Hold at Saffa.
I know that your post was not directed at me put I can't keep from posting a response to it, big mouthed women not withstanding. I would agree with you 100 % if we lived in a utopian univerese where management and employees share common goals. They do not. Managements prime considerations is to the share holders of the corporation not the employees. That is capitalism, that's essentially all it is. We as pilots do not have multi million dollar bonuses, stock options and the ability to move from one company to another with no loyalty to anyone of them, and essentially keep the same salary.
We are tied to our airline by virtue of our seniority. No employee group has a greater interest in keeping an airline viable than the pilots. We have very specific skills and if we ever leave the airline or if the airline fails we have to start at the bottom some place ellse. Due to all of this ALPA and all the other U.S. pilot unions do exhaustive economic analysis of the corporation before we exchange contract openers with management. It is NOT in the unions interest to cause the airline to fail, and indeed, no airline has EVER failed because of high union pilot salaries. As a matter of fact pilots are payed much less now at Delta and United than they were in the sixties if you factor in inflation.
As you well know, Swissair did not fail because of high salaried union pilots, they failed because of a failed strategy by management and in the process got a an airline with a book value of about 2 billion in to 10 billion dollars worth of debt. Who pay's the price? Management? No, they are set for life. The share holders and more iimportantly the employees pay the price as Cisco and the rest are all to aware of.
If Delta or United fail it will not be because of high salaries payed to their pilots it will be because of a lack of leadership of their management. Should they fail, however, we all know who has to pay the price.
I sure wish I lived in your universe where everybody sits around the proverbial campfire singing CumbaYa, but I don't and neither does anybody ellse, so I will keep my union, and my high salary because if I give it up it doesn't benefit anyone except management when they pay themselfs year end bonuses.
I think maybe you could learn something from the Americans.