Fellow Pilots of PPRuNe:
Thanks to the solidarity of our pilots from Hong Kong AOA, our website has been made available to many more concerned voices from the world pilot community.
Speaking on behalf of the Korean pilots, both KAL and Asiana, through my official position with IFALPA, we are very grateful for the overwhelming show of support and encouragement for our 4 jailed pilots.
Perhaps we have been too long silent on the issues, allowing people to conjecture on the complicated problem at KAL. Due to some of the content on the second page, I have been compelled to join this discussion, but with acknowlegment first to the right of all people to air their views freely without my imposition.
WANDERLUST was correct to note KAL Flight Crew Union's proposal to limit expat pilot hiring during the last negotiations which resulted in the June 12 strike.
We, as a labor union, and as the legally recognized bargaining agent on KAL property, make no apologies for our attempts at job security and workscope protection for our pilots.
With regard to the pilot shortage, whether management had planned for labor to sustain expansions, who has rights to these jobs first, etc., such are the issues for the collective bargaining process, which by the sum total experience of hundreds of thousands of pilots throughout history, must be honored in order for any organization to prosper and survive.
I contend that we have been stripped of these constitutional human rights in Korea, both by KAL management and the Korean Government Prosecutor.
As to the issues raised by LIZARD DRINKING, the "militant unions," yes by far, KAL FCU was one of the latest to join the ranks of the democratic KCTU, driven entirely by the wisdom of the old saying, that "management gets the union it deserves."
You said, "pilot participation was illegal," which by itself indicates your lack of grasp on the issues. Pilots struck independently as a unit, as voted by its members alone, and it was not a participation in someone else's decision. Its legality is still the question being tried at the courts, but of course, being a KAL management pilot if that's what you are, must be going on the briefings by the management legal department's yes men.
But surely you know that concerted strikes along affiliations are the bedrock of industrialism, again, to effectively pressure managements into good faith bargaining without government intervention, but that point was all but lost on KAL management, which had no intentions whatsoever of engaging its pilots as equals, as borne out by its actions to date, all according to the now exposed scripted plan to bust the union.
And did we not initially propose negotiating on the $40 million/year pay and benefit increase? Our requests for negotiation from the end of March was all but completely ignored by management, to where we decided to forego the pay increase at par with expat pilots to next year, in order to gain control over issues such as FOM revisions and FOQA agreement, and the scope control was really the last on the agenda.
It has also been written on this forum that "Koreans hate the expats." While I cannot speak for others in this regard, it is ironic that this is the very same gutter argument raised by the Prosecutor in this case, as fed from KAL management, to cloud the issues with irrelevant arguments of, sadly, ethnic strife.
I close by telling you of my experience on July 25, when I was fired from the company for my union activities. I had been interrogated by the Prosecutor all day, who did not hesitate to tell me that I would be fired by KAL management at his behest, for going against my word of not writing information such as this to the outside world, which was conceded under duress on the evening of the day of my release from a previous night in jail. When I went to see my fellow pilots that evening, they told me that I had indeed been fired, that afternoon.
Back to the subject at hand, fellow airline pilots of the world, union or not, I thank you for your solidarity on behalf of the pilots of Korea.
[ 15 August 2001: Message edited by: Jailed KAL Pilot ]