I can DEFINITELY be a lot worse! They wouldn't need to ask a bankruptcy judge to throw out that pension or furlough out of seniority or slash your pay rates or impose PBS or take away medical benefits and give you only a high deductible health plan or they can reduce your sick bank or reduce your vacation or eliminate per diem or eliminate the defined contribution plan or eliminate your long term disability insurance.

If you don't think that Ornstien or any other management wouldn't do this when times are bad, then I don't know what to tell you. Most of these things are all things that management would do tomorrow at LXJT if we were non union. So please don't be so naive to think that it would not be any worse because it certainly would.

 

Fair enough. But they can offer you / us a ridiculous concessionary contract and when the pilot group says go f*&k yourself, they say OK. We'll give it to somebody else. Obviously, the regional industry is not in control of who the flying is "gifted" to. The unions are impotent not because there are not good people trying to do good things, but because the management group that is actually in charge is the group doling out the contracts, the Majors.
If you look at the flying AA just gave to Compass, it has to do with the fact that Compass is cheap. They do not have pilots on their rosters with 20 years of seniority. Compass's payscale is actually pretty good, but no lifers as of yet.

I do not know what the solution is to the never ending regional airline pay disparity and the ass raping we all take, but until we (Regional guys/gals) sound off with one voice there will be no improvement.

 

When times are good, without a union, DAL pilots wouldn't have gotten what they got. Unions try to maximize compensation when times are good and minimize concessions when times are bad. Otherwise, you will ALWAYS get less than you could've with collective bargaining.

 

I agree. The union works great for the Majors. Not so well for the regionals. The management group the MEC is negotiating with at the regionals is NOT the management group that makes the decision. The Major's MEC representatives do not have a multi-tiered system to navigate.
It's like asking your big brother if you can borrow the family car, he might say yes, but if your Dad says no, you don't get the car.
If we had one union and one seniority list, that would be pretty powerful. I don't think that will happen.

 

I'm sure SKYW mgt doesn't give a crap about this.

Oh, you mean SKYW pilots? What was the final tally during your last ALPA drive again? Actions have consequences!

 

Actions have consequences? You're a tool.

 

Oh yeah, hiring into the majors should only be through regionals. Just exclude those coming from the military, ACMI, supplementals, corporate, 135, foreign airlines, etc.. because none of these pilots paid their dues. Great idea.

 

Say what you want. It's the only way for majors to staff that cheap feed they've come to love over the last decade and a half.

The majors don't care where pilots come from.

It's a business plan.

 

Quite rich coming from a Newb at the undercutter of all undercutter regionals.

 

The only way to "sound off with one voice" is with a union. Not to state the obvious, but that is exactly what a union is.