Originally Posted by
Direct Bondi
There are collective bargaining issues for pilots flying for Ryanair and Norwegian (pilots at Norwegian are represented to service provider agency OSM, not to the airline). The remedy exists for both groups to significantly improve their lot. The first step is to establish a court ruling the AIRLINE is the employer. Legal rulings in Scandinavia and the USA have recently determined the Norwegian airline to be the employer.
The days may indeed be finally numbered for limited companies and service provider agencies, employing and renting pilots to airlines from PO Boxes and broom cupboard offices, and for those airlines taking advantage of such employment circumvention, shell game schemes.
Pilots and cabin crew at Austria Carrier FlyNiki were hired by a contracting agency and leased to the actual airline but they organised (rather secretly at first, with assistance from Austrian Cockpit Association and the GPA trade union) and threatened to strike unless the company hired them directly and gave them a collective agreement.
Now they're employed by the company and have a collective agreement including seniority. (They enjoyed the benefit of the Austrian statutory right to elect a works council but such rights as well as right to join a union exist elsewhere as well.)
It's up to Ryan/Norwegian/etc. pilots to stand up collectively and demand change. It's up to the rest of us to support them in that endeavour (as long as they really try), simply to stop carriers using these practices dragging down T&Cs elsewhere. Solidarity is not charity, but helping Ryan pilots means helping all pilots.
It's not easy as even in the age of innumerable online communication tools you have to be careful not to fall prey to company people posing as conspirators, but that was the same in the early days of US ALPA ("many a pilots membership card was only discovered on his dead body" or so it reads in "Flying the Line"). It can be done, e.g. by "vetting" possible conspirators through a pilot association or using handles whose identity is only known to the pilot union until a framework strong enough for action has been established.
As long as pilots choose to endure conditions "for a couple of years" or conditions that "are not good but not really bad either, at least better as my previous job", nothing will change. If we'd get Europe working instead of falling apart and go for prosperity for the masses rather than prosperity for shareholders, resulting in more air travel and more work for pilots, Ryanair might fall apart by simply not being able to retain pilots, like it seems to happen with US regionals these days. As long as that does not happened, old-fashioned methods like organizing are needed.