737823 said:
The IAM is hurting airline workers collectively, not DL. DL ready reserve has been around for nearly 30 years, people like the program and the flexibility it offers. No different than other industries transitioning away from full time benefited positions and towards part-time/contract/consultant type arrangements, similar to the growing reliance on adjunct faculty at colleges and universities. How come you didn't condemn part-time reserve the IAM willingly added at Hawaiian Airlines, completely identical to DL ready reserve? What about the fact that most/all of the stations NWA contacted out went to Air Wisconsin, also part of DL 143 allowing the IAM to continue to collect dues? How about all the Air Wisconsin staffed stations at UAL? Bottom line is people are gladly willing to work under the terms DL is offering, I have seen college students, retirees working in DL ACS under the RR program. If you are too good for those terms, don't work for DL but having that attitude because it isn't up to your standards others should not avail themselves to it is outrageous. A program like RR actually would be in the interest of the IAM, more heads to collect dues from although dues per employee would be smaller under the current scheme driven by hourly wage.
Again Kev has ignored the question, but it speaks volumes about the value of union representation when the unorganized sCO passenger service employees join the IAM and then find themselves out of a job or needing to relocate to a hub to maintain employment. Why did DL 141 willingly sign away sCO cargo jobs? They should have taken the better of the two agreements and worked to bring sUA cargo work back in house, which the IAM also gave away years ago.
Josh
I have to ask a few things to this:
Why wasn't the BTW wing Express work at IAD won by the IAM? They got the ATW work, but not the BTW. Was that a tacit agreement between 141 and 142 to keep the dues flowing? IMHO, ALL hub work should be ours. Same as the DEN situation with SkyWest. But I digress......
The pilots really hurt us. We don't have a small M/L aircraft like the 190 or the 717 that AA/US and DL has. The 50 seaters really kills leverage. We don't have a lot of the larger RJ's in our system, but the 175's will be coming online, and I don't know how that's going to play out in the line stations. And how many we will lose in this deal.
They rolled over and gave up our Cargo. "Harmonizing" was the excuse, but we now know the real reasons. It was wrong to give up a great service that was making money. Continental Cargo was a profitable operation, and I'm quite sure that there are enough experienced people to make the combined United a profitable cargo operation. Now look at it now. It's in shambles. It should have been fought for and we should have won it back. In the IBT/IAM vote, we knew that the IAM was going to give up Cargo, and that sadly came true.
As far as the RR program, I have mixed feelings about it. Should it be a entry point into getting a job? Should it be flexible PT? I don't know enough about DL's program, but I know that most people don't want their hours capped, and want more than a fixed pay rate. Does it drive down everyone elses wages in the industry? IMHO, yes. That keeps the "race to the bottom" going with each vendor going lower and lower to get the work. Plus, we don't have a DGS or a Eagle to have a automatic "C" scale workforce. They in fact do a lot of our work. That also keeps the money "in their house" so to speak.
IMHO, the sCO ATW is very wary of this union. They were strongly anti-union, but we will see what happens.
This union needs some serious change. New ideas; fresh blood. People that will FIGHT!
