Utah

Duplicate post.

Utah

American only retires around 500 out of their 11,166 pilots in the next six years. If only a third of their furloughees come back , and they stay the same size, they won't need to hire for 7 or so years.

Newty

Yeah, we are a house divided, jets and not jets, and the notjet guys get thown under the bus, so again, I don't feel bad for the ASA guys as I believe I have it worse. I have a student of mine from the instructor days, I instucted for a year and a half, I went to Alaska, then flew freight then came to Skywest with 2100tt, she instructed to 600, took ASA then took the COLA for a year and is headed back to 900 training next month, I cannot find it in my head that she has it somehow worse than me and needs me to combine lists with her.

JDFlyer

I'll make you a deal, lets work on this together. Lets figure out a way to decertify ALPO at ASA and then we can work together at unifying the pilot groups at Skywest and ASA.

I am only one Skywest pilot, I have only one Skywet vote. ALPO will never, ever have mine. A strong, internal, independent pilot union representing ALL Skywest, Inc. pilots, you have my support all day long.

Otherwise, forget it.

Nevets

I understand the urge to only think of yourself and I feel that you should but to a certain extent. Certainly envy is not helpful. What I'm saying is that your own company pits Skywest Brasilia pilots against CRJ pilots. They also have you divided depending on whether you happen to work freight and hired at 2100 hours or instructed to 600. There is only one way to equalize the disparity and it starts with one list.

That's fine but Skywest getting an independent union does not hinge on decertifying ALPA at ASA. Because if your management doesn't want to combine pilot groups now, they certainly wont do it with no union at either place.

By the way, its a big misconception that individual ALPA groups are not independent. ALPA is a bottom up organization. ALPA national cannot tell an MEC how to handle its business. The MEC does what they think is in the best interest of their pilot group. No different than any independent union. The difference is that with ALPA you have all the resources that are available to the MEC by virtue of being part of ALPA.

JDFlyer

WHOOOAAAAA!!! HAAAAAA!! HAAAAAA!! (Please stop, I am going to pee on my self!!!)

I guess we will just have to agree to disagree on this one.

Just say 'No', its ALPO!! (sorry, couldn't resist)

Nevets

So we disagree on ALPA. But how does your idea of decertifying ALPA at ASA help you get an independent union at Skywest?

You conveniently ignored that part of my post. Sorry, couldn't resist.

JDFlyer

I jumped into your discussion with another poster on this thread regarding the idea of joining the two groups. My only point was that the only way I personally would ever consider joining ASA pilots with Skywest pilots is to get rid of ALPA first.

An independent union may or may not ever come to Skywest. I hope it does materialize some day sooner than later. I can say quite confidently though, that as long as ASA is ALPA, the majority of Skywest pilots will not support integrating with them.

Personally I am generally happy with the way Skywest management treats us and we treat them. We have a good working relationship with St. George. Granted, Skywest is far from perfect. There is always room for improvement. Again, just my opinion, one pilot, but having ALPA represent all our pilots would be a MAJOR step backwards, NOT forwards.

Terrain Terrain

In my new hire class 3 years ago 43 of the 45 guys were from ALPA airlines, 0 wanted alpa on skywest property from our previous experiences. You need to understand many of us here at skywest have more time under alpa than some of the outside chest thumping zealots. Once we see pinnacle, mesa, airtran, colgan, start to take the gloves off and wipe the turd off their face a union might be an option here. Please dont throw union propaganda at us, because allot of us here at skywest know more about alpa than you would expect, and that is the reason getting on property is so hard..,

Nevets

And my point is that getting rid of ALPA at ASA has no effect on getting an independent union at Skywest. And my other point to you is that if your management doesn't want one list now it will may not mean they want one with two non-union groups.

And as far as integrating with ASA, them being ALPA should have no bearing anyways. Why would it matter?

Of course you are happy with the way Skywest management treats you. Just as Cinderalla's sisters were happy with the way their mother treated them. And just because you have ALPA does not mean that the relationship between the pilots and management would deteriorate.

Having one voice represent the profession would be a MAJOR step forward.

There are many misconceptions about ALPA. One misconception is that people think ALPA should be able to make your airline profitable, have the best pay, work rules, have good relations with management, be the saviour of every pilot, etc. But there is not much ALPA can do about making sure that their company is profitable, have favorable relations with management, make every pilot happy, make them thee best paid group, etc. Think of it this way, if your fellow new hires were from Mesa for example, do you think they would have had a better experience without ALPA on property? No, of course not. JO would take more advantage of them if there was no union. So just because you came from another airline that was ALPA and maybe wasn't profitable, or wasn't treated fairly by management, or didn't have the best pay and work rules (by definition only one airline can at any one point in time), doesn't mean that ALPA was not helpful. There is only so much ALPA can do when dealing with managements of the like at places like Mesa, Colgan, Airtran, the economic environment, the RLA, etc. This is not propaganda. Its not just ALPA either. The reason why its hard to get on property there is because of the Cinderella syndrome. Its not uncommon among pilots though so its not just Skywest. Historically pilots are their own worst enemy usually by being short-sighted.