baseball

Instead of clock bag tags, we should just all start wearing clock jewelry. Great sign of unity, plus we'll all know what time it is. What time is it? Time for a new contract. What time was it? time for a new contract. What...ok you get the picture.

baseball

you can even dress up nice in a tuxedo. Very formal. Very classy. Maybe get our contract clocks sponsored by Breitling or Rolex, or Omega.

JoePatroni

Fantastic.

JimLaheyTPS

Excellent point Joe! The amount of pilots bragging about how much they made in a month and even showing off pay stubs is the reality right now. I’m convinced we have more pilots who are thrilled about their sweet heart months than the contract that is no where in sight.

JoePatroni

Agree 100%. Once again, we are our own worst enemies. Hearing guys brag about income is sickening.....have a little class, especially around people who make a fraction of that.

Itsajob

Just playing devil’s advocate, so don’t shoot the messenger. What will that gain? Everyone knows that we will never get released into self help, so a slow down, much less a strike disrupting service isn’t even remotely a possibility. The flying public has no sympathy for people who have as many days off as we do and who make $200,000++++. Investors know that we have few legal options available to force the company to pay us more, so they don’t want UAL to increase labor cost. The company doesn’t want to spend more on labor without getting something in return such as scope relief. We definitely don’t want to give anything up, we’ve done enough of that in years past. Our options are severely limited. We can have no organized action of any type, but individuals could stop trying as hard to do the job. If people stopped extending CCO’s, picking up open time, no more single engine taxiing, waiving parts of the contract, etc, it would have an impact, but the company can work around that. They know that there are plenty of pilots who would fall on their sword for the company and there are also enough who will not pass up extra money, especially premium paid trips. Any measurable employee slow down would most likely result in the company being able to file a lawsuit against the pilot group, and if recent history is an indication of what to expect, they would win. We don’t want to give up anything, and the company doesn’t want to pay more for a contract that is more expensive and even more restrictive. I’m wanting a contract too, but I’m not expecting anything soon.

JoePatroni

IMHO, if the average shmo (who gets his “news” from FB and Twitter) saw a picture of a UAL picket line, he would actually think there might be a strike and book away.....I think THAT is what UAL doesn’t want.

Barley

Well if we look at historical UAL PR disasters and see how we are still performing just fine I don’t think anyone at the top cares that much about the optics of pilots marching in a circle...

JoePatroni

Maybe not but Ma and Pa Kettle might.

Barley

That was my point. Ma and Pa won’t care now nor have they in the last two contracts I’ve been through. Ma and Pa buy based on price alone. Business travelers buy based on schedule and rewards. Those two things are pretty well established here. If they see you on TV picketing they’ll only remember it for 24 hours and even then they’ll probably misidentify the airline altogether.