Sorry BlueDriver, I think you missed my point, I'm agreeing with your POV. The union is who prevents me from jumping ahead of all of you. And that's a good thing, because the next guy would then agree to fly my airplane for even less.

I had a friend who left Cathay Pacific. He was American and came to understand that only the Brits, friends of the Brit Chief Pilot, were ever going to upgrade. The only thing worse than a union is not having a union.

 

Sorry bud, I misunderstood you. You are completely correct.

Unless you want a new car lease, then you definitely want to vote out your union...

 

Let's hope this comes to the private sector.

 

I would say you are trolling, but judging by your other posts, you have gone full talk radio bubble on your news/propaganda.

 

I too was once at a company (as another type of professional - not a pilot) where I got all the perks and high pay. In fact, I negotiated my own salary at > BJ year 3 pay.



However, airlines need Union representation because pilots do not stand up for themselves the same way other professionals do. Pilots will never walk away from a bad deal nor will they recognize a bad deal when they see one (e.g. the current TA, post language disclosure). Most pilots at BJ come from a former personal experience of being beaten down and whose sense of "normalcy" has been recalibrated to your average service industry job. Management has successfully defeated pilot employee groups. Part of the problem is that anyone can become a pilot - there is no discrimination based on academic merit or testing. The FAA standards are not terribly hard given enough time. So, employers know that if they don't want to pay top dollar for a 4.0 GPA, Part 141 flight school grad or a military pilot, they'll pay sub-minimum wage for the guy who never graduated high school but got a pilot's license. We don't have a professional organization that controls standards. Doctors have that which is why they control doctor supply/demand/pay. ALPA is a half-solution replacement for the absence of a professional organization.



Unless pilots learn to be professionals like lawyers, medical doctors, scientists, engineers, etc., we will continue to need unions.


Albeit I'm a big time ALPA supporter, I'm also highly critical of it. They are WAY TOO SLOW and EXPENSIVE for the inadequate results we get (e.g. the current TA). ALPA has imposed on itself this whole bureaucratic process that is all artificial and not required by law. For example, they could have mass online conversations via IRC to write out a contract with all members electronically/virtually present. Once we write our dream contract, then we could present that to BJ, with only us knowing what elements of the contract proposal are make or break requirements. That way, after the first meeting, we would instantly know if we need to immediately start with informational picketing.



Remember, the mediation process is entirely voluntary! Appeasing a mediator is a self-imposed restriction for some arbitrary cause. According to the RLA, we have so many different ways to accomplish negotiations. ALPA is just mind-stuck on the way they've done for eons, which is vastly inefficient. Please read the RLA - it leaves it up to the Union and the Company to come up with a method of "negotiation". Also, every step of the RLA is *voluntary*.



So continuing on in my hypothetical example, if we give them our full proposal at meeting #1, they could read it entirely and come back with revisions at meeting #2. If they don't, the informational picketing continues. If they simply don't agree with our verbiage, or we don't agree with their amendments, then we've reached an impasse and we ask to be released for strike. Our goal is to negotiate on the expendable items but never to compromise on "requirements", which are only known to ALPA big fish as determined by ALPA members. There's no legal requirement to do things sentence by sentence, year after year.



The Railway Labor Act Simplified



ALPA is a necessary evil and I support them. They just need to abandon their dinosaur, lack of thinking methods so they can deliver results at Internet speed.



This communique is for entertainment purposes only. It does not implicitly or explicitly acknowledge employment with any air carrier nor is any relationship implied. This communique does not represent the opinions or policies of ALPA or JB ALPA and does not represent the collective pilot group, ALPA, nor does it imply collective bargaining, advocacy, or workforce actions intended to disrupt operations.

 

Amazing how strong your opinions are and how weak your understanding is. You don't have to join the pilot's union, but you do have to pay your portion of the cost of negotiating the contract and all its benefits that you enjoy.

 

NFL players work for a private entity. They must obey the rules of the corporation, just as we do 311.
Should we be able to make pointed PA announcements or wear political slogans on our uniforms? No.

 

Hey genius, guess what we, pilots, need to make a living that none of those other guys do? I'll give you a hint. It costs hundreds of millions of $, carries tens of thousands of pounds of Jet A and we don't own it.


With friends like you.

I have no idea if jetBlue's first contract is worth a yes vote, but even you get a vote despite not having a clue about the union pilot game or how it is played. I recommend you follow the old line, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."

 

That's because you don't have a clue about why pilot unions started in the first place or what pilot pushing is or why the airline industry went nine years without killing a single passenger in the U.S. And if you are a jetBlue pilot they had a seniority system before they were unionized. If you think it through for about five minutes it should become obvious, but if not go read Flying the Line Vol. 1 and then get back to us.

 

I just don't understand the angst some airline pilots have against joining a union. The only explanation is shear ignorance of the history of the profession, where it's been, and who had to fight for what.

There are plenty of non-union airlines out there to choose from. There is always corporate aviation. In both cases their obvious superior skills and rugged individualism would be better rewarded vs being chained to the seniority system and shackled by union dues.