Are the ALPA & US-Based Airlines Playing a Game That They Can’t Win?

Mal,
You have touched on a variety of subjects without a real analysis of any of them. Also you have made drawn some inferences which are just wrong. With respect to some of the comments above, clearly there are other agendas which are not a part of this conversation. I will say that I doubt Mike or John have much insight into what ALPA is, or what ALPA’s goals are. If airlines don’t have profits, then airline pilots don’t have jobs. Nobody, and especially after the last ten years, NOBODY understands that better than an airline pilot.

As to the Ex-Im bank, you miss the point. ALPA has no interest in “keeping Emirates out…”. ALPA has a strong interest in a fair and level playing field, where the rules are the same for all players. The Ex-Im Bank amounts to a US taxpayer subsidy to foreign carriers to reduce the cost of the airplanes they buy from Boeing. It is one thing to compete against a cheaper product made overseas, it is an entirely different thing if that product is cheaper because the US Government spends US taxpayer dollars to subsidize that cheaper product which that very same taxpayer then has to compete against. THAT is why ALPA STRONGLY disagrees that the Ex-Im Bank be should be allowed to subsidize aircraft sales. Unless those same terms are provided to US carriers for the purchase of airplanes, then all of us taxpayers are supporting companies which compete against your neighbors and friends whose businesses are put at risk as they compete against a company financed BY OUR OWN TAX DOLLARS.

In addition, that same government levies more taxes on our Airline Industry than it does on cigarettes and booze. The Mideast carriers are supported by the (bottomless) treasuries of those Mideast countries. Of course, that money comes from the profits of an OPEC controlled oil industry, but let’s leave that alone for the moment.

Now, on to NAI. When you mentioned that NAI wants to use American crews, you demonstrate a typical modern american trait (too long in Seattle?). You are demonstrating that you have (some) information, but no knowledge or understanding. Knowing a fact does not give you an argument, understanding where that fact falls in the full picture of a subject does. NAI has talked about hiring a handful of flight attendants in New York and Orlando. The vast majority of their crews will be on contract to a company in Singapore, they will be based in Thailand; and they will not be allowed to organize or have representation. The real reason companies are relocating to Ireland is that the Irish, desperate to rebuild their economy after the last 30 years of economic disaster, started with call centers and have worked their way up to eliminating many of their labor laws and other restrictive corporate regulations.

There is a separate conversation to be had about the appropriate level of governmental oversight of labor and corporate behaviour, but I think we can all agree that our modern society owes many of it’s beneficial aspects to the advancement of the balance of power between labor and capital over the past 120 years. In fact, we have a great example in front of us of what a world without that 120 years of effort looks like. At the turn of the last century, with no restrictions on the few concerning how the many could be treated, John D. Rockefeller was worth (in 2014 dollars)over 21 Trillion dollars; with a T. Carlos Slim, Warren Buffet, and Bill Gates are pikers by those standards.

An even better example is Putin’s private game reserve, popularly known as Russia. In the post cold war wild, wild west that is today’s Russia, 35% of the the total of all of the assets in the entire country are owned by, wait for it, 110 individuals. We now call these people “Oligarchs”; it’s a new word for an old problem.

ALPA’s goals are nothing more or less than adhering to the dream which we as a country committed to on a hot day in July, 1776. The idea that there will be no special deals, that we will not allow our society to be broken into classes which are treated differently, and that the rule of law will apply to all; equally and without amendment, was a radical idea at the time. To some, it is still a radical idea which threatens their ability to manipulate the power of our society to the purposes of a select few. We at ALPA fully intend to see that threat carried out in the People’s House, and the Senate; even if the politicians have been bought.

I hope this clears the issue just a bit.
Cheers,

It is always stunning to me when someone writes an article about a topic they know so little about. No one cares what jobs are outsourced to lower paid overseas workers until it is your job.

I am one of the US Flight Attendants hired by NAI based in Fort Lauderdale. To tell you the truth I have been flying for 14 years as a flight attendant and the training I had to go through for NAI was more intense than any other training I have been through in a US carrier from having to demonstrate that I can swim 200 meters to evacuations. If some of these training aspects were incorporated into the US carriers half the flight attendants would fail. I even had to go through an intense physical and if I didn’t pass that physical I don’t fly. NAI hired us at competitive wages. Higher than I have started at any us carrier as a matter of fact. $3.61 higher starting paythanat a US carrier and I have worked for some of the big boys including DL and AA. Yes we’re contracted but the company is based in Norway not Thailand like ALPA wants people to believe. We do have Thai crews working the flights but that is just until NAI finishes the training for the US cabin crews.
The EASA and CAA regulations are much more stricter and less lax than FAA rules. So as for safety EU regulations are more stricter than anything I have ever seen. Also we talk so much crap but yet why do you think pilots are flocking to European carriers because theory and benefits are much better than here in the US unfortunately and ALPA is not liking that. I say ALPA needs to stop their crap and focus more on what their own company’s are doing instead of what other companies are doing.