Someone on this forum proposed doing just that a while back, don't remember who. Back a while ago there was a bunch of polls. Something along the lines of 'let anarchy reign' without the union.

Why does a sickout even need to be organized without a union, pilots would be free to just do their own thing, they either show up for work or they don't. Many airlines have raw PTO, no need to even refer to it as "sick".

 

Because, as my light reading has informed me, any of those things done outside of the collective bargaining process is illegal. The case study I read was in reference to a fueling company who fired a worker. The coworkers (non-union) decided to strike for 8 hours for one day more than 2 weeks in the future and the courts filed an injunction and ordered the strike illegal.

Any action, union or non-union, done to protest or highlight labor relations outside of the provisions outlined in the RLA is illegal.

 

Sick outs have been tried and done... This isn't about money... It's about ego. Bedford would rather shut the place down than give one red cent. . I don't miss rah at all...

 

You are misunderstanding. No union, no group or association of any kind, nothing at all organized. Workers either show up for work or they don't, risk firing. No strikes, no organized actions of any kind. Workers are free to do whatever they want, the company deals with them on a one-on-one basis like any other job.

 

Correct. That's how day to day life is. You are more than welcome to call in sick. The minute one person encourages another to call in sick even if it's at separate times to highlight labor relations, it becomes illegal. Phone records, emails, etc can be subpoenaed.

 

That was me. I've been off for a while but I was putting something together the last few weeks I was going to post but haven't really finished it up. If anyone is interested in it maybe I'll finish it and post it.

I'm basically proposing, at the regional level, that unions are of no value. I propose basically that unions do the opposite at the regionals, they give the company the needed infrastructure to keep pilots inline. Imagine if there was no union or central pilot group authority, how could the company possibly cope with all the anarchy? The company needs the union desperately, but they need to control the union under the covers.

In order to reign the group in and function, they would have to basically work harder to keep pilots on the property and happier, especially in times like this where it is clearly a pilots market.

For the sake of argument, what would happen if at your company (any regional) the pilots just decided to vote out the union altogether and not replace it with anything at all, not even an in house governing body. What would happen?

 

Total abuse of pilots. Some would make stands and many would lose their jobs.

Safety would go down as well.

 

Would the company want to survive? The 20 pilots they want to fire are desperately need at say RAH who is parking airplanes and can't afford the reduction in staff. Other pilots would demand more to stay. The company would have to raise pay and standards to prevent unorganized labor from leaving without a union to tell them to wait because things are going to get better.

 

I completely agree with your logic, but having worked for a non-union shop, I don't think it's realistic. We had a captain refuse an aircraft coming out of maintenance because he thought it was unsafe, he got fired. Many of us threatened to quit over that and he was re-hired.

We won some small battles but lost the overall fight. The airline eventually closed its doors.

Skywest makes it work, but I think they are to big to risk totally screwing over their employees.

 

Today is different, it's a pilots market out there and will be for a long time. Someone in a different thread basically stated that the new currency is pilots, who has them?

Using reverse logic, one could argue that having a union is something the company should have to pay for, ie it does more for their benefit than the pilots benefit.

So what would happen if 50 pilots decided all on their own to call in sick. Who does the company complain too? Who do they sue?

The company is accustomed to dealing with pilots as a whole, not pilots individually one on one.

I don't believe skywest is a good model to represent my theory, skywest I'm sure while unionless per say does have an in house authority of some kind. But what would happen if say skywest or republic, both non alpa airlines, decided to do just that and dump their unions and in house authorities? Would they both go out of business?

Another question. How does the RLA apply to an airline without a union or other bargaining authority? What items apply, which do not? Which do not even make sense?

I would really like to hear others opinions as well on the topic.