ip568 said:
Talk to any unemployed union pilot. It's likely he's unemployed because he was in a union that busted the airline's bankroll.
I'm an unemployed union pilot because management (the 51% stock holder/CEO) got greedy and siphoned off all the money in a stock buy back that gave him 3x the value. Than he demanded concessions from the unions and aircraft leasers to keep the company out of bankruptcy. After the unions took the ass-raping, Boeing told him to piss up a rope. So he declared bankruptcy and sold the company for a huge profit to a friend. The friend than got more concessions from the unions to enable the company to exit bankruptcy while paying the creditors 100% (and by the way, this friend now also owned all the debt which he bought at 25 cents on the dollar).
Meanwhile, throughout the entire bankruptcy and employee rape, the company made record profits.......
The union is the only reason we got a reach around and lube. Otherwise it would have been many times more painful and pathetic.
Even at the airlines with the highest paid unions/pilots, it would only take 10 or 20 cents more per ticket to cover what was taken away from the employees. In fact, at one point during the United bankruptcy, it was pointed out to the Judge that if the pilots worked for free with no benefits at all, the airline would still be losing big money.
Oh and lets not forget that airline tickets are almost the highest taxed item you can buy. Somewhere in the 22-24% range, up from 10-12% pre-9/11/2001. The so called airline bailout of post 9/11 ended up being in reality airlines loaning themselves the money while paying the feds an astronomical interest rate since the new taxes will never go away and have far exceeded the money given the airlines. And did the airlines raise ticket prices to cover this extra 10%+ loss of income? No, the initially ate it and than took it from the employees paychecks.
I'll say it one more time - it is not the unions that put the airlines in bankruptcy. It's broken business models, too low ticket prices and extremely bad management that put the airlines in bankruptcy. The feds haven't helped either with their airline tax cash cow.
Jonzac - you can pm me the questions and I will try to answer them too. But I've been furloughed and away from the union for about 3 years.