Not a good precedent- Midwest Airlines Wins Arbitration

stillageek

Well-Known Member
First the pilots and now the flight attendants.

http://www.jsonline.com/business/38454964.html

Arbitrator rules against Midwest flight attendants

By Tom Daykin of the Journal Sentinel
Posted: Jan. 27, 2009
For the second time in a week, an arbitrator has ruled that Midwest Airlines Inc.'s decision to hire another carrier to operate several flights, resulting in job losses for Midwest's union flight crews, does not violate a company labor agreement.
Oak Creek-based Midwest Airlines announced last fall it was hiring Indianapolis-based Republic Airways Holdings Inc. to operate Midwest Connect flights previously flown under the Midwest Airlines name. That came after Republic agreed to provide up to $25 million in financing to Midwest, which helped prevent a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.
Toni Higgins, head of the Midwest flight attendants union, said the ruling was disappointing. She also said the ruling should be of concern to the community, because it involves a loss of jobs from Milwaukee.
Midwest's pilots and flight attendants unions both filed grievances, saying the outsourcing to Republic violated their contracts - a claim Midwest denied. The company says it will rehire laid-off flight crews after they're trained to staff the Republic jets, but only if they accept substantial pay cuts.
The pact with Republic is allowed under the company's labor contract with the Association of Flight Attendants, according to the arbitrator's ruling, Midwest spokesman Michael Brophy said Tuesday. A ruling announced last week from a different arbitrator denied a similar grievance filed by the Air Line Pilots Association.
Republic flies a dozen Embraer 170 regional jets, each with 76 seats, under the Midwest Connect name. Midwest Airlines also contracts with St. George, Utah-based SkyWest Inc. to operate a dozen Bombardier CRJ200 50-seat regional jets under the Midwest Connect name.
That amounts to just more than 1,500 seats, or 63% of the combined capacity of Midwest Airlines and Midwest Connect.
Midwest Airlines operates nine 99-seat Boeing 717 jets, which use union flight crews.
 
This #### makes me sick.

What's the damn point in continuing in this profession if the prospect of making a good living continues to disappear.
 
I guess that the whole binding arbitration argument (ala US Air style) goes out the window when it doens't work in your favor?
 
It would be interesting to see what the contract says. My hunch is that perhaps it was the function of incompetent negotiation on the part of the Midwest pilots involving scope. Not sure, but if other airlines could do this they would but are somehow prevented. Perhaps this is a failure of imagination on the part of the negotiators of this contract.
 
:yeahthat:

..majorin' in psychology with a minor in sociology. Nursing school after graduation! Then the masters!

Good for you. I'm a little different, Political Science with an International Relations concentration, Military science as my minor, and then off to Law school.
 
This #### makes me sick.

What's the damn point in continuing in this profession if the prospect of making a good living continues to disappear.

There is no point. So don't continue in it.

Seriously. There's not day that goes by that I don't read something that makes me glad that I left this profession. And yet at the same time, there is not a day that goes by that I don't come across another eager young space cadet readly, willing and able to jump right into this profession. I don't even know how to describe it. It's not ignorance, It's more like suspended disbelief. I guess a better way to describe it is they all have a "That won't happen to me" attitude.
 
Sadly, you're right.

I blame the lack of other career experience (straight out of College chomping at the bit for their first real job and sipping up the marketing ########) and pocket deep parents.
 
For coming to a regional to make essentially $12/hr.

Was it a lack of career experience or deep pocketed parents?

The writing has been on the wall a lot longer than your tenure at ASA. You take satisfaction at pointing fingers at others for continuing in this career, I just want to know why you chose to do so.
 
I choose the path that I choose for the same reasons a lot of people do.

Quality of life.

Not even close to an excuse. So, there, wasn't either one. It was:

1) I have a family
2) I own a home
3) I have prior career experience
4) I don't have deep pocketed parents
5) I paid my own way through flight training and formal education
6) Thankfully I have mentors that I respect that have provided me with the realities of the airline industry and profession.
7) Because of number 6, I didn't buy into any ridiculous marketing mumbo-jumbo, and most importantly
8) This is a profession and a career, not a hobby.

What was your excuse then?

And, since you edited your post to add one question.

I'm continuing in this career, should a recall occur, only long enough to either achieve my personal professional goals (where then a re-evaluation of career earnings will occur) or to leave the profession and venture down other career opportunities. I am constantly re-evaluating my decisions, as anyone should. Further, I'm also doing a great deal of work to place the foundation financially and operationally to make a career change when and if needed.

And I take satisfaction in pointing fingers at those who continue in this career? What exactly does that mean? Congratulations to them, and anyone, for continuing in a profession they are happy in. Not really sure I follow that train of thought, but this wouldn't be the first time I don't follow something you've written.
 
I choose the path that I choose for the same reasons a lot of people do.

<snip>

I'm continuing in this career, should a recall occur, only long enough to either achieve my personal professional goals (where then a re-evaluation of career earnings will occur) or to leave the profession and venture down other career opportunities.

So then there are obviously other reasons why people pursue the career other than deep pocketed parents or a lack of a real job before getting hired at 121 carrier.

I started my commercial before 9/11 so my perspective is probably a little bit different than yours. But quality of life is/was certainly at the top of my list, as well as having a fun and dynamic job that was in demand, which it was at the time. I probably shoud've bailed after 9/11 but by then I had too much time and money into it to quit, so like you I'm now using it to discover what other careers I would like to pursue.
 
Of course there are.

My post was in response to skydog's comments regarding young space cadets willing to jump into this profession.

It wasn't directed towards any other reasoning for coming into this profession.

Nevertheless,

You're right though. Once someone is so invested in a product (or service, or profession) they're significantly less likely to put the product away and never touch or see it again after the product fails to satisfy their needs. They'll keep the product around using it at every opportunity, even if it doesn't satisfy their needs because they feel significant emotional connection with the product. That emotional connection is too strong for them to put it away and find another product that satisfies their needs. Or at least that's my analogy for the time being.

Which is, ultimately what many of us are currently going through. We are seeing if this product (flying for a living in the 121 environment) is going to satisfy our needs (financially, whatever they may be. . .maybe just to wear the uniform, I don't know, everyone is different) before we put it up on the shelf. We (my wife and I) have very distinct financial goals for ourselves and our children. Should the prospect of attaining those goals appear to be a lost cause, we (me really) will not hesitate to do what we need to do to restructure our professional lifestyle to meet those goals.

Some of us, as with anything in this crazy game, jumped in at the right time and the water in the pool is still clean, cool, and refreshing. Some of us jumped in at the wrong time, and someone is peeing all over the damn place making the water unsafe.

Everyone's evaluation of their professional goals is going to be different.
 
We were all young eager space cadets, we had to be in order to shell out $30k, $40k, $50k+ let alone the cost of a degree to make $15k/yr to instruct and an adjusted $12/hr to start at a regional in a post 9/11 environment.
 
I'm sure a case could be made to convince me of that. But I'm not too sure I'm willing to classify everyone who is flying for a living was at one time a young eager space cadet.

I sure as hell never wanted to go to the Moon. ;)

Some of us just had the skills necessary to get into a, for the most part, low impact profession. For me, that was a wonderful change of pace between what I was doing prior to flying for a living. Some were small business owners whose flying was related to their business, and figured "I might as well get paid to do this," and they jump right on in. And then yes, there are those who right out of High School attend Big Name Aviation School.edu for 4 1/2 years, graduate with multitude of brain power and end up getting picked up by Small Lift Provider XYZ.
 
In some ways the "new way" of the regionals is actually better for most of those young cadets. Before pilots built time, 500+ TT just to instruct, then instructed for 2-3 years. Maybe got lucky and flew right seat in a navajo for 6 months-1 year, finally moved to the left seat. Got some PIC multi. Moved to a turbine, 1, 2, maybe 3 years later they hit a regional. My companies hiring mins pre-9/11 were 2500 TT 1000 TPIC. At this time their pay probably hadn't cracked $25k/yr. Starting pay in the 328 was $19/hr, that's around $9.50/hr for a "normal" worker. If they got lucky they hit paydirt and made it to a major. Suffice to say many, many, pilots did not.

Now we can walk into a relatively cushy RJ job making relatively decent $$ in comparison to years ago during the same time period of your career with relatively little sacrifice as far as time goes.

And then yes, there are those who right out of High School attend Big Name Aviation School.edu for 4 1/2 years,

FWIW I spent 2 years 10 months at ERAU to get my 4 year. But it was 2 years 10 months too long, I was going after the "fun" job, the only way I knew (and my parents knew) how. Actually I really didn't know what I wanted to do back then other than be a pilot. Still don't, it's fun as heck!
 
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