Militant Labor Question

Short term, yes. Long term, who knows. Disaster could be around the corner with current Obama policies. Blindly voting for a better NMB could just end up in pure disaster.

So you are exactly like the management people you despise. You just use a less successful method of obtaining what you want. The only reason you don't like them is because they happened to be successful and you have to depend on the government to gain any traction.

Exactly what liberals despise about republicans and yet you share the exact same goal.

Hypocrisy is running rampant in this thread.

President Obama's economic policies are supported by a strong majority of economists. Supply-side economics has become a fringe theory, supported mostly by people who have no background in economics at all. To quote the "good" President Bush, it's nothing but "voodoo economics."

No, not at all. I believe that progressive policies are good for everyone, not just for me and my profession. I don't believe for one second that Mitt Romney actually believes that supply-side economics are good for everyone. He just doesn't care, because it's good for him and his buddies.

I consider myself to be pretty successful, thanks. I don't need $1 billion to be happy or successful. As far as the pie, I don't want their pie, I just want them to stop beating the crap out of me so they can take my portion of pie.

Three guys are sitting around a table. Mitt Romney, you, and a guy on welfare. In the center of the table is a pizza pie, cut into 12 slices. Romney beats both of you over the head and quickly grabs 11 slices for himself while you're knocked out. When you come to, he then looks at you and says "hey, you better grab your slice of pizza before that welfare freeloader takes it."

That is essentially the modern Republican party and the idiots in the middle class who have been tricked into supporting it. While the ultra-rich steal all of the pie, they look at the middle class and tell them that they need to support the policies of the rich to protect themselves from the "leeches" on entitlement programs. Meanwhile, they leave the middle class nothing but table scraps. That, my friend, is the reality of "trickle down" economics.

The right to freely assemble certainly gives you a right to gather together and work towards a common purpose, but it doesn't give you any protection beyond that. Without further labor laws, your employer could terminate your employment, you would have no protection in the event of self help, etc.

Oh boy...

Not at all. The right to freedom of assembly, and the right to self-expression are natural rights that you get by virtue of the fact that you are a living human being. The Constitution AFFIRMS that individuals have these rights, and prohibits government from infringing upon them.
The right to unionize is GRANTED by the government, and mandates that an individual (i.e. the employer) must recognize “the union” as the authorized representative of the individuals being served with regard to employment policies. The RLA is simply the framework which describes how this relationship must be administered.
And just as a reminder, the RLA is not simply designed for unions and employees. Employers have rights under the RLA too.

I disagree. I don't know if there's case law on the matter, but the right to unionize is the same exact thing as the right to assemble. Now as far as an employer recognizing the union, that is a different case entirely, and in other industries they don't necessarily have to recognize it, but a union(group of people, individuals, whatever) have the right to not work regardless of the govt or an employer recognizing them as a group.

I also disagree that without the RLA it'd be like the wild west with employees and employers threatening each other constantly. Most of the blue collar labor unions do not operate under a law requiring mediation, and they're not striking every other year or anything. It is in fact rather rare anymore.

The right to assemble is only a right where the government would prevent you from assembling, not private parties.

Looked at another way, without a labor law framework: You have the right to assemble as much as you want. Your employeer has the right to fire you for assembling.

You need to read the entire thing: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

Note the bold: the right of the people peaceably to assemble, AND to petition THE GOVERNMENT for a redress of grievances.

The first amendment refers the the rights of citizens to challenge their government, not their employer.

Where do you get this information? On my way to the airport the other day I drove by two construction sites that had the IBEW striking at one and the Pipe fitters striking at another. This is in Albany, New York. Just because the news media does not cover it does not mean strikes don't happen.

As Andrew said, it's actually not that rare for labor unions (outside the RLA) to strike. Also, the very reason it isn't the wild west, as youc all it, is because the threat of a strike or a lockout is VERY real and management and labor are generally able to work something out before a contract expires.

As opposed to aviation where there is essentially no threat of strike in this quarter. Consider the Republic strike vote. How long did that take? Since there's no threat of strike in the immediate future, there is no need for management to make concessions and they can stonewall and bicker up to the bitter end. The entire time, they're saving money that they should be paying their crews...

I can't say for other areas, but pretty much all of my family is blue collar labor, at least the males. My dad is IBEW. They've had 1 strike in 20 years now. I can't recall the last time my uncle's millwrights struck.

And are they limited in when they can strike?

My father is a truck driver and represented by the teamsters. When I was a kid they went on strike and they were limited by the union when they could and couldn't.

Why do you assume that management is responsible for the delays? Frankly, the IBT at Republic is a joke, is constantly saddled with internal conflict, and they aren't even close to getting down to the settlement packages issues in negotiations. As long as that is the case, the NMB isn't going to release them, nor should they. No one is more pro-labor than I am, but I even I wouldn't vote to give them a proffer if I was an NMB member. They need to get their act together first. That's not management's fault, or the NMB's, or the RLA's.

The NPA at AirTran was the same kind of joke. Spent years fiddling around with nonsense and internal fighting. When ALPA got on the property, we got the contract done in less than 18 months.

Yes, under the NLRA, you can't strike until you've reached impasse on the mandatory items of bargaining. When it comes to permissive areas of bargaining, you aren't allowed to strike at all. For example, scope is a permissive area of bargaining. You have no rights to strike over scope. Rates of pay are a mandatory item of bargaining, so you can strike over rates of pay, but only after you've been in negotiations long enough to reach impasse. If the union wants to go on strike, but management asserts that you haven't reached impasse yet, the NLRB gets to decide. An injunction can be issued to stop a strike until the NLRB makes their decision.

Interesting sidenote, a guy I knew just interviewed there and was told about the strike risk the company sees near. They then said if they did strike they would understand he would have to follow suit being that croasing was a career ender even in training but would be let go. That didn't sound legal to me, so he emailed them about that and they replied with hey were willing to put all new hires in training on furlough until the strike was over instead of firing them like they said in the interview.

Technically, they do have the right to terminate the employment of anyone on probation who goes on strike. However, the union would always negotiate their jobs back as part of a back to work agreement. Either that, or the union would just tell the probies that they aren't required to strike with everyone else. It's been done both ways.

You mean, the people the people who actually buy airline tickets?