Piney,
Efficiencies which are often permitted under the labor contracts are OFTEN not taken advantage of by management. It really does seem rather ridiculous that they seem to prefer to make stuff up, whether it violates contracts or not, than take advantage of efficiencies already allowed them. Take duty rigs, for example. They are there to ensure that the flight crew is used efficiently, not left sitting around with nothing to do for no pay. Even with this incentive, the company continues to schedule long airport sits, long overnights, etc. SWA has them as well, they just schedule much more efficiently so that they don't pay this sort of penalty. The pilots allowed all the efficiencies for a SWA type operation. Maybe you remember Metrojet. It was VERY popular with customers, and even the crews appreciated the more efficient trips and cost structure. It even appealed to management in that it allowed the pilots to basically work as much as they wanted to, up to 288 hours in 3 months (FAA max, since only 1000 hours per year can be flown). Trips were basically "hard time" with very minimal rig pay due to the MUCH more efficient use of crews. Rather than even entertain the notion of expanding it to more of the mainline operation, management just pulled the plug and parked the airplanes. I know a lot of folks here on the pilot list that to this day resent Metrojet being on the property, but faced with that sort of operation or flying an RJ, I think I know which they would choose. Piney, just let me emphasize that I know of very few employees at U that are here for any sort of "free ride", all they want is fair treatment, fair wages, and a decent lifestyle. BY the way, my solution to your example about 100 unionized workers would be to: realize that there is a cost to doing business, and our business model in the NE is more expensive than most; then, I would line fewer executive pockets in order to maintain the operation profitably, while NOT comparing my operation to anyone elses, especially not marketing models as different as those of SWA and JBLU. I hope you can understand that unions would NOT exist if fairness was a concept embraced throughout the business world.