@PhilosopherPilot to compliment
@ATN_Pilot reply above I'd also remind you the union has many jobs. The make many claims. One of their claims is upholding the profession but that's a more nebulous thing than you think. There aren't cut and dry answers all the time. (ex. We had a guy that just needed to get through a messy divorce before he could act like a human being again). The union, the people working in it ALSO have to be professional. A professional means more than vigilante justice, it means being a professional and letting the company run their business, it means the process is fair for everyone. Unions are built around a legal framework and they operate inside that framework. Every union is a little different so it sounds like
@BobDDuck might have had more leverage dealing with problem pilots than we did. Our CBA didn't have much to fire a "jerk".
You seem to think there should be more done because of some examples you heard about in the past. Not knocking you but your way of phrasing things makes me think you listen to politicians (base rep). Here's what sometimes happens with that. Legal has exact language that's pretty simple once it's explained, an intelligent person can listen and ask questions, listen to answers, and learning can happen. A politician does something completely different. A politician goes into the meeting thinking one thing, how do I shut these phone calls up or make myself and the union look good in front of our pilots? He listens to legal, asks no questions except to say, "is it alright that I tell guys
THIS instead" and legal says "No." They say okkkkkkkkkk, in their best child whiny voice. Then they don't respond to people over email or any recorded anything, and simply say what they were going to say anyway, because there's no way to prove it later in court. There job is to sometimes tell people what they want to hear. I can't do that.
That doesn't mean politicians are bad, they have a closer relationships to the pilots as a whole and they know whats going to make them happy. ... Politicians are much more comfortable lying than I and others are. A politician doesn't say that's lying, he just says to himself (like a sales guy), this is a version of the truth, "legal won't let me tell you how it how it really is". Sometimes a politicians superpower is to be an uninformed as possible because they connect
emotionally, not
factually. To me it should be the same thing, but that's not the real world for every pilot. There are posters on here who regularly make stuff up and I do my best to correct with facts, the overwhelming majority don't think that hard about it one way or the other. So you end up with a minority having what seems like petty fights over facts. I feel like I'm using facts to tell truth, a truthy politician feels like they are telling "their truth" and that's just as good. If you believe facts are malleable, then listen to your politicians, if you believe facts are facts then listen to legal guys.
The example you've given here on this board seems like a truthy example. Not your fault, it was something you were told and you're repeating it as best you can. Now it sounds like
@BobDDuck might have been a part of a union where you could have done what you're talking about, I just know mine didn't (to the best of my knowledge).
