flensr

It's happening with railroad workers. Congress is intervening. I'd quit if that happened here, but most wouldn't or couldn't.

TOGALOCK

The difference is that one airline going on strike is an inconvenience, not a catastrophe. If the railway workers were to actually strike the entire rail transportation system would be shut down. That could have some pretty drastic consequences if it went on for any length of time.

Palmtree Pilot

Is UAL’s announcement of LAS and MCO bases going to hurt SWA recruiting a bit, considering anyone that wants those domiciles has another option where they can upgrade on the same equipment in les than 2 years instead of 7-15?

PineappleXpres

Yes….filler

at6d

Don’t count on MCO going junior for UAL.

Lewbronski

What happened to the railroad unions in this episode isn't great for the railroad unions. It may make them reconsider how they approach negotiations in the future. It's almost as if they wield too much leverage. But I wouldn't say it means very much for airline unions.

This dispute that Congress intervened in involved 12 railroad unions comprising 110,000 workers. Had they gone on strike, the entire national freight railroad system would have gone down. Towns would have not been able to treat their drinking water. Gas stations would have started running out of gas for your car. Coal-fired power plants would have begun running low on coal. And on and on and on. There is no real viable alternative to the national freight railroad system. Trucking is reportedly already maxed out. Air cargo can't handle the volume nor the types of cargo that travel by rail. Had the railroad unions struck, the economy, already snarled by supply chain issues, would have ground to a halt.

The airline unions do not negotiate the way the railroad unions negotiate. As everyone here knows, the pilots at one particular airline negotiate separately from the pilots at another airline. We do not negotiate in a massive inter-company block the way freight railroad unions do.

If the pilots strike at an individual airline, even one of the Big 4, it only takes that one airline down. In terms of the threat to interstate commerce posed by one single airline being forced to halt operations due to a strike compared to the threat of all American rail freight traffic coming to a standstill because of a strike (and also a good chunk of rail passenger traffic since the freight rail companies own much of the trackage the passenger rail trains operate on), there really is almost no comparison. A rail freight shut down is orders of magnitude more significant to the national economy than a single airline shut down.

The effect of an airline strike is also blunted by the fact that passengers begin "booking away" from an airline in the run-up to a strike. Business and leisure travelers begin finding ways to accomplish their travels on other carriers. Well before an airline strike begins, this "book away phenomena" blunts the effect of the possible strike on interstate commerce.

The significance of the hit to commerce is further reduced by competing airlines adding capacity to routes flown by a struck carrier in an attempt to gain market share and increase revenue during a competitor's strike. In the 1998 NWA pilots' strike, for example, American began adding lift to abandoned NWA domestic routes and JAL did the same on some of NWA's international routes. This even further mitigates the impact on interstate commerce of a single airline strike.

For all of the above reasons: 1) the repercussions to the economy of an airline strike are dramatically less than the entire national freight rail system suspending operations, 2) what effect one airline striking does have on commerce is weakened in advance of the strike by passengers booking away on other carriers, and 3) other airlines rush in to fill the void left behind by the struck carrier during a strike. All of these factors make it significantly less likely, though not impossible, that Congress would intervene in an airline strike.

In the case of a railroad strike, there really is no viable "book away" alternative. Where can freight rail customers turn to book their freight? There are no competing rail lines or trucking operations or air cargo services with the ability and excess capacity to step in and fill the void of a freight railroad strike because they cannot match the capabilities of rail freight and/or are already operating at full tilt.

Because so much of our economy depends on the freight rail system, to have the entire national rail freight network taken out by striking workers is something that is a much, much bigger deal to the economy than a single airline going down. That's a headache and hassle for that airline's customers, but it's not paralyzing to the entire economy.

Now, consider this: as of today, since the RLA was enacted in 1926, Congress has acted to intervene post-PEB in railroad union strikes 19 times. How many times has Congress acted to intervene in airline union strikes? Zero times.

Is that merely coincidence? Do you think any of the above might help to explain why Congress has never intervened in an airline strike?

There are definitely lessons we can learn from this most recent railroad RLA dispute, but the idea that it means airline pilots will never be allowed to strike because Congress will automatically intervene is not one of them. Maybe if the pilots of SWA, UAL, DAL, AA, F9, NK, AS, B6, YX, Skywest, Envoy, FedEx, UPS, Atlas, and all the other passenger and cargo airlines in America that I'm not thinking of all banded together and got to the point of going on strike, we'd have to worry about Congress intervening. That's sort of the equivalent position the railroad unions were in.

The biggest lesson I'm taking away from the last year of railroad negotiations is that the NMB will release from mediation, in 4.5 months, a dispute (the block of 12 railroad unions) with such enormous ramifications for the national economy. That's great news and a great precedent for us.

WHACKMASTER

I sure hope it does!

RJSAviator76

I think UAL's Florida bases are gonna be stupid senior.

hoover

I disagree. Those senior pilots would have to give up their WB spots to go fly domestic NB

RJSAviator76

Commute to WB vs. drive to work.... hmmm.