Which problems will get solved faster?

Nope what makes a strike work is locking the doors. There is a notion of "struck work" and locked doors. If the RLA was reformed and the flying could be protected, or strike authorization be given more freely, you would have real contract negotiations taking place.

But I'm not a lawyer.

Locking the doors? Now you're talkin'!

It might not be too much of a stretch for employees to relocate certain pieces of equipment to locations that would make it, well, impossible for the company continue to function.

But that would never work in a lawful society.
 
Nope what makes a strike work is locking the doors. There is a notion of "struck work" and locked doors. If the RLA was reformed and the flying could be protected, or strike authorization be given more freely, you would have real contract negotiations taking place.

But I'm not a lawyer.
Yeah, reform of the RLA... I don't think that will work. Our legislature is incorrigably corrupt. Someone will slip in a line that is something like 'Unions can never strike, but Management can lock you out at anytime. Praise Jesus.'

Just look at the so-called "Health care reform" bill the Republicans put out there.
 
Yeah, reform of the RLA... I don't think that will work. Our legislature is incorrigably corrupt. Someone will slip in a line that is something like 'Unions can never strike, but Management can lock you out at anytime. Praise Jesus.'

Just look at the so-called "Health care reform" bill the Republicans put out there.

Your view, as I understand it, is that making laws and reforming them is impossible on a national level (perhaps all levels) of government because the process is too corrupt. Yes, if the process is too corrupt then there is no point to trying to pass a law or reform it. That is one track for the logic train to take.

I believe, however, that things aren't that bad, and we could make progress. Also, I believe democracy is not a farce.

Again, not a lawyer.
 
Apparently, you didn't comprehend my post which was in reference to your sarcasm/insult comment. Oh well......
I wasn't going to respond, but maybe I had a bad day and ruffled some feathers. I apologize for my rudeness- even to those who may not always be civil.

JTrain, I think the RLA may be way beyond needing reform. But end the we may see things similarly. I wish you further success in law school and where ever life takes you.

Qgar,
We seem to lock horns a bit. I tried to make peace with you with a kind and gentlemanly PM after taking your sarcasm and insult, which you didn't reply to. I was trying to clear the air, that if it was directed at me, maybe we should just ignore each other or make peace. I've done all I can in that regard. :)
 
How about the auto workers. Everyone complains about how the UAW is way overpaid and underworked. And yet when the time comes for a new contract and a new one isnt signed, the whole place shuts down the very hour the contract expires.

But hey I guess since there is no government intervention, everyone will be fired and replaced. I mean its all unskilled labor pushing buttons on the line isnt it? Should be easy to replace.:sarcasm:

Oh wait, that doesnt happen! We are freakin pilots here. SKILLED LABOR! Twelve thousand pilots at Delta walking off the job the second their contract expires are not replaced by holding a few training classes. The labor union is so far gone in this country, I have no hope for it.

So let me clarify, The RLA is the biggest assest to us because if somehow we are ever able to strike (if ever) then we at least keep our jobs if management decides to let us back in in the first place? Shouldnt a labor group only resort to a strike when it can no longer stand the current conditions and it is ready to give up everything anyways? The RLA is the biggest crock of crap fed to the unions.
 
How about the auto workers. Everyone complains about how the UAW is way overpaid and underworked. And yet when the time comes for a new contract and a new one isnt signed, the whole place shuts down the very hour the contract expires.

But hey I guess since there is no government intervention, everyone will be fired and replaced. I mean its all unskilled labor pushing buttons on the line isnt it? Should be easy to replace.:sarcasm:

Oh wait, that doesnt happen! We are freakin pilots here. SKILLED LABOR! Twelve thousand pilots at Delta walking off the job the second their contract expires are not replaced by holding a few training classes. The labor union is so far gone in this country, I have no hope for it.

So let me clarify, The RLA is the biggest assest to us because if somehow we are ever able to strike (if ever) then we at least keep our jobs if management decides to let us back in in the first place? Shouldnt a labor group only resort to a strike when it can no longer stand the current conditions and it is ready to give up everything anyways? The RLA is the biggest crock of crap fed to the unions.

Your view is very skewed.

If we didn't have government intervention, you would be fired for even joining a union in the first place (or fired for even *thinking* about joining a union). A strike can't take place if you don't have a union. To have a union, you need government intervention in the form of the NLRA. The cart must go behind the horse, not the other way around.

While I agree the RLA needs to be reformed, you are making some very innacurate statements here.
 
Your view is very skewed.

If we didn't have government intervention, you would be fired for even joining a union in the first place (or fired for even *thinking* about joining a union). A strike can't take place if you don't have a union. To have a union, you need government intervention in the form of the NLRA. The cart must go behind the horse, not the other way around.

While I agree the RLA needs to be reformed, you are making some very innacurate statements here.

It's akin to the whole "Keep the government's hands off my Medicaid" argument.

Really? REEEEEALY?
 
It's akin to the whole "Keep the government's hands off my Medicaid" argument.

Really? REEEEEALY?

Sort of like this...

wall-street-deregulation.jpg
 
Your view is very skewed.

If we didn't have government intervention, you would be fired for even joining a union in the first place (or fired for even *thinking* about joining a union). A strike can't take place if you don't have a union. To have a union, you need government intervention in the form of the NLRA. The cart must go behind the horse, not the other way around.

While I agree the RLA needs to be reformed, you are making some very innacurate statements here.

The NLRA doesnt exactly cover those under the RLA. Kinda the problem here.

I guess I'm just being too idealistic to think that a small group of people with very specialized skills can control their own market rates within their own group by making those skills scarce at a moments notice. Regardless of government intervention.
 
The NLRA doesnt exactly cover those under the RLA. Kinda the problem here.

I guess I'm just being too idealistic to think that a small group of people with very specialized skills can control their own market rates within their own group by making those skills scarce at a moments notice. Regardless of government intervention.

You are, it's the entire reason we have labor unions and government protection of them.
 
You are, it's the entire reason we have labor unions and government protection of them.

As it stands now under RLA, I dont agree that the government is the one protecting the unions. At the very least it is protecting the integrity of the underlying industry for the people as a whole, not the workers in the industry.
 
You're mincing phrases here. The government providing protections to unions is not the same the government protecting unions.
 
ahh Einstein, They would have a lot more leverage without the "protections" of the RLA.

The RLA is actually a great piece of legislation that has provided far more benefit to labor over the years than it has to management. The problem is that your career has probably been entirely encompassed within the Bush years, in which the RLA wasn't allowed to work as it was intended. There are really only two times in the history of the Act in which it was not applied properly: 1989-1993, and 2001-2009. Both periods were during the terms of office of men named Bush. The first Bush wasn't as bad as the second, but he certainly didn't allow the Act to work as intended.

Now, the Act is working wonderfully. Disputes are moving rapidly towards conclusions, and the NMB is applying pressure exactly as they are supposed to do. You may have noticed that Hawaiian pilots recently got a new contract with huge improvements. Why did this happen? Because the NMB told Hawaiian management that they would either play ball, or the HAL pilots would be released to strike at the beginning of the year. Guess what? Management played ball. As we speak, the pilots of Spirit Airlines are engaged in heated end-game negotiations with Spirit management. These talks have continued virtually non-stop for the past three weeks. We expect that there will either be a deal, or a strike, within a very short period of time. Trans States is right behind, and then AirTran, and then CAL, and so on and so on. The process is working wonderfully.

So, why didn't it work for the previous eight years? Simple: the Administration had no desire for it to work as it was intended, and he ensured that it didn't by appointing people to the NMB that would be dedicated management lapdogs. The former Chair of the NMB (whom President Obama fired) was a former lobbyist for Northwest Airlines, for example. But this was an anomaly in the history of the RLA. It's not just a Democrat/Republican thing. History has shown that even during Republican administrations, the NMB has just about always been impartial, carrying out their duties under the Act without any undue influence. That changed under Bush 43. Even Bush 41 allowed the NMB to operate pretty much as usual. His biggest violation of the intent of the Act was to deny the pilots at Eastern the Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) that they requested, something that had never been denied in the entire history of the RLA. But even he allowed the daily operation of the NMB to be unhindered by politics. His son was not so kind. But again, he has been the only real exception, and I don't expect things to get that bad again, even if a Republican makes it back into office. The failures of the Bush 43 NMB were too widely notice for another politician to try the same games.

The RLA rarely allows strikes

The RLA has allowed hundreds of strikes since its inception. You can view complete lists at the NMB's website.
 
ATN -

I was a young'en when the AA pilots almost went on strike.

You seem knowledgeable about this stuff -- can you summarize that presidential emergency decision to not allow the strike (or immediately order them back to work right as the strike started) in a few sentences if you don't mind?
 
ATN -

I was a young'en when the AA pilots almost went on strike.

You seem knowledgeable about this stuff -- can you summarize that presidential emergency decision to not allow the strike (or immediately order them back to work right as the strike started) in a few sentences if you don't mind?

Sure. The AMR PEB was an unusual situation. As they reached the final hours approaching the end of the 30-day cooling-off period, President Clinton's administration was watching everything very closely, as a strike at AMR would be felt nationwide. Bruce Lindsay, the White House Chief of Staff, called the APA President and asked him what the APA would like President Clinton to do. The answer was "we wouldn't be opposed to a PEB." It wasn't a request for a PEB, but it was a big hint that that's what the APA wanted. President Clinton complied, and the PEB was issued just moments after the deadline was reached.

Typically unions don't want PEBs, because the PEB is leverage against the union. In this case, however, the APA realized that they had driven up membership expectations too far (for instance, claiming that they could achieve an end of outsourcing to Eagle), and they knew that a PEB was the only way to get the membership to calm down and accept something reasonable. When the PEB issued their recommendations, it included pay raises and work rule improvements, but it also didn't come close to giving the APA everything they wanted. It had the desired affect, though, and the deal reached was basically based on the PEB's recommendations.
 
*facepalm*

Sometimes government transparency, or the continued push for more transparency, slows down actual progress within institutions of government - to the point of increasing inefficiencies.

Just random information I figured I'd spread.
 
Sure. The AMR PEB was an unusual situation. As they reached the final hours approaching the end of the 30-day cooling-off period, President Clinton's administration was watching everything very closely, as a strike at AMR would be felt nationwide. Bruce Lindsay, the White House Chief of Staff, called the APA President and asked him what the APA would like President Clinton to do. The answer was "we wouldn't be opposed to a PEB." It wasn't a request for a PEB, but it was a big hint that that's what the APA wanted. President Clinton complied, and the PEB was issued just moments after the deadline was reached.

Typically unions don't want PEBs, because the PEB is leverage against the union. In this case, however, the APA realized that they had driven up membership expectations too far (for instance, claiming that they could achieve an end of outsourcing to Eagle), and they knew that a PEB was the only way to get the membership to calm down and accept something reasonable. When the PEB issued their recommendations, it included pay raises and work rule improvements, but it also didn't come close to giving the APA everything they wanted. It had the desired affect, though, and the deal reached was basically based on the PEB's recommendations.

Thanks. I had never heard that side of it.
 
All I know is that if a regional carrier were to fire all of their striking workers they would have no problem filling spots. I would imagine that just about 70% of the dumb, uneducated, kids that graduated in the past year or two from the major collegiate aviation programs with $60k+ of debt would be jumping all over it. Gotta fly that shiny jet yo!

Wait until they learn the definition of 'scab' which is definitely not taught at any point at my particular school.

So does the government need to step in somewhere and say that you cannot fire a striking labor force (which they do)? I'd say yes. Is the current system perfect? Probably not.
 
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