Are you saying that retired military pilots who accept huge pay cuts in order to get to mainline should be considered scabs? I Just want to clarify your position.

 

To be a SCAB you have to cross a picket line to take a job...pretty cut and dried.

 

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Question for the brain trust, how is attending training SCABing? You're not moving metal for revenue or flying any struck work. Honest question, just curious.

I had a conversation with my old man about one of his strikes, and asked him about the "well I have so and so burden" excuse. His response was "you think you're the only one with problems?"

He did say that one of very few scabs they had, came forth to the union before hand. His wife was dying of cancer and he wouldn't make her suffer due to the loss of health care. He apologized profusely and supposedly donated all of his earnings to some strike fund during the strike. Still took on the scab label, but I guess he was the only guy afterward that they let be.

 

Lots of jobs pprovide health care. Not just airline pilots. You don't have to steal someone else's job from them to get health care.

 

Never happen. All the PIs would have to scab as well because the FAA certified the instructors as well as the training program. So you'd have to rely on this management training 12,000 new pilots with new instructors, when they can barely train the ones they have using experienced and qualified instructors.

The airline would go away before it could train anybody.

 

Things are different today. You can get a job as a walmart greeter and have healthcare that same day, or just sign up for Obamacare.

Back in the day if you started a new job it would typically take months, maybe 6 months, for the healthcare to kick in and pre-existing conditions might or might not be covered. You simply could not buy a private plan that would cover pre-existing conditions.

So I can see the justification for someone with a very sick family member...in the 80's there was NO way to get health insurance for a pre-existing condition on short notice. Part time jobs typically wouldn't have insurance so you would have had to start a full-time job 6 months before the strike.

Ok there was always one option... if you enlisted in the military (enlist not officer, the later would take too long) you could get coverage within a few weeks probably, But then you'd have been shipped off somewhere for three years making $600/month.

I would have given someone with a sick kid or spouse a pass. There's an exception to every rule, but in this case they're few and far between.

Did a big union like ALPA have no provision for healthcare for strikers? I could see that as being too expensive for an in-house union.

 

[QUOTE=Sunvox;1650936]So you have a son in college and one night he gets with his buds and they break out the cocaine and he decides to "give it a try" and the cops show up and bust him.

Do you ever forgive him? Is he ever accepted back into society after his one bad choice? Does prison time afford him a "reset"?

I was hired at United Airlines in 1996. I read "Hard Landing" and "Flying the Line". I think 570s are windbags full of themselves. I would never cross a picket line, but . . .


I am a Christian and I believe in Forgiveness. How do pilots justify hating somebody for their whole life when the offense occurred decades earlier? Is there ever a chance or way for a "scab" to be accepted back into the fold? If you make a choice when you are 25 are you marked for life like Hester Prynne? Isn't hating somebody 25 years after their offense a type of prejudice?


I know . . . now I'm a "scab lover" and subject to the same vilification, but that's ok because I'm a

Scabs undermine everything pilots are fighting for. By scabbing, they show the company that there is a chance to undermine solidarity.

I do wish there was more education concerning what unions are fighting for, and why. I seem to frequently get comments like, "If they don't want the job, then why don't they leave"?

Look at what the regional pilots are getting paid, and then think about "Whay are we fighting"?

 

It is easy to say that you are willing to forgive, but this is a matter where people are asked an opinion, not person and the world works in other way. Unfortunatelly, today there aren't many room for mistakes.

 

I am a Christian and I believe in forgiveness as well.

That being said, when someone scabs, they know the consequences of their actions in this world. A family friend scabbed... we didn't alienate him in his personal life, but he know that he could never jumpseat if he tried to as well as the other consequences.

In other words, I completely disagree with your viewpoint. You don't have to hate someone or not forgive them to hold them to the standard that they put on themselves in this world.