A320 Driver said:
The problem here has nothing to do with cash bleeding from the company. It has to do with a group of employees being sold down the river to save a left seat or a right seat or a furlough. That's the issue here. The cash loss is not my problem or ALPA's problem or AFA's problem. That is what we had a highly-paid Harvard MDA for. Problem is, he did little to try and fix the revenue model and even less to figure out how to compete against LCCs. All we got were excuses and another invitation to the concessions table.
Granted, I do think that Concession #1 was necessary. But to give up everything? The pilots gave WAY to much... not in terms of cash but definitely in terms of scope protections. When all was said and done, when the package was negotiated and it went out for ratification, I definitely believe it was each man for himself. The result was the caste system we now call MidAtlantic Airways.
What would I have done to strengthen your contract. Well, not bending over each and every time the company asked you to would have been a good start. Look at what the flight attendants accomplished in round #3. After suffering the typical Bronner bullshyt for months... where the demand kept going up, the flight attendants, under Teddy's brilliant lead, overwhelmingly authorized the CHAOS strike. The result was an immediate good-faith effort on the company's part to negotiate and, compared to the other labor groups, the flight attendants fared pretty well in the last round. If you stand up for yourself (and your work group) today, you probably won't have to tomorrow. That is what the Boeing/Airbus division pilots have yet to do... take a stand, be a man, and say "Enough already!"
Everybody on here chides USA320Pilot for his opinions, that everybody else needs to make the ultimate sacrifies to save his job or position. But you know what? There are a lot of Boeing/Airbus drivers who hold that very same opinion. "You will work for pennies on the dollar so I don't have to!" And then they have the unmitigated gall to espouse that they did all they could do to save jobs.
But the profound difference is we don't have jobs... we have careers! And those careers have been bastardized by senior people protecting themselves at the expense of junior people. Jerry Glass knew exactly what he was doing and that he could get what Bronner wanted by dividing labor. It is the pilots and flight attendants in the Embraer division who are the victims, both of the company and of the unions. And it is the pilots and the flight attendants who now will hold the company and the unions responsible. And they will pay.
