- May 8, 2007
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If you recall recent airline history (you may have been to young at the time) but age discrimination was EXTREMELY prevalent at the airline level to get hired either as a pilot OR a flight attendent (steward/stewardess back then). If you wern't hired by a major airline by thirty you wern't getting hired. Even worse for the Flight Attendants where you couldn't be married, had to be slim, youthful and attractive (whatever that is). Only when deregulating and severe transportation upheaval were these issues brought to bear at the CAB, in regulation. Companies are FAMOUS for getting rid of OLDER WORKERS because they are usually higher paid than new hired counterparts....who just happen to generally be young, single, naive and willing to work for lessin trading off for the experience....which eventually finds them back in the same boat as older workers. Old vs. young is the MAIN REASON for a labor union. If you took the time to READ the Rakestraw descision at the USAPA website, the Court descision was VERY good in explaining how labor unions WORK under RLA. Case law is a history lesson in and of itself.
If you widh to have a discussion of THIS case I would be MORE THAN happy to indulge in that arena.
However, therefore you are EXACTLY RIGHT: LONGEVITY BECAME A MEASURE WITHIN EACH INDIVIDUAL GROUP. And this is why national unions don't work. The line of demarcation is the line you stand in to get your money. And when those lines combine, without any Standard Operating Procedure, if you will, all hell breaks loose and the Companies therefore leverage to the LOWEST bidder. Why do you think Lorenzo was so successful?
Then you must have quit and went back.
As you pointed out, the reason for a union is to bargain COLLECTIVELY WITH A REPRESENTATIVE CHOSEN BY MAJORITY VOTE. Do you punish the population for the results their voted in (or forced vote, if communist) leadership and principles fail? Maybe we should not have had the Marshall plan and instead reinstated the Versaille Treaty after WWII to punish the Germans and Japanese again? Those people made poor descisions, one out of desperation and the other out of blind loyalty. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater makes no sense. Let me put it this way, if the majority don't want it or won't accept it, you won't get it....at least not in labor law. Arbitration or no.
Our "leadership" on both MEC's made BAD descisions, but do not expect the pilot population to AGREE with it. If you don't like the law, vote out the reps and vote in new ones that fix it. And that is what we're doing. And if you wish to skewer the MAJORITY of the group, no matter who it is, beyond a point of unacceptability, then this is what you have.
If United were to merge with US Airways and the ALPA arbitrator stapled all the United pilots, a group that is larger than us, to the bottom of the list, do YOU really believe that your group would NOT DO THE SAME? That point will, most likely, be put to the test in the next downturn. One mans labor leader is another mans scab. It's all in the perspective.
