And for that reason we have the RLA. PSA, it's not there to protect pilots.

True, it’s not there to protect pilots. But, it’s also not there to protect management. It’s there to protect the public from a major economic disruption that might result from an airline strike or lockout. But, in the end, the RLA still preserves the right of labor and management to eventually use the full complement of economic weapons available to them.

The perception exists among many pilots that the RLA is slanted against labor. It truly is not. It is slanted, though, like most things in life, against those who are more poorly educated (in this case, on the subject of the RLA) and who have a weaker grasp on how the game is played. In that sense, then, the RLA is slanted against pilots because pilots almost uniformly have a poor understanding of the power available to them via the RLA, esp compared to management.

And Symbian is 100% right in his previous post, the chances of an airline CEO allowing a labor disagreement with pilots to go to a strike are almost nil for the reasons he cited. Like he said, a CEO might allow negotiations to go to the brink to maximize the perception of his/her leverage, but it would likely be suicidal to allow a strike to occur.

That happened just after the news that United had reached an AIP.

Absolutely, I should have said it's there to protect the public and commercial interests using transportation. In my opinion, management has generally been more effective in using that to their advantage.