Flyfalcons

Airline passengers don't cancel their trip to visit grandma because their "overpaid autopilot babysitter" pilots are informational picketing either. Yet airline pilots still picket. Despite what is most likely a paid anti-union account above stated, we know it works, and that's why we do it.

MinRest

Well, it didn’t work for you. You guys had 800 people picket Omaha. 800 with your family members, pets and goldfish. Airlines of similar size are having larger numbers of only pilots. How many NJA owners walked passed the pickets in Omaha? My guess is a couple handfuls at best. Thousands, even tens of thousands of passengers pass informational pickets at an airport terminal.

When passengers see potential issues of having their flight cancel because of a strike, they book another airline. Airline pickets also appeal to a lower economic demographic than NJA could ever reach. It is so much easier to get the traveling public on board with the message from an informational picket than any NJA owner. How many NJA owners are gonna sell their share and fly SWA because you guys brought an inflatable alligator to Omaha?

Your Hail Mary “big” move netted you a “now is not the time” response from management. Meanwhile WestJet got an AIP hours before their strike, and American got an AIP days after the results of their strike vote. You have no other cards to play because you voted them away. How are you still so delusional to believe that airline pickets and the section 6 process are less effective than NJA pickets lol. You are elevator bellhops to the richest people on the planet. You will never get owners to side with you beyond them just making some empty comment about how you should be paid more.

You shot your shot, and it didn’t go the way NJASAP told you it was going to go. How many more promises are you going to believe before you start holding the union leadership accountable?

I am as pro-union as they come and work for ALPA in two different volunteer roles for the airline. But let’s call a spade a spade.

HeavyD

Honest question. Who is the intended audience for these pickets?

Flyfalcons

Attend one and find out, if you can be bothered to support your pilot group. If not that's okay, you can let others do the work and enjoy the same CBA benefits as everyone else.

MinRest

Or you can stop giving canned answers.

The question warrants exploration and a better answer than that.

Flyfalcons

The answer is right on the picket signs. People who have attended know this. Who was the target audience when Alaska picketed? Assuming you could have been bothered to join them. Why do airline pilots picket, anyway? Since you feel it serves no purpose and all...

obiden

Yes, anyone with a different opinion is a paid anti-union account. What, no russian bot?
You're ridiculous.

Btw, congrats on being the first to identify yourself as one of the ppl I was referring to.

MinRest

I told you who the audience is for an airline picket. Do you actually know the industry you’re in? The job you have? Who you fly? It sounds like you are lacking yet another basic level of understanding here…

And I’m on the strategic planning committee so yea I was there. At the time it was the biggest informational picket in ALPA history. What do you do besides the bare minimum?

jtf560

The union leadership NEVER said Omaha was the be all, end all, last chance to prove our point. Before it happened, they published a long list of further pickets going out for the rest of the year, not even including the small team pickets that will show up at multiple other locations. They have told us the whole time that it is not a short term process. While we could hope that the threat of Omaha would be enough, our leadership did not advertise it as being what would ultimately make or break us.

My personal thoughts about the utility of the pickets is that they provide many different things to the equation for getting an improved contract. Omaha gets the attention of Berkshire that there are a lot of angry pilots that are starting to finally unify. Operations tend to suffer when this happens. The other pickets are more to get the attention of the owners that will then start calling management asking what is going on and getting the message that it is management messing up when their flight get delayed and asking why they are paying so much and now getting very inexperienced pilots. They don't want to see that and management doesn't want them to know either.

The pickets also get us together and get us talking and unifies to do what needs to be done. We then go back to work and bring this energy to our coworkers and get them to think about how each action they choose to do has a consequence on getting a better contract. The pickets themselves don't bring the contract, but the unity they bring does. When the majority get together and the train goes off the rails, the money will come. There are many, many small things that lead to the train coming off the rails and this unity is what freaks management out. A bunch of angry pilots don't feel like helping the company at all. They get angry just thinking about going to work so they end up bidding off the higher utility schedules and they stop doing extended days and they stop giving out letters of recommendation and they actively tell their friends and anyone asking why they shouldn't work for NetJets and so on and so on. It takes time for the group to come together and this is exactly what the union leadership has told us. Honestly, if all this didn't do anything, why would they have offered us any improvements? They could have told us to pound sand last fall when we told them it was time for improvements. I have no idea how much we will be able to squeeze out of them, but the squeeze will only continue to build as more and more get frustrated and either stop helping the company or just end up leaving.

Omaha was also great for the leaving part of the equation. Many saw that that alone wasn't going to get us a contract and then pulled the trigger on at least sending out their apps. The attrition is starting to accelerate and it isn't just pilots hired recently. We had a 25+ year Global PIC leave for AA. I'm genuinely excited to see how many leave the list next month after finally pulling the trigger. I had a great time in Omaha talking to old friends and newer pilots and many if us talked about leaving. These are all forms of pressure. I'm kind of a lazy guy and will probably need a really subpar new contract to pull the trigger myself, but I am definitely thinking it through.

jtf560

The intended audience depends on the picket. Omaha wasn't so much for airplane owners as it was for Berahire to see the unity building. Most of the others are for the owners to see a bunch of frustrated pilots so they will start to wonder why they are paying so much if the "help" isn't getting the money and to understand what is happening when their flights are delayed and how the experience level is starting to tank. We want the owners harassing their owner services representatives and mangaement. The pickets also bring the group together and are quite fun the night before and night after- so they are kind of for us also.