WeAAsles said:
The only reason Delta gives what it does and certainly not to all is because they want to keep the Unions out. The main reason wages went up over there was because the IAM was dangerously close to gaining an election.
There are 4 major N American carriers. 3 are heavily Unionized. If it was reverse and only 1 was organized the wages and benefits for ALL would be much lower. The 1 organized carrier would have to keep employee costs low to compete with the other 3 or they would go out of business. Pilots are organized in all 4 airlines so they can look at the other 3 and demand at least equal treatment driving up wages and benefits that with consolidation can hopefully be passed on to passengers.
In Fleet against all 4 airlines the biggest concern is the "Ready Reserve" program at Delta. (Hopefully) those numbers stay low from employee pressure that no other airline has RR in their contracts? But without industry contracts every airline would utilize ready reserves throughout their systems.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/delta-united-american-dissolved-one-160141471.html
There may be some truth to that.
However I will say my home town had 2 glass plants, one UNIONized and one not. The nonUNIONIZED factory made no attempt to match benefits or wages to the UNIONIZED one.
I will say the UNIONized factory did go through a cycle of being UNION and nonUNION and the employees did tend to make more and have better benefits while UNIONized.
I will also say when UNIONized the factory did not have people sitting around playing dominoes and watching TV 6 hours a day either.
I don't know if all airlines are like that but I certainly saw a lot of it at American Airlines.
A crew chief that never left the shop, a bus driver that worked less than 2 hours a day (and still complained when asked to do his job), an inside person that sit most of the day everyday making a crew wait on supplies for an aircraft for over an hour because he wanted to catch a show (he flat out told me that)........
All these people made $21.16 (top out at the time, more for the crew chief) for a job that required less than 2 hours (usually) to complete everyday. Most of them did not even fulfill their job responsibilities.
Everyone of them made 169.28 a day for 2 hours of unskilled work you could train anyone to do in a week (or less) with full benefits. Instead of being thankful for getting a decent check for very little investment on their own part they have the audacity and sense of entitlement to
DEMAND more money.
If you want to talk about fair and right WeAAsles do you think it is fair and right for a worker to be paid 169.28 a day for 2 hours or less of unskilled work (and usually done at low quality at that) shirking his job responsibilities and demanding more money and better benefits?
Let me put it another way. How would you feel if
YOU had to pay someone $3385.60 a month for driving a bus 40 hours (that's $21.16 times 2 hours a day of actual drive time) in a months time (that comes out to be $84.64 per hour of actual drive time PLUS BENEFITS!!!!) out of your own pocket and then your driver came up to you demanding more money. I bet your attitude would change real fast if you were on the other side of the employment fence.
Do you think it is fair for an employee to demand of his employer more pay and more benefits when the employee contributes nothing to improve his value over 40 years of employment?
YOUR definition of fair is you get what you feel entitled to, not what worth you actually bring to the company.
