Originally Posted by
YellowFever777
I agree with you. I'm trying to be pragmatic and empathetic. SLS is the most equitable sacrifice and relatively very mild when you look at the bloodbaths that are unfolding in other airlines. If and when the company comes looking for redundancies it will be a sad day indeed.
YGBSM.
New joiners are hired for over a decade on a series of declining contracts. These (knowingly) undermine existing contracts yet the new joiners don’t care. The company plays this very well. Fair enough. The common element in the contract is seniority and the rules are clearly delineated. Seniority has great value and effectively anchors people in the job preventing easy transfer and market forces to operate to some extent (being a barrier to entry and exit). Keeping many with higher skills and qualifications from going elsewhere with these because to do so would dump the seniority and have them start all over at the bottom.
"Unprecedented times ?!?" -- yeah-- Bull****e. . While perhaps the Wuhan Flu itself was unpredictable and unexpected, it's completely foreseeable that SOMETHING would happen over the life of the contract (which is why you have a contract with layoff and recall provisions to begin with). Historically airlines have faced numerous boom and bust cycles by SOME kind of event. While the exact type of event might be wholly unknown its obvious to anyone in the industry that it will happen (and might even happen a couple or few times over a career). Which is why a contract and agreement towards what to do when it does happen exists in the first place.
Now a significant event happens and the snowflakes want to change the contract by voiding the clearly defined lay-off and recall procedures contained within it. They don’t want the rules they knowingly agreed to apply to them anymore (and neither does the company in that they are the cheap labor and the first to go under the agreed contract). It’s a form of communism — make up some scam downline to ‘share the pain’ and void the contract endorsing the behavior of those who deliberately undermined it over the years to begin with. In other words enabling bad behavior. What one agreed and committed to doesn’t matter anymore.
How can anyone think this is in any way the right thing to do ?
Now, to be fair contracts are not necessarily static and perhaps given the objectives of company and person at some point downline both parties might find a mutually agreed better way to do things. That's fine too; several US carriers have done so by incentivizing early out (voluntary) packages or (completely) voluntary leave packages. Without propaganda or coercion. Where the value of seniority and the layoff/recall provisions in the original contract are preserved (not deliberately circumvented).