I work at a station where UAL comes to borrow parts and tools, and the mechanics are all fed up with the company, the National Mediation Board, and the current union. These folks have been down in the bunkers getting shelled for so long they wouldn't recognize sunshine if they saw it. How would you feel if you always have to tread a fine line with discrepancies for fear that management may accuse you of writing too much up? How would you feel if your group gathered enough signatures for a union representational election to change to a trade union, and the current union and the government colluded to have management, planners and others (who have never paid any union dues to the current union) hastily added to the representational roster to disqualify the signature list as not having enough signatures requesting an election? The mechanics with skills and talent really have no incentive to take any paycuts. And at this point, it has become personal with them. The sad point to all of this is that it never had to get to this point if the company had paid attention to what was going on and showed some true leadership.
(Wino, if you want to compare shop rates, major airlines are around $130 to 180 USD, compared to auto dealerships of around $65 to 85 in the same metro areas. With the last round of pattern bargaining aircraft mechanics will make about the same as auto mechanics, but less that UPS airfreight mechanics, even though an airplane-is-an-airplane-etc. Still, about the same as skilled trades in the US in large metro areas. I'm also not so sure auto service managers would put up with the same amount of donut eaters as the airlines do. Thanks none the less for rallying on the mechanics' side. If you can ignore the bad apples in my group, I'll ignore the ones in yours.)