Clanger32
I’ve worked for a heavily unionised (over 90%) airline for twenty years and counting.
Being unionised does not mean continuously spiraling costs for the company…far from it. I served on our CC for a number of years and I know through first hand experience that working in partnership with the management gives rise to potentially huge benefits to the company and the workforce.
I have seen adversarial negotiations lead to poor company performance and a ballot for strike action from the pilots, to the partnership approach we now have leading to new ideas and successful working practices.
Managers like all human beings run out of ideas and get a blinkered view of the problem with an inability to step back and see the problem for what it is. I have seen many ideas for the way forward being suggested by our CC and being adopted by management who then admit to it being the right way forward.
It is in no-ones interest for the company that pays all our wages to go bust. In fact we pilots due to the seniority system are more likely to have a vested interest in the airlines survival. Most pilots have longer service at their respective airlines than the managers who come and go every few years.
Pilots tend not to be militant. We all had to work bl**dy hard to get qualified. We tend as a group, to have a very good work ethic. That includes going beyond normal working practices to get the job done, rather than just downing tools and going home.
Pilots want negotiated T’s & C’s that suites the pilots and the company, nothing more and nothing less.
Union recognition is not some evil and certainly nothing to be frightened of.
Last edited by max_cont; 25th Jun 2009 at 12:50.