Collective Bargaining: negotiation of wages and other conditions of employment by an organized body of employees.

I think I understand it just fine. I also understand that it refers to a specific company, not an entire industry.

Yes[/QUOTE]

Yes you are a pilot? Yes you are a pilot at an airline?

Don't get me wrong, as far as some business go the sinority system is a valid system, for all the things listed before, as mentioned in some businesses there is that disconnect from employees and management, sinority systems work well in non Union buinesses also :) but to make pay comparisons from us to doctors or lawyers, just doent make since

How many:

Doctor
Lawyer
Accountant
CEO
CFO
COO
Any Manager / Supervisor

Are represented by a collective bargaining agent?

They also have direct contact with their immediate supervisors daily. How many people routinely are evaluated by their chief pilot? There is no way to stratify a pilot group without making it a massive popularity contest or a micromanagement exercise. This is not opinion. This is fact.

Touche Sir!
I believe I understand your point. Correct me if I'm wrong. You are saying Airlines have unions. Unions represent the pilots. Pilots vote on CBA's and therefore decide their salary. If this is your point, I agree.
However, I am not talking about a single company. I am talking about the industry. I understand that the industry is composed of the individual companies, thus the individual unions, but union votes at ExpressJet do not affect union votes at Envoy (at least not directly). My point is simply that we as pilots should not be penalized years of experience for moving to a better company or a company that offers a better QOL.

Good point. But-- what if a pilot at airline A on the west coast could trade positions with a pilot at airline B on the east cost. Both have a "career" seniority number that puts them in the same date of hire range.

That's probably the way things ran before unions. Then companies probably would give out special favors to the pilot who makes sure the flight completes "no matter what" where the guy who won't fly into a thunderstorm is punished. I think unions are what put a stop to this in the beginning.

When were airlines not ran by unions ? Web say alpa was formed in 1931 😃

Did ALPA start out representing every airline in their first year of operation? ;) That same timeline that you probably got your number from says that ALPA first represented American Airlines in 1939.

I thought this was interesting:
"1960: Southern Airlines pilots strike over equal pay for equal work.
ALPA created and operated Superior Airlines to compete directly on Southern routes...."

WHAT alpa back stabbed another pilot group to profit alpa national, say that aint so.

So we have the RLA written in 1926, amended to apply to the Airlines in 1936. We have ALPA which began in 1939. We have a strike that occurred in 1960, and we have deregulation which happened in 1978. Now will the history scholar in the room tell me what any of this has to do with why an airline pilot does not get paid for his experience when we move to another company?

My next question is why do we only get paid when the main cabin door closes and the brake is released?

skypilot35,

You need to read Flying the Line, then come back with questions. RLA basically rules out cross-company or national unions covering several companies. The RLA was written to prevent strikes or lock-outs crippling transportation., not to give either the company or union that much power.

As to transferring jobs, if you can't have trans-company unions, explain how to get to national seniority? Before that, explain how to operate a large number of interchangeable members of a craft except thru seniority?

As to pay, google Decision 83 of the National Labor Board


GF

The link people are making is that because of the Railway Labor Act, it's extremely difficult for us to strike. We can't just threaten that like a lot of industries can. As a result, management gets away with a ton of stuff and with contracts more to their benefit than ours. Resultantly, we only get paid when the door closes and parking brake releases.

There has been plenty of airline strikes over the years, you guys are making it sound like they can never happen. They do happen. Sometimes a Republican president is in office at the time of the strike and he ends it same day ordering them back to the table for a new round. But ultimately all the tricks run out and an airline can be on strike.

Eastern Airlines strike - Bush didn't order them back
American Airlines strike - Clinton orders them back
Comair strike - Bush didn't order them back

So, who is more labor friendly? Be careful what you wish for. I've flown with ex-Eastern pilots who vote Democratic because they are "labor friendly" and were very bitter that Bush let them strike.

With the size and concentration of the mainlines, a strike at the big four (UA, AA, DL, SW) would likely be short, perhaps a PEB ordered with a return to work order. A regional, a strike would be pretty silly. How much real bargaining power does a strike add when replacements wouldn't be hard to find, the planes shuffled over to any contractor, service curtailed or eliminated. How many profitable RJ routes could be flown by a mainline plane with less frequency? How many just dropped? Any RJ strike would hasten the shrinkage of the business.

GF

If a strike by a regional airline would be "no big deal"...why hasn't one gotten released by the NMB into self-help in the last decade or so?

If you were given the choice to strike tomorrow in the current regional climate, would you? What do you think the realistic result would be?

Bill Swelbar is making last decade's argument.

ALPA's President is correct. The math is very simple. Take the number of (pilots flying 50 seat jets + expat pilots + the handful coming from the military) - the number of pilots getting hired at the majors = surplus. How many very qualified candidates are still waiting on calls from Delta, United, American, Southwest, etc ... . ?

The shortage is at airlines which do not pay competitive wages. They need to get in the game and pay, or fold up their chairs and go home.

What Bill Swelbar misses (and he calls himself a consultant :rolleyes: ) is unit cost analysis. As the costs of providing air travel have increased (gate leases, fuel, capital expenses to buy airplanes, management salaries) it makes more economic sense to spread those costs over the greatest number of seats. Dividing those costs among more paying passengers results in lower unit costs.

Fifteen years ago the pendulum had swung towards "trip costs" and yes, it costs less to launch a 50 seater than a 737. The World has now changed and Swelbar missed it. Airline network managers have discovered capacity discipline. Part of this trend is mergers have resulted in larger networks which can drive larger passenger loads by consolidating service. Today passengers chase available seats instead of airlines chasing marginal passengers with empty airplanes.

If an airline can fill a 737 with passengers which used to fly on 4 or 5, 50 seat RJ, flights - then that is what is happening. It had nothing to do with ALPA bargaining. The trend towards fewer larger flights is resulting in a surplus of pilots.

I believe the surplus will be absorbed. There will be jobs for those who want them (absent a real Ebola problem, ISIS, or some other threat).

But, we have a pay shortage, not a pilot shortage.

"Decision 83 established minimum wages and maximum hours for pilots across the industry. It also attempted to compensate pilots at least partially for technological changes by relating pay to increasing aircraft speed. The decision protected wages and hours only of pilots employed by airlines carrying mail under contract to the Post Office Dept., it established de facto industrywide protection". (Air Transportation, A Management Perspective; A.T. Wells , J.G. Wensveen).

"The wage formula of Decision 83 was later included in the Air Mail Act of 1934 and the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938. With the passage of the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, they were formally abolished". (Air Trnsportation).

My APA format is probably off. Haven't written a research paper in awhile. However, Decision 83 along with the Air Mail Act of 1934 was abolished in 1978.

Again, why do we not receive compensation for our experience when moving from one company to the next?

"Industry Wide Bargaining became a reality in 1934 through Decision 83 of the NLRB, which was established under the National Recovery Act". (Air Transportation,).

So with the passage of the Airline Deregulation Act, we also lost the ability to negotiate as an industry? Notice I did not say strike.

SP

Seniority, change companies, you go to the bottom.

The RLA prevents industry-wide bargaining.

GF

The article is spot on. I'm not sure why you are disagreeing. I believe it's the incredibly high pay on the high end of the pilot scale (captains make 250k+ a year) that led to need for this regional shell game that has kept wages so incredibly low (20-30k for a first year FO).

Every major airline manager would love to have the regional flying done in house. They would reap the revenue and profits that would grow their airline and their stock price. Unfortunately, it is the less of two evils to give that flying to regional airlines that keep labor costs low, rather than keeping that flying in house.

Regional FO's should start out at ~50k and Major Captains should end up at ~150k. The higher that top line number goes, the lower that bottom line number will go. The career earnings of a pilot have stayed the same for roughly the last 20 years. It's just where it is distributed that has changed. You can blame the unions for that.

It's highly unlikely you are even going to get 150K at the top end in the future. Airlines already know that regional pilots are willing to go without pay just to fly and will offer very little resistance other than *****ing on a forum.