Quote:
Originally Posted by SkyHigh
Union thuggery is a tradition. What is to stop every pilot from coming up with an excuse? "I have a pool payment to make this month." It seems to me that those who hold such a hard line in regards to strike violations must be single or have another source of income. If you have a family to think of you would think there would be more empathy.
Skyhigh
Once again you display your lack of knowledge.
Literally thousands of UAL pilots back in 1985 put their careers in jeopardy. You think they were all “single” or had another source of income? Do you believe I didn't think of my wife and three children, ages 15, 12 and 6 when this came down?
We talked with our kids and shared with them my reasons for honoring the strike. But the wife and kids understood the importance of the event.
After the strike there was quite a bit of money donated by the pilots for those flight attendants who honored our picket lines. (Another story). My oldest daughter donated all of the money she had from her baby-sitting jobs. It was a few hundred dollars as best I recall. I told her that she should keep the money, but she insisted on doing it, and she kept her word.
Let me share a perspective with you. Fifteen years after the strike I agreed to an MEC committee position. Unknowing to me, a scab had already been asked to work on the committee - I didn't find out about this until after I agreed to be the committee chairman. (Still another story.) I wasn't really happy when I became aware of this development, but out of respect for the MEC Chairman, I didn't make an issue out of it.
Literally the day after the strike ended, this guy tried to earn his way back into the good graces of the union. He wrote articles about his mistake, stood up in front of the MEC and his own Council to confess the error of his ways. He gave back every penny he earned during the strike, but it really didn’t satisfy a significant number of the pilots who honored the strike.
Anyway, in 2000-2001 we had some “contract difficulties” with the company. This guy was the only pilot I knew who actually wanted a strike, and he made no bones about it. He wanted to honor our picket line to make up for what he did in 1985.
Some of the statements in this thread make me SO GLAD that I am no longer in the industry. But then, those reasons are not all that different from those who crossed in 1985.
Twenty-five years have passed and I still have that non-existent scab list.
My wife and three kids appear to have had more backbone in 1985 than some on this forum today, judging from some statements made.