So, when do I stop seeing all this spam from ALPA about the evils of overseas and Middle Eastern airlines and start seeing them go after Delta? Anyone think the rest of the airlines will end up doing the same thing and/or actually put their operations under "foreign based" companies?
ANALYSIS: Delta Weighs Foreign Subsidiaries to Reduce Tax Burden

 

First: IF they do this...and it's a big IF... there will be very little change in day-to-day operations at the airline. Atlanta HDQ will still be clicking, and there will still be a Stars and Stripes on the side of the airplane.

Second: Why so quick to run to ALPA PAC for help on this? Their continued support for politicians that vote for higher taxes on those that produce, as well as making "evil big business" pay "their fair share" only assisted in creating this problem. ALPA PAC is fighting their own creation. Keep the growth-of-government crowd out of Washington and let the earners keep their earnings. No more wealth redistribution.

There needs to be a focus on whether ALPA wants to be a big-time "Jimmy Hoffa" break your knuckles socialist sympathizing labor group, or whether they want to be a trade-based lobbying power for a specialized industry. In summary, highly trained and skilled pilots do not belong lobbying with unskilled 3rd shift janitors in a meat packing plant.

Ok- I'm ready... Let the slaying and insults begin...

 

It's almost poetic that a blue-collar, extremely overpaid relative to market due to a strong union, pilot would be ranting about letting the "earners keep their earnings".

You realize if the Republicans truly had their way, you'd be lucky making $150k in the left seat of a 777, right? And our airlines would be based overseas using foreign crew similar to the cruise ship industry. Read: Zero job security.

You need to thank your lucky stars for the left base that keeps your wages high and the airplanes registered here in the USA.

 

It never ceases to amaze me how many airline pilots are right wing toadies. The truth of the matter is we're all just blue collar labor and the airlines will do ANYTHING to minimize their labor costs.

 

If this came to fruition, then Delta could get Boeings subsidized by the taxpayers through the ExIm bank.....

 

I am always amused when guys making a few hundred thousand dollars or less are fighting to protect guys making well over 7 figures a year. Joe the plumber teams up with Jim the pilot to quote a constitution they clearly haven't read, condemn a group of people they don't understand on behalf of a group they will never be a part of. Priceless.

 

Ok.
I'm a long-time lurker, but with about 10,000TT, and retired USAF with 21 years of service, I feel driven to respond to the original retort.
FMGEC, you may think you're special. But you're nothing more than hourly labor hired to do a predetermined job for the man.
The odor of exceptionalism reeks from your post. (You were what, an O-5 or above?) Let me clue you into something, you are nothing more than hired help.
We all are VERY highly skilled labor; our educational background and work history attest to this. But you seem to take the position that you (we) are something above the $7.25 an hour janitor.
Yes. We are several orders of magnitude above him. But we are also of the same working class as him.
Your attitude that we are his betters is, frankly, obscene.
Pilots are a group of employees that execute a task for the benefit of the company. You are not management. You are no longer in a position to decide the outcomes of the strategic goals of the corporation.
You are employee #XYZ.
Do your job and go home.
Unions are a disagreeable necessity, in my opinion, but they are NECESSARY, g*d damm*t! You will never accomplish a damned thing on your own against the company. The only strength you have is in our numbers.
If you think you're so special, have at it. I'll be watching with a full bag of popcorn.

 

Emphasis added.

The very job of a union is to redistribute wealth from the company to its members through collective bargaining over pay, benefits and work rules/conditions. Extracting things that companies would not pay of their own volition is by definition the redistribution of wealth, even if one can argue that such redistribution has been earned.

When you have an employee number and can be swapped out of your job for any one of hundreds/thousands of people who can do the exact same job, you are hired help, same as that 3rd shift janitor. The amount of skill, experience, education, etc. you have is irrelevant because you are part of a fungible and very much interchangeable pool of workers.

In short, neither you nor anyone else in the piloting profession is all that special as viewed by their employer.

You don't have to like unions to appreciate the necessity for them. You also don't have to like them to reap the benefits they negotiate because a union has a duty of fair representation to tend to the interests of all its members, even the members who don't like it.

 

The last two posts are probably the most genius things I've ever read on this forum. Ever!

 

Come on, give the rugged-individualist job-creators a break. 'Cause they work hard and FREEDOM!!