It may very well be true that the replacement mechanics that NW hired were not properly trained and they might not have been the sharpest tacks in the desk drawer when NW hired them. I don’t know and don’t doubt but I also don’t really care. It was NW’s decision to sack their entire maintenance group and replace them and what NW did was their business to figure out.
My concern came the moment those employees became DL employees. If they were not competent, DL either did a pretty good job of getting them trained or perhaps there were other issues that were at play that were resolved over time; NW’s operation ran far better a couple of years after the lockout than it did when it started so NW figured out a lot of its own problems. They can’t possibly be as bad now as they were before or the effect on DL’s operation would be apparent – and it simply isn’t there.
But let me let you and other labor supporters in a little info: DL employees and supporters absolutely detest the rancorous, contentious environment that exists in many airline labor-mgmt relationships. DL employees may want some of the things that unions can offer but they absolutely want nothing to do with the difficult relations that other airlines have had with their employee groups and they absolutely want nothing to do with the labor problems other airlines have had. DL employees aren’t willing to trade away prosperity that has come through cooperation for a few economic crumbs. Many of you seem to forget that the labor problems at Eastern played out on Delta’s doorstep – in many cases, right across the tarmac of many airports. DL employees know full well how destructive bad labor relations are to individual careers.
When people try to bring up the AMFA strike again and somehow attach the problem to DL or drag other airline’s labor problems over to DL, I can absolutely assure you that many DL employees react not much differently than a cat whose hair stands up on end. If the labor movement has any desire to ever win over DL employees, it needs to get past the contentious form of relationships that exist at so many carriers. The whole notion of a scab list is nothing more than the same failed mindset that hasn’t worked at other airlines and won’t convince DL employees there is anything that they want.
As much as it slays you to admit it, there are companies that pay their employees well and give them decent benefits because those companies realize that happy employees take care of the company. Good businesses are good because all parties win and not because someone has managed to screw someone else out of something. Labor will never understand the concept of win-win given their jaded sense that “someone has got to lose.”
This board prides itself in anonymity and SELF-DISCLOSURE. When one side or party decides to walk away from the principles that have been accepted, you can’t expect the rest of the building to stay intact.
HA! you corporate types eat their young. Try another ethics class, evidently the first one didn’t take!
absolutely priceless - and hypocritical - and completely reinforced by this discussion in which you and others are trying to justify scab lists.
