WorldTraveler
Corn Field
- Dec 5, 2003
- 21,709
- 10,721
thanks for your responses, Dawg.
You are absolutely right that DL couldn't find the revenue to replace the insourcing revenue it gets... and they couldn't find places to do the jobs you do for the same amount - including the cost of laying Tech Ops employees off and shutting the place down - so they keep Tech Ops jobs.
It's about money. DL is a business, not a charity. You and others do a job for them and get a paycheck.
Other airlines have chosen to keep LESS work in house - send more work out. DL has a formula that keeps more work for DL employees than other airlines, and DL is able to do it at comparable or lower costs than its peers who outsource more.
DL's insourcing work - not just in Tech Ops provides the mass the airline needs to remain efficient. Whether it is engine overhauls for Gol or shutting Comair in order to shift flying to DL employees, DL insources because it makes mainline more efficient.
Yes, I know you want to focus solely on overhaul because that is apparently YOUR THING. But DL is not just overhaul. They aren't just a domestic airline. As such, they have the ability to shift assets where they can make the most money. They stopped flying to Cairo because tourists don't want to go there anywhere... no money to be made. They don't do airframe overhauls - in part - because they can't make money at those costs.
But they can make money doing engine overhauls. And they can and do form partnerships with AM for maintenance just like they do with AF/KL for passenger revenue - because both sides gain.
Kev,
you may want to label flexbility as autocracy but it is exactly what DL has been able to use to keep more work for DL employees. Pilots gave the company the flexibility to turn a bunch of 50 seaters into beer cans but buy used 717s and add'l 76 seaters, with the result that DL employees will work more under the reworked fleet plan than they do now.
You, from your union viewpoint, see flexibility as taking jobs away... yet the overwhelming evidence is that DL's ability to adapt to the marketplace is what has allowed them to keep more jobs than other airlines. It was true during the bankruptcies, it is still true today.
DL employees are a member of the marketplace for airline labor. Their benefits and scope are being eroded by other airlines who trash union contracts in BK. DL only has to do better than those airlines to convince its employees that a union won't provide the security or pay the unions promise. DL employees fare better than their unionized peers because those heavily unionized airlines have had open season on airline labor for 35 years of deregulation.
Other airlines are laying off employees... and you can't accept that moving jobs from within the company is a better alternative. That is the flexibility DL has to use... flexible staffing including RRs are what DL can do today to keep its FT employees on the payroll. Unions won't ever agree such a solution is viable - yet you can't stop the wholesale trashing of airline labor contracts in BK and the outsourcing of work by other airlines which is far larger.
You are an idealist, Kev. I admire you for that. I admire you for fighting for what matters to you and for never giving up in the things that you believe are right. Sometimes, flexibility and pragmatism are needed in order to build a world that isn't everything you want but a whole lot better than the alternative.
A political commentator offered this about the current political situation in the US, noting there is alot of idealism at work with little ability to make goals happen.
"The presidents judged by history to be the greatest — Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Washington, Jefferson, Reagan and Wilson — were all idealists. They had a vision of America and of the world. But these men were also pragmatic politicians, men who judged that winning what’s possible is preferable to losing in fealty to an impossible dream.
In their time, each of them was denounced by their closest supporters for betraying their ideals. But they changed America."
The world will be changed not by those who hold rigidly to ideals which cannot be attained but by those who figure out how to succeed in a world that is less than what it should be but still provides considerable opportunity to those of us as change agents who pragmatically accept the world as it is and build a better world one brick at a time.
You are absolutely right that DL couldn't find the revenue to replace the insourcing revenue it gets... and they couldn't find places to do the jobs you do for the same amount - including the cost of laying Tech Ops employees off and shutting the place down - so they keep Tech Ops jobs.
It's about money. DL is a business, not a charity. You and others do a job for them and get a paycheck.
Other airlines have chosen to keep LESS work in house - send more work out. DL has a formula that keeps more work for DL employees than other airlines, and DL is able to do it at comparable or lower costs than its peers who outsource more.
DL's insourcing work - not just in Tech Ops provides the mass the airline needs to remain efficient. Whether it is engine overhauls for Gol or shutting Comair in order to shift flying to DL employees, DL insources because it makes mainline more efficient.
Yes, I know you want to focus solely on overhaul because that is apparently YOUR THING. But DL is not just overhaul. They aren't just a domestic airline. As such, they have the ability to shift assets where they can make the most money. They stopped flying to Cairo because tourists don't want to go there anywhere... no money to be made. They don't do airframe overhauls - in part - because they can't make money at those costs.
But they can make money doing engine overhauls. And they can and do form partnerships with AM for maintenance just like they do with AF/KL for passenger revenue - because both sides gain.
Kev,
you may want to label flexbility as autocracy but it is exactly what DL has been able to use to keep more work for DL employees. Pilots gave the company the flexibility to turn a bunch of 50 seaters into beer cans but buy used 717s and add'l 76 seaters, with the result that DL employees will work more under the reworked fleet plan than they do now.
You, from your union viewpoint, see flexibility as taking jobs away... yet the overwhelming evidence is that DL's ability to adapt to the marketplace is what has allowed them to keep more jobs than other airlines. It was true during the bankruptcies, it is still true today.
DL employees are a member of the marketplace for airline labor. Their benefits and scope are being eroded by other airlines who trash union contracts in BK. DL only has to do better than those airlines to convince its employees that a union won't provide the security or pay the unions promise. DL employees fare better than their unionized peers because those heavily unionized airlines have had open season on airline labor for 35 years of deregulation.
Other airlines are laying off employees... and you can't accept that moving jobs from within the company is a better alternative. That is the flexibility DL has to use... flexible staffing including RRs are what DL can do today to keep its FT employees on the payroll. Unions won't ever agree such a solution is viable - yet you can't stop the wholesale trashing of airline labor contracts in BK and the outsourcing of work by other airlines which is far larger.
You are an idealist, Kev. I admire you for that. I admire you for fighting for what matters to you and for never giving up in the things that you believe are right. Sometimes, flexibility and pragmatism are needed in order to build a world that isn't everything you want but a whole lot better than the alternative.
A political commentator offered this about the current political situation in the US, noting there is alot of idealism at work with little ability to make goals happen.
"The presidents judged by history to be the greatest — Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Washington, Jefferson, Reagan and Wilson — were all idealists. They had a vision of America and of the world. But these men were also pragmatic politicians, men who judged that winning what’s possible is preferable to losing in fealty to an impossible dream.
In their time, each of them was denounced by their closest supporters for betraying their ideals. But they changed America."
The world will be changed not by those who hold rigidly to ideals which cannot be attained but by those who figure out how to succeed in a world that is less than what it should be but still provides considerable opportunity to those of us as change agents who pragmatically accept the world as it is and build a better world one brick at a time.
