the body politic in the USA today and for that we have the combination of Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan who brought us the mantra that "Unions are the problem." They are not. The problem is that the capital that makes the world go round is ultimately owned by the workers but in reality is controlled by a select group of bankers for whom the laws of our nation are designed to favor. Dig down through the banks, pension funds, private equity firms, and shell corporations and ultimately you and I are the majority owners of almost every public corporation in the world, but the rules are designed to protect the interests of the intermediaries and not you and I. In effect we the proletarians of the USA have prostituted ourselves to the banks of the world.


I work 50 hours a month because I have built a level of wealth that allows me that pleasure, but that is because I understand how the cards are stacked against the working class. All I can say is that if everyone understood the stakes involved no one would ever go to work for a JetBlue or Southwest start up ever again. By the way that is a story of the young eating the old that has been told time and again going back to shipping lines in the days of the Greeks and continuing through the Railways at the turn of the last century and repeating yet again in our own industry. Watch carefully as the Southwest story comes to a crashing halt over the coming decade now that its workforce is approaching maturity.

For the record I have been short LUV and long UAL for several years now.



Joe Peck
IADFO-UAL76/75