I have registered for this site because I am fed up reading misleading posts about pilot associations made by various posters. I find the idea that pilot associations are run for purposes other than looking after their members peculiar, since the majority of European pilot associations, like the one I belong to, are very small organisations. What else could they be expected to do, other than look after the interests of their members? (By small organisations I mean with as few as 1-4 full-time staff).
What else are they for than the members, and who can the mysterious people the run them actually be?
However, there is one problem, and that’s this thing called democracy. Sometimes you are on the loosing side of a vote. If you don’t like the outcome you can give out about the association and claim all sorts of nonsense about stupid leaders or idiot pilots. But what you mean is that your point of view did not carry the day. This is even more to the point for the 3 or 4 large associations in Europe, where the decisions are necessarily more complicated.
Unions do not have policies, their members do. Members create and modify policies by participating and using their votes. By the standards of big unions, even the largest pilot associations are very small. They idea that they run around for other purposes seems quite misplaced. A pilots association is just that, an ASSOCIATION. You can opt in, or you can opt out.
Pilots are naturally conservative, but even the most conservative can normally can work out the better choice between (a) being picked off one by one or (b) sticking together. So I find the idea that Ryanair pilots would be better of without union representation so nonsensical that I see no point in joining in any such argument. But I will say one thing, which is that I find it very hard to see how it could make their situation worse.
When I look at the “hobbyhorses” being pursued by those who are against pilot associations I just wonder about what motivates their desire to see Ryanair pilots without a means of defending their interests – interests that can only be decided, democratically, by those very pilots. Does those who oppose unions know better? What have they to fear from being quiet, letting the pilots organise and seeing the outcome? They don't have to join in. So why the repeated negativity? It does not ring true, or is highly patronising towards colleagues.
In fact, who has anything to fear from organised pilots, other than a management that wants to do whatever it wants, regardless of how their pilots feel?