T2Pilot

I’d like to pose a question about ALPA and mergers. I am in no way trying to start a “flame war”, so please be kind. I am not an airline pilot (just a weekend CFI), so I am not aware of the “day to day” impact of ALPA.
Perhaps the following is flawed logic, but here it goes. Since ALPA represents pilots who are employed by a multitude of Airline companies and that airline mergers have and will continue to occur, why is there not some ALPA Standard Procedure (for lack of a better term) that deals with Pilot seniorities during a merger that has already been agreed upon by all ALPA members?

SCRWDbyMGMT

ALPA is concerned with one thing and, one thing only! They want dues paid by as many as possible with the promise that they will represent as few as possible.

pilotss

I think it is hard to use a one size fits all merger rule. Usually seniority progression, fleet types, and payscales have large impacts.

Really, what we need is one seniority list. Get a job with a 121 carrier and you get a number. If you get furloughed, you can't bump anyone but if you are the most senior you get the next job available, and a your seniority scale.

Each aircraft has a scale and no company can force another company to undercut.

SPDBOILER

So if I understand this correctly, you would omit 135 and military pilots from this group regardless of their experience level until they could get a 121 job. Seems like that would pose some problems.

Also, who would head this mega-union????

milky

Besides the military/other pilots not being included, this implies that every pilot that gets hired is of the same caliber. I don't believe a company should have to hire you over me because you have a number issued by some other company. They may have different standards than whomever hired you originally.

sailingfun

ALPA has a merger policy and overall it is a good policy. There is no one solution that could ever cover all mergers. Negotiation followed by arbitration if a solution can not be reached is the best method.

pilotss

Let me get more detailed.

Military wings would obviously be included. Winged or 121.

Yes it would only include wings or 121.

As the FAA states we are ALL qualified to fly metal no matter what the paint job. This actually makes a better standard for all not less.

sailingfun

A national seniority list has been talked about for years. Let me ask you this however. You work for a airline for 15 years and it fails. You now want to go to another airline and slide right in as a Captain ahead of the majority of their pilots. Do you think that airline will hire you? Not if they value the loyality of their current employees. The only way it would work is if the union took over all hiring at the national level and farmed out the pilots. Currently unions do not hire employees in the airline industry. Management hires and fires and also maintains the seniority list.

Oldfreightdawg

And herein lies the problem with this industry. In the good old days you could count on being at an airline for your entire career. As it was for just about the rest of America's working population. Today, nobody stays in the same place more than a few years. But most people can use their experience base to maintain or even elevate their incomes when moving from job to job.

Pilots have no ability to use experience to leverage higher wages. It's that lack of ability that airline managements world wide use against us.

satchip

Would that not also proliferate the number on non union carriers? If a company has a job opening and must hire from the top of the national list at the top end of the wage scale, that is a significant addition to the cost of labor. That would stagnate hiring at most companies. All the new entries into the labor market would not be hired for years being not on the list. That would force them into non union carriers for employment. Companies would farm even more jobs out to non union subsidiaries to reduce labor costs. Look at the UAW and the auto industry.

A better model would be the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) and the other hollywood unions. There you can still hire entry level workers but you must pay union scale wages. If we formed a national guild or Professional Association we could set a national wage scale, ie if you want a 767 pilot, this is what it costs. There could be longevity based raises and bidding within each company.

It would give us more collective bargaining power because we would be negotiating a national contract with all carriers. Any job action would affect the entire system. (current law may prevent this, unfortunately.) Companies would like it because it would add some long term fixed cost stability to the labor market.

The old style union model i think is played out. Let's emulate a more successful labor union model. We must adapt to changing market forces. This is not a political statement, just an idea to discuss. I am new at this industry and until recently have been an outsider and this idea comes from that perspective. What do you more experience folks think?