fadec

Tired pilots is how to take everything public. Work rules are hard to understand and hard to value in dollars, and they simplify to what you wrote above. Tired pilots is a simple mantra that can be hammered on people over and over. Everything public must be framed in terms of it. We have pilots who won't upgrade because of work rules. Pilots are so tired they're skipping upgrade and more pay to avoid flying tired. Pilots aren't greedy, obviously. They care about safety. This isn't about money. We need a Goebbels who understands how to talk to the public. Never mention money. Never talk about what you deserve or get lost in the weeds on esoteric details. Don't respond to intellectuals. Find a simple mantra that 90% of people agree with repeat it over and over. Never miss an opportunity to bring it up. Relate everything to it. Tell everything in terms of it. Respond to counter arguments with it e.g. Emirates pilots are no help because they're even more tired with worse work rules. Good propaganda is simple, often repeated, pertinent, and contains an element of truth. Tired pilots is perfect.

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sailingfun

I laughed at that also! Striking in France is the national pastime.

awax

That’s brilliant!! There’s no way any company would ever remind pilots that there’s federal law prohibiting them from flying tired, specifically:

§ 117.5 Fitness for duty.

(a) Each flightcrew member must report for any flight duty period rested and prepared to perform his or her assigned duties.

(b) No certificate holder may assign and no flightcrew member may accept assignment to a flight duty period if the flightcrew member has reported for a flight duty period too fatigued to safely perform his or her assigned duties.

(c) No certificate holder may permit a flightcrew member to continue a flight duty period if the flightcrew member has reported him or herself too fatigued to continue the assigned flight duty period.

(d) As part of the dispatch or flight release, as applicable, each flightcrew member must affirmatively state he or she is fit for duty prior to commencing flight


if you’re tired, it’s up to you to tap out before you turn a wheel. Oh, and you’re Klassy with a capital K for attempting to leverage safety as a bargaining chip for Section 6 negotiations.

Earthboundmsfit

I agree with all of that, so why are we not seeing any PR ads getting that across right next to the usual political ads that run constantly during NFL and NCAA commercials?

opheims

The thrust of that comment was having courage, the courage to hold out and possibly strike, not about strike history. Sorry if that was lost on some readers...
It seems there's a bubbling undercurrent of union members that are already leaning towards "man, this is a slow process that's gonna take a while." and are primed to jump on whatever TA2.0 comes out with.
Only vote yes if it's acceptable, not just because it's what was offered, and start building the idea that we're ready to take it all the way if we don't get something acceptable.

Lewbronski

You guys have leverage under the RLA. The dynamic is similar to, but different than, the recent railroad dispute. A primary way in which it is different is that, unlike the railroad dispute, which had a strike occurred would have shut down essentially all freight rail service in the US with no alternative providers for customers of railroads, a major airline strike in the US would leave at least three of the "Big Four" airlines, JetBlue, and the ULCC's as alternatives for airline customers to choose from.

Passenger airline traffic in the US would not grind to a halt in a major airline pilot strike. The rail strike, had it happened, however, would have shut down almost all freight rail service in the US.

This difference in dynamic between the two scenarios leads to what current Acting Director, Office of Mediation Services at the National Mediation Board (NMB), John Livingood describes as the "book-away" phenomena. This phenomena occurs before a strike and:

The book-away phenomena wasn't really a thing in the railroad dispute because there weren't really any alternative rail freight providers. Therefore, rail companies continued raking in revenue all the way up until a few days before the potential strike last week when they were forced to begin cancelling trains in order to secure their fleets in the run-up to the strike.

Contrast that with the description of the book-away phenomena above. Think about it: if you had to make plans for a wedding or vacation or graduation or business meeting or whatever in City X and you heard United pilots might be on strike during the dates of your travel, would you book your tickets on United? Or would you "book-away" from United on another carrier whose pilots weren't anticipated to possibly be on strike during those dates?

When you're booking your tickets for travel, do you care that much whether the pilots at whatever airline you're considering buying tickets on are blue collar or white collar if there's a decent chance they might have walked off the job on the dates you want to travel? No. People will still book away from the possibly soon-to-be-struck airline whether or not they sympathize with the plight of its pilots' work conditions.

You can call the book-away phenomena "pre-strike leverage." Management will begin taking a hit to their bottom line well before a strike occurs. The book-away phenomena will happen regardless of whether Congress ultimately intervenes to stop a strike or not.

Management doesn't want to deal with that. That is leverage.

AND - all of the above says nothing of the possible leverage that the change in political composition of the NMB late last year probably handed to labor. The NMB transitioned from two GOP members and one Democratic member to one GOP member and two Democratic members.

The rail unions entered mediation in January of this year. They were released in June. They spent less than six months in mediation. That is a dramatically and unprecedentedly short stay in mediation.

This current NMB was willing to release >100,000 rail workers in 12 railroad unions controlling 40% of America's freight capacity after less than six months. Think about that. Why would they not be willing to do the same with United Airlines pilots who could shut down an airline of 87,000 employees handling 13% of our nation's domestic airline passenger traffic?

The vote to release them from mediation was the two Democrats in favor against the one GOP member opposed. You can imagine how that vote might have ended up if the composition of the NMB had remained unchanged from last year.

If you know anything about mediation, how long it typically takes, and what the courts say about the average length of mediation in RLA cases, you understand how what happened in the rail dispute just might represent a sea change for the better for labor under the RLA.

jerryleber

We sure do.

Default Vacancy 23-01V
CA - 394 (78 WB CA)
FO - 889 (121 WB FO)

Finessed

It’s tough to have leverage when your operation struggles to make money. The majority of the last 3 year earnings have been massive losses for UAL. Then when we finally get back to 2019 froth ticket pricing management reports missed earnings.

Good luck.

jerryleber

It's tough to train pilots (United Next) without instructors and LCAs. Luck has little to do with it.

OOfff

learn a bit about French history