Whoever has the purse strings has the distinct advantage believe me. Look how amazingly the Holding companies were in the black while the airline itself was bankrupt with many of the latest cases. The Airline is the catalyst for the money, and the holding companies siphon away the $$ so when it is time to talk to labor, "Sorry we're broke."

Did you see the list of creditors for the NWA bankruptsy, I think the holding company owned nearly all of them. They were in hawk to themselves:rolleyes: They reissued the stock to themselves. Crazy, who has the advantage?

Of course one would be crazy to not do this. But those pay rates wouldn't give a true representation of what the "market value" of their skills were worth, which is what I'm trying to say.

Buying in bulk to receive discounts is a *little* bit different then negotiating in bulk. While I did say it was different, in a way Wal-Mart acts like it's own union when it buys products, forcing the suppliers to double-down their costs. Their buying power is that big.

ALPA is already pushing bankruptcy reform. If you think labor got the short end of the stick on that one, you might want to talk to the thousands of other investors who got fleeced as well. We can all agree the post-9/11 bankruptcies were scams.

I agree that the way these holding companies are set up are genius, and quite possibly the biggest scam in the history of America, besides the Afghanistan/Iraq wars.

Great Post. We all worked very hard and I don't care if it costs a lot of money to train us when we first start. Regional FO's should make at least 30K starting out. Not to mention, most of us have big loans to pay back, and when making 17-22K it has to make it hard. However, I am about to start my 121 career and am pretty excited.;) Just have to keep my eye on the prize of Fedex or Swa someday.

If that's true, the pilots at the airlines you've previously mentioned have placed themselves at a disadvantage. ;)

A corporation is a non-living, non-breathing entity that only exists on paper and has the sole purpose of extracting money from a market.

As a living and breathing member of the labor force I'm happy to have a union (albeit a soulless one) to negotiate on my behalf. The company I work for generates revenue off my pilots license - they don't own the certificate - I do and that has collective value in negotiations.

As far as citing the obvious, unions negotiate as large of a piece of that pie as possible. Call it stacking the deck if you will, although I think ascribing any human emotion to contract negotiations, especially emotions based on ethics or morality, is a false argument. People are ethical and moral (which I highly support and encourage!), corporations aren't alive and therefore can't be moral or ethical.

In a perfect world every corporation would be led by virtuous and ethical men and women - and many are. However, the very charter of a corporation in today's business world is at odds with the ethics you suggest.

In the meantime, the only apology I have for working under a CBA is that the rates aren't higher, the work rules better, and the retirement more robust.

how do you expect we buy everything american when the average person can afford nothing but wal-mart? Find me a regional FO that does not bargin shop. Lets be honest, cars like Mercedes and BMW are better made. Also, hate to say it, people working at wal-mart make more than "local stores". Meijer, for all of you Michigan people here, pays LESS than walmart. Prices are higher as well. I shop Meijer though becuase of a better selection. Its all a nice little plan. Sink the rich down to the poor, and make EVERYONE dependent on the rich and the government. Amazing the stock market (until a few weeks ago) is/was booming, huge profits...and yet wages won't even go up the rate of inflation. A lot of this has to do with weaker unions. Bust up the unions and you can pay people crap becuase no one stands together. I pray the pilots unions stand strong and end this insanity.

They were at a disadvantage. That's why pay scales fell 50%.

I find it hard to believe that someone would seriously be anti-union and say that this collective power stacks the deck unfairly in favor of labor. The laws and judgements of the past 10 years or so are precisely the reason we need labor unions. There has not been in recent memory a climate as anti-worker and as pro-corporation as the one we now live in.

The deck is stacked massively against the average worker at this time.

My airline has about 3100 pilots. Lets say that we want a $5 raise across the board (every pilot gets an extra $5 per hour for the year). Now just for arguement's sake, we will say that the average pilot earns 1,000 hours of pay credit hours per year. So each pilot earns an extra 5,000 a year. 5000 X 3100 pilots = $15.5 million. My airline generates over $1 billion in revenue per year. So for a pilot to get a $5 pay rasie it will only cost the company an extra 1.5% of the yearly revenue, which many companies spend more than 1.5% on executive bonuses. The money is out there, we just have to be smarter when negotiations come up. We have to go against the grain and give the bigger raises the the junior guys first before we raise the 8 yr CA pay, we must stop the trend of screwing the junior pilots to benefit the few senior guys (esp at a regional because most pilots do not want to retire at the regional level). Do not be fooled when management says they can't pay you, it is a lie. The airline can be just as cheap to operate with higher pilot salaries. Gordon Bethune was once quoted in a CAL crewroom when asked why pilot salaries were so low: "They are low because you don't make me pay you more, if you guys made me pay you more I would and could, but you don't negotiate it." Do some research on why salaries got to be so high in the first place back in the 60s and 70s and compare those pilot groups to the ones today. Those guys would have kicked our a$$ (literally) if they saw our payrates and work rules today.

Hardly, don't confuse the opportunity to organize with the choice not to. Your argument is framed by the choice these pilots made not to organize (for whatever reason). Choosing to participate in organized labor does go a long way in establishing and enjoying "fair market value", or not.

This is the crux of dismay for many union pilots; why non-union pilots would skip the bargaining process and avoid reaching parity with their union peers (who have already set a baseline wage).

There are limitless emotional reasons not to join a union, although from a business perspective, unions have a history of applying more leverage and producing better contracts than do a collection of independent contractors.