Mr. N S Fletcher: Whether I agree or not with some of your points, your style is commendable. Compared to many Ppruners who simply bash any union activity with a large Cro-Magnon club, despite the truth and no job experience with any US airline, your observations appear to be sincere and detached, without the seething personal animosity which so often appears to be the case at Pprune.
Donkey Duke: Don't let yourself be provoked by pilots or others who never even attempted a civilian pilot career.
None of them can begin to understand the US airline/business landscape, due to their exposure only to the US/foreign press and its pre-calculated levels of bias and distortion, or regret that their union has no teeth. With US doctors and lawyers it is an,...ahem... "association".
The unionized pilots at my airline gave up for three years, 15% of our paychecks in the early 90's, mostly due to the leveraged buyout (LBO), which almost sank our company. This buyout had been caused by new owners. They had "mortgaged" the airline, in order to buy it. Just who saved it? To a considerable extent, the employee groups helped out, with paycuts lasting three years.
For those Pprune members who are new here on our blue planet, without the many terrible corporate sharks who had devastated (other) US airlines in the 80s and 90s, we would not even have the union solidarity which tends to exist today. Look at Icahn's (his TWA pilots took a 40% paycut for years, in order save their company!) and Lorenzo's crippling or outright destruction of formerly proud carriers (critical asset sales, "cash upstreaming" into "holding companies"), if still in the dark about this simple concept.
If Pprune readers really hate our US airline unions, partly thank Lorenzo, Icahn, maybe Ferris, Crandall (B-scale) and others (plus the arrogance of so many former/present Congressional/Senate GOP members) for the vital services rendered by our unions. You are worth only what you negotiate.
[ 08 November 2001: Message edited by: Ignition Override ]