Cloudbuster, I have two problems with your 'challenge' above
1) "its all about choice" -- just goes to show how much the consumer mindset has taken hold of contemporary thinking. Choice is good in some areas, and counterproductive in others. If you are talking about driving down prices and increasing the variety of goods and services in a marketplace, yes, choice is good if you are a consumer.
However, choice is very bad for you as a the provider of a narrow set of skills that took a huge investment in time and effort. That is why companies, developers etc are dependent on devices such as patents, intellectual property rights, etc.
Example: Test the proposition that "Choice is good". Ok. Lets increase choice for the employer - allow Direct Entry pilots to compete on an equal footing with incumbent first officers seeking an upgrade. How do you think that would run for the FO's in your organisation, would they embrace that concept? Is choice in all forms still good?
If this ruling survives the appeal (and an appeal has been granted, which means at least one judge can see that it has merit), then no one union or association will have total support. The 'market share' to put it in your terms, might be 50/50, 75/25, or even 80/20, but it will never be 100/0.
All that 'choice' does for pilots in an industrial sense, is to ensure that there will never be one effective voice for pilots.
2) You put the emphasis on the AFAP to show what they have done for their members. Unfortunately that only shows that you miss the entire concept of how a union achieves 'a win.'
The membership. A united membership that is willing to take a risk, in order to win better conditions. A membership that understands that "power is never ceded without a fight."
The union staff is selected for their knowledge and expertise, but it is the membership that sets the direction and generates the 'push.'
Take a look at one of the more successful unions in this country, the CFMEU. These construction workers earn salaries that rival B737 captains in this country. The media like to focus their attention on their leader, Big Kev (not the fat spruiker from QLD, the union man from WA). But as Big Kev put it himself, the only reason the CFMEU is the attitude of their members.
"Our people earn that sort of money because they understand the collective".
Folk like Cloudbuster can sit back and defend their right to choice and hang on to the cult of individuality if they like. However, so long as you guys think like consumers of a service, we will be hamstrung, and Cloudbuster will be taking a slice of an ever diminishing pie.
The problem here is not really which union represents the QF group pilots. It might be a new flag, but it is flying above a group of people that has not changed, and I suspect wont change much, especially if they continue in the mistaken belief that AIPA can do much more for them than AFAP or any other organisation.
Same army, new uniform.
Takes a lot more than that to win a battle.
Last edited by ITCZ; 9th Jun 2007 at 05:35.