I participated in the PSA pilot strike in 1980, ...
...During that time furloughed pilots from Braniff and others were interviewing for our jobs, even as we walked the picket lines. The company was recruiting replacement pilots and was quite successful in obtaining the requesite number of pilots to do so...
...In case you haven't been keeping up on current events, or your 401K balance, these are perilous times and many will walk right over your back to get your job. As usual, right battle, wrong timing.
N924PS,
I seem to recall reading and/or hearing that it was a number of former Braniff pilots that kept Continental in business after Lorenzo abrogated the pilots' contract and triggered the 1983 strike.
And I would guess that many of those pilots, probably a majority ex-military as were the demographics at the time, perhaps had a much stronger sense of duty and dedication to ones fellow man that the "Me Generation" that occupy cockpits today.
Nonetheless, they had suffered the initial shock of their airline being the first major carrier to go out of business in the modern era; and they had been on the street for a year at that time, while some of their colleagues were fortunate enough to get picked up by other major airlines that were beginning to expand. (Hello, Duane Woerth?) So they had to be asking themselves, "What has ALPA done for
me lately, and why should I honor their picket line when I'm starving?"
(I am not condoning their action, by any means. But I can at least make an attempt to understand it.)
That strike, on the heels of the 1981 ATC strike, during which airline pilots were perfectly content to conduct business as usual instead of supporting the controllers, sent a loud and clear message to airline managements and several management-friendly administrations that airline pilots are a very ununified, selfish lot that can he had.
And the history of ALPA and the piloting profession over the last quarter century speaks for itself.
Today, Mr. Parker would not need to employ strikebreakers from outside the company. And as much as a small minority of West pilots would relish the opportunity to fly East routes while East pilots were on strike, they will never have that opportunity.
No, Mr. Parker has more than enough pilots on hand already to negate any East job action. And they're all based on the east side of the Mississippi.