MikeD -
Sure I will elaborate.
Had a very long duty day of about 14-hours followed by a short layover. We had discussed on one leg, the BA thing mentioned somewhere in this thread or another. In the same conversation, discussed how some are trying so hard to make things better while others are zero help whatsoever and if a union gets to the point of concluding a strike is the only remaining course of action, there are people lined up and the whole cause to improve things is futile. We talked about how it effected us even that long day and short layover, because our contract does not go beyond FAR limits for most things, which we all know are often not adequate.
I was based at EWR for a year and a half and shared a crashpad with CAL pilots. 9 of them, and me, the young new hire at a vendor that had their paint scheme on the jets I flew. They were great to hang out with and as any crashpad of legacy airline pilots would have, they had a wealth of experience. Plenty of times, in the living room some topic of the suckiness of their contract would come up and most of those guys were around in 1983. They remember suicides, divorces, people having all sorts of problems due to Lorenzo's absolutely horrific management tactics and yet there was a big chunk of their pilot group that was okay with helping Lorenzo out to enhance their own personal situation with zero regard for the amount of disruption they were causing to the group that was trying to have some leverage against what was basically an evil man abusing the system.
So, these guys would talk all about how years later, today even, there are still some things that are they are behind in, contractually for example, because of the past and those that are still at the company with that mentality. With no threat of bankruptcy, voting in concessions that had them taking crew rest from 2AM to 4AM in three coach seats instead of a proper rest area or business class seat. Or having six exhausting, unproductive transatlantic crossings with no relief pilot in the month only to have to go to Houston on a few of their 12 days off for recurrent. Getting paid half for deadheads that last 8 hours. A bad PBS system. The list goes on. Bottom line is, they were not happy with the contract and their frustration with those who didn't help the effort to improve things was very apparent.
After the PIC and I talked about the futility of raising the bar (and not asking for the world, just stuff like pay that you can live off of, etc.) and the sad fact of replacement workers standing by, it was still on our minds when we had two off-line jumpseaters trying to get on our oversold flight.
One was not very friendly and one was. The unfriendly one had checked in first and he informed us that he had the jumpseat; he had listed at the gate first. The friendly one was apparently just waiting around to see if he'd get offered one of our flight attendant jumpseats. We are not permitted to have either of them sit in the galley but he may have not known that or he might have lucked out and had some crews that allowed him to do that before.
We had some time on the plane between flights and I had been online via boingo in the cockpit at the gate for a few minutes because I could pickup the wifi signal from the terminal a little. I had my laptop already open on my knees. PIC walks in and says how the one guy was a bit of a jerk and wondered if he was just the type of person we had been discussing. Yes, he was, on the jumpseat form was his full name and that name was also on the scab list. I suppose he just picked the wrong day, and the wrong flight to try and ride, and act not really that polite. PIC informed the other jumpseater that he was welcome to sit in the cockpit jumpseat, and told the scab to please take another flight. Flight went out full, with the cockpit j/s occupied. So before anyone jumps to conclusions, I am not in favor of jumpseat wars but this was an instance where the scab was just not gonna get a ride with the other guy standing there.